This “skin in the game” reasoning is nonsensical. Highly competent and passionate engineers don’t avoid mistakes because they’re bummed out about being woken up

This “skin in the game” reasoning is nonsensical. Highly competent and passionate engineers don’t avoid mistakes because they’re bummed out about being woken up in the middle of the night with the consequences of them. That thinking is just based a cartoon version of human motivation; its twin is the idea that offering money and promotion as an incentive will lead to better performance. Your manager may fancy themselves as a latter day Cortés, but you don’t need to play their mind games (most of them based on the misunderstood readings of an unsettled science) to create an effective and high functioning organisation.