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Team Compensation by Mary Poppendieck [pdf]
- briancooley 18y agoUnjust Deserts? Nothing like a typo in 48-point font.
- michael_dorfman 18y agoI hate to break it to you, but that's no typo. The word in the phrase is, in fact, "deserts", which means "that which is deserved". It has nothing to do with arid zones, or after-meal snacks (although it is spelled like the former, and pronounced like the latter.)
- briancooley 18y agoCool. Thanks for the info.
- alexfarran 18y agoActually 'deserts' is correct. It's pronounced the same way as 'desserts', but the two words are not related. 'Deserts' is what a person deserves.
- gruseom 18y agoI've come to the conclusion that there is no good way to solve the compensation problem -- of how to reward outstanding performers and teams without the unintended consequences that the article talks about -- inside standard corporate structures. Besides, the compensation offered under these schemes is almost always so tiny as to be nearly a joke. I think many people here would agree, though, that there is a simple solution: if you want greater compensation, make something and let the market decide. Markets don't have the limiting beliefs that middle managers do.
- ajross 18y agoMarkets, on the other hand, have a nasty habit of paying people nothing at all for failures. It's hard to feed a family in that kind of risk environment. I'm all for startup fever, but we have to be realistic here. The libertarian ideal of paying people the precise market value of their labor would lead to an awful lot of starving IT workers...
- dpapathanasiou 18y agoThe libertarian ideal of paying people the precise market value of their labor would lead to an awful lot of starving IT workers You could leave out the word "IT" and still have a good point.
- ojbyrne 18y agoUmm, but aren't most people hired through a labor market? What reasons do you have to believe its not an efficient market?
- pchristensen 18y agoThe firms that hire them are mediators between the raw market and the labor market. And those firms almost always pay for the expected average productivity for that position. Which leads to ... the Team Compensation issue. http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- dpapathanasiou 18y agoI'm just describing a phenomenon I've seen at large companies, i.e. 10% of the people do all the work. The other 90% spend their time attending meetings, writing memos, and otherwise looking busy but not actually adding value.
- ojbyrne 18y agoI think that attending meetings and writing memos are work. Startups do eventually grow beyond the startup phase, and nobody has figured out a better way to manage large companies than bureaucracy. Middle managers, memos, interminable meetings...
- pongle 18y agoHer message is results based compensation doesn't work in the domain of software creation. I wonder if it applies to other areas, where it's widely used (e.g. sales or waitressing)?
- joshwa 18y agoPooled tips in a restaurant environment definitely fosters good service for the team as a whole... servers are more likely to help each other out, versus more greedy behavior/gaming of the system in a competitive environment.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoI remain dubious of "don't pay people extra who perform better" because that's simply not my value system. You describe your problem, I name a price, we negotiate, then I go fix your problem. There. I am paid based on our mutual understanding of the merit of the work. But I'm a hired gun, so I have a slanted view. Let's try another analogy. I love start-ups, in which the marketplace rewards those products it finds most meritorious. You make things people find merit in, you get more money. Looks to me that is two strikes against the views represented in the article. I guess you could make the case that there are full-timers who are interested in lots more besides money. In this case, the marketplace still rewards the meritorious work, it's just that management gets to keep the extra money and screws over the little guy. There has to be some kind of middle ground. If my team invents the next google while working at company XYZ, I don't want a T-shirt and an opportunity to become senior muck-slucker. I want a cut of the action. Is that so unreasonable?
- chollida1 18y ago> There has to be some kind of middle ground. If my team invents the next google while working at company XYZ, I don't want a T-shirt and an opportunity to become senior muck-slucker. I want a cut of the action. I'm not sure what the solution would be in this case, but Google used to give out Founders awards, were by if you created a cool new technology or product they would try to compensate you as if you were a startup they had to buy. They ended up scrapping this as it, in their estimation, caused more harm that good with in the company.
- jon_dahl 18y agoIf my team invents the next google... The article described a situation like this (well, not quite Google maybe), but the company wanted to single out 1-2 team members for reward, while ignoring the rest. I'm all for being paid better for performance, but when working as a team, there's something to be said for rewarding the successful team, not just an individual or two. Definitely a different story if you're a hired gun, and I've been on both sides of the table there.
- YuriNiyazov 18y agoIs it wrong to judge a text by the childish (or marketing-oriented) front page?
- johnyzee 18y agoApparently management-targeted material has to read like it is written for grade schoolers: "Here's Sandy and Sue. They are great friends! Don't forget the StickyNotes at the end of the lesson!"
- gleb 18y agoThe only way to get similar level of contributions from everybody on the team is by getting rid of high-performers or hobbling them.
- jon_dahl 18y agoI think you're right, but I don't think that the merit-based pay described in this article is simply based on the total contribution. The problem was that not everyone on the team could "exceed expectations".
- snorkel 18y agoMerit compensation is OK. Comparative ranking cooworkers causes all kinds of problems, such as everything in the article. Comparing workers to each other doesn't mean much if all of the workers are excellent or if all of the workers suck.
- malkia 18y agoAnonymous vote system might help. Everbody puts his vote for who he thought was the best one in the team (he can even name himself). Or something like this.
- johnyzee 18y agoI think Joel already wrote the book on this (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/09.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/09.html). For good developers, the only motivation you need is already intrinsic to them, that is the desire to do awesome work and be recognized for this by their peers. Just facilitate this, sit back and enjoy the show. Lame rewards confuse the picture and (a) piss off the guys who are bound to feel slighted, and (b) dilute genuine motivation with a perceived need to look good to managers.