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But the bonus is just an incentive mechanism. The question really is what things influenced the bonus award? Sensible things or not so sensible things? Did they

• t_mann 5y ago
  No matter which measures you choose, as soon as you tie financial incentives to them, people will find ways to pervert what they're supposed to measure. That observation is so general that there's even a name for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
• masklinn 5y ago
  > But the bonus is just an incentive mechanism. Sure. It's an incentive mechanism to be seen as better than your peers. > The question really is what things influenced the bonus award? Sensible things or not so sensible things? Did they tie the bonus to things that the company wanted or not? They tied the bonus to "being a top performer": > Then tie the bonuses to some shadowy and illusory "peer review" system and watch the sparks fly. But frankly any time bonuses are involved the risks shoot up exponentially. For instance sales are commonly highly bonus-based, and as a result at least in software they will promise any and everything to the client so they can close and get that sweet, sweet bonus, and let everyone else hold the bag when the client finds out there was only a very tenuous relationship between their promises and reality.