
Team Compensation by Mary Poppendieck [pdf] - d0mine
http://www.poppendieck.com/pdfs/Compensation.pdf
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gruseom
I'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.

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ajross
Markets, 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...

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eugenejen
Ain't that a good thing for human race? In history when kings hired
incompetent generals, disloyal subordinates, bullying common people, they paid
the price with their own lives. Farmers who failed to tend their crop and bad
luck due to harsh climates died of famine. Vikings, pirates who pillaged wrong
targets got annihilated. Why should we put ourselves as a special caste?

~~~
malkia
There is also the case with the good surgeons and the bad surgeons....

Well a good surgeon would always take a safe & sure case, where he would
almost succeed.

A "bad" surgeon would take the impossible (to save life, limb, etc.) cases,
and he would fail way more...

Now really - who's good and who's bad?

If your child or you has something really terrible that's almost impossible
(but still there is chance) to cure, whom of the "good" surgeons is going to
help you?

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DanielBMarkham
I 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?

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chollida1
> 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.

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gleb
The only way to get similar level of contributions from everybody on the team
is by getting rid of high-performers or hobbling them.

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jon_dahl
I 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".

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johnyzee
I think Joel already wrote the book on this
(<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.

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pongle
Her 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)?

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joshwa
Pooled 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.

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YuriNiyazov
Is it wrong to judge a text by the childish (or marketing-oriented) front
page?

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johnyzee
Apparently 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!"

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snorkel
Merit 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.

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malkia
Anonymous 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.

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briancooley
Unjust _Deserts_?

Nothing like a typo in 48-point font.

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michael_dorfman
I 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.)

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briancooley
Cool. Thanks for the info.

