About the dangers of bonuses
Source: Article by Joel Spolsky, Translator: Dmitry Mayorov, Editor: Peter Gladkikh (April 3, 2000), In the original English article: Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
The material was prepared by the scientific director of the AQT Center Sergey P. Grigoryev
Free access to articles does not in any way diminish the value of the materials contained in them.
Mike Murray, a remarkably unlucky Microsoft HR executive, has distinguished himself many times, not counting the creation of the "Ship It" award, which he created at the very beginning of his career. The idea was that right after the product was released, you got a Lucite tombstone the size of a decent dictionary. This somehow had to give an incentive to work, because if you do nothing, then there will be no Lucite! It's amazing how Microsoft even managed to release programs before the appearance of this plate.
The prize was announced amid incredible fanfare at a large social picnic. A few weeks earlier, posters with a portrait of Bill Gates and the caption “Why is this man smiling?” were hung throughout the corporation’s campus. I didn’t quite understand then what exactly was meant. Is Bill smiling because we now have an incentive to create software?
At the picnic, it became apparent that company employees felt they were being treated like children and booed the speakers. The Excel team unfurled a huge banner with the slogan: “Why does the Excel team yawn?” Just how despised this prize was is illustrated by the fact that, based on a true story, an episode of Douglas Coupland's classic book Microserfs in which a group of programmers attempts to destroy it with autogenous gas.
Treating your own highly qualified scientists like children who are still in kindergarten is far from a unique phenomenon. Almost every company has a similar, very offensive and insulting bonus program.
In two companies where I worked, the greatest stress occurred during mandatory certification, which was carried out every six months. The HR departments at Juno and Microsoft apparently copied their performance appraisal and bonus systems from the same Dilbert management playbook, because they both worked exactly the same way. First, each employee “anonymously” assessed his direct supervisor (as if this could be done honestly and objectively), then he filled out an optional “self-assessment” form, which the supervisor “took into account” when conducting an assessment, which consisted of giving ratings in qualitative categories like “works well.” in a team" on a five-point scale, and, in reality, only ratings of 3 and 4 were acceptable.
Managers submitted bonus proposals to the top, where they were completely ignored, and as a result everyone received bonuses of random sizes. This system never took into account the fact that people have different and unique talents, which are necessary for the good performance of the team as a whole.
Certification created stress for two reasons. Many of my friends, especially those who had talents that were very important but didn't make the traditional list on the letterhead, got lousy grades.
For example, one of them was a cheerful catalyst, a kind of toastmaster, helping everyone when things went wrong. He was the glue that held the team together, yet he received poor performance reviews every time, simply because his boss underestimated him. Another acquaintance had incredible strategic sense; his participation in technical discussions helped everyone else do a much better job. He spent more than average time trying out new technologies, and in this area he was a great asset to the entire team. But, given the number of lines of code written, he ended up behind, and since the boss, in his stupidity, did not notice anything else, the results of the certifications were also worthless. Which, of course, had a bad effect on my mood. Moreover, even a positive assessment can be offensive if it is not as positive as the person expected.
The impact of evaluations on employee mood is asymmetrical: negative evaluations greatly offend people, while positive evaluations have no effect on either mood or productivity. Those who receive them work well anyway.
A positive review suggests that they bend over backwards to get praise... like Pavlov's dogs working for a handout, rather than like professionals who actually care about the quality of their work. And this is where the dog is buried. Most people think they work very well (even if they don't). This is a trick that our brain shows itself so that life does not seem completely unbearable. So everyone thinks they are doing a good job, and even if the performance appraisal is done fairly (which is not easy), most people will be disappointed with the results. The impact of this on the mood of the team is hard to miss. In teams where appraisals are carried out fairly, they lead to a week or two of general depression, and sometimes voluntary dismissals. They drive wedges between team members, often out of jealousy, which DeMarco and Lister call the untranslatable term teamicide (team is a team, and teamicide is similar to suicide): the unintentional collapse of previously cohesive teams.
Alfie Kohn, in the now classic article “Punished by Rewards,” in the Harvard Business Review, September-October 1993, writes:
“At least two dozen studies over the last thirty years definitively show that people who expect to be rewarded for completing a task or for performing well simply do not perform as well as those who do not expect any reward.”
He concludes that "bonuses (or bribes) are simply not effective in the workplace." DeMarco and Lister go further and point out in no uncertain terms that any kind of competition in the workplace, any carrot-and-stick scheme, and even the old trick of "catching people red-handed doing something useful and then rewarding them" all do more harm than good. benefits. Any distribution of gingerbread (for example, the ceremonial presentation of plaques to the winners of a socialist competition) implies that they worked to obtain this Lucite plaque; that is, they do not have sufficient independence to work without the carrot; it's humiliating and insulting.
In most cases, managers have no choice and are forced to participate in existing performance appraisal procedures. If you're in this situation, the only way to avoid "killing the team" is to give everyone full marks. If you have a choice, then I recommend avoiding all sorts of certifications, bonuses and pennants for the “drummer of the month”.