This paragraph is a real nugget:<p>> In most organizations the developers are some of the highest paid employees. They get paid well because their skills are scarce and hard to reacquire. This leads to entrenched “senior” developers who produce little, but “know” (and therefore get paid) a whole lot. It also shifts the emphasis to stability and away from being quick, nimble, and adaptive. Over time this turns your development teams into an occupying force rather than a fighting force.<p>When this process is unhindered a company's right brain starts to wither and die.
This seems like a great short-term incentive, but impractical long-term, like in <a href="http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx</a><p>He said that, in that week, the code base was reduced by 90%, which probably accounted for a fair chunk of the bonuses. Odds are, the code base won't be reducible by another 90% any time soon.<p>Now, doing something similar another week for test coverage, or some other way that the code base is lacking, makes plenty of sense. But it doesn't seem viable as a long-term bonus strategy.