This is a funny anecdote wrapped in a lot of noise.<p>On the one hand we don't expect to get dinged $10k when we cause a $500K bug, on the other.. finding a $500k savings does feel like something worth rewarding.<p>The fact that this was rewarded with $30 is in fact worse than $0, as has been commented elsewhere in the thread.<p>I've been in recovery disaster hell where the entire team worked 18 hour shifts for 2 weeks including weekends to bail our our CTO & senior management who refused to pay for any backups/DR site. Similarly we were rewarded with $20 gift cards. It completely felt like it would have been better to just not give us anything.<p>Of course these are always symptoms of bad companies, and I encourage anyone in a similar situation to take it as a sign to move on.<p>My company I later found out had just secretly had a near-death experience, which they managed to do a second run at death 18 months later, requiring RIFing 50% of my team. Fortunately I was long gone by then.