Ugh. I severely dislike articles like this, because they lend legitimacy to a pay-by-politics form of reward and punishment.<p>Each of the three reasons he lists can be traced back to manipulation of one's political image: you fail to take the absolute most cynical view that everyone's failures from above will come crashing down on you, and cover your ass accordingly; you fail to wave your achievements around, because you believe someone is actively paying attention or gives a crap about anything you're doing; or you fail to appropriately hide your boredom and lack of motivation by plodding on at the same rate as everyone else like the good cog that you are.<p>None of these have anything to do with actually doing anything. You could be accomplishing next to nothing, and still be able to hit all of these points; you could be working miracles in code, and manage to flunk all three and get thrown out on your ass. They are all the departmental equivalent of spin control, and are the sign of a broken department and quite possibly a broken company. It is a sign that people have stopped caring about doing things in favor of appearing as though they are doing things. This sort of thing is a slow death of a thousand cuts to an organization, and will result in people getting fired anyway, when the lack of revenues from people not getting anything done force staffing cuts anyway.<p>I understand that a lot of companies are run like this; I don't need to be reminded about how the real world works, and especially not with the usual condescension. I'm not trying to convince myself or anyone else that the corporate world is not stacked this way; what I am doing is yelling in the same way Dan Pink did about motivation by incentive that this sort of ass-covering doesn't work. It results in an organization that will steadily decay from the inside, and will ultimately end up shafting the same people who thought they could save themselves by just hunkering down and playing the political game. All these people bought was a little more time cower in fear, and convince themselves this will all blow over if they just behave. It doesn't work, and people need to stop convincing themselves, for the sake of themselves, their coworkers, and the organizations they purport to work for, that it does.<p>Life is too short, peoples' time and effort is too valuable, to put up with asinine wealth tarpits like this. No one, not even the person cowering, is benefited in the long-term in any way by this sort of attitude.<p>Ugh, I need to go take a walk to unwind.