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.
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.
Indeed. This seems to be putting a "price" (really, with those numbers, these are just game-like "points", they aren't going to change anyone's compensation meaningfully) on what amounts to the low hanging fruit of the development world.
Yes, all that stuff is good. But you can do all that right, constantly refactor code, write tests to avoid "rolling out bugs caught by others", and still have an expensive, out-of-control project. This just seems like a way to turn otherwise wasted developer cycles in to busywork. It's seems fine, and might be fun for a while, but I can't see this making a huge difference in the long term
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This seems like a great short-term incentive, but impractical long-term, like in http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx
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.
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.
Indeed. This seems to be putting a "price" (really, with those numbers, these are just game-like "points", they aren't going to change anyone's compensation meaningfully) on what amounts to the low hanging fruit of the development world.
Yes, all that stuff is good. But you can do all that right, constantly refactor code, write tests to avoid "rolling out bugs caught by others", and still have an expensive, out-of-control project. This just seems like a way to turn otherwise wasted developer cycles in to busywork. It's seems fine, and might be fun for a while, but I can't see this making a huge difference in the long term