One thing I'll caution about, though. One of the more depressing moments I had at a prior gig was realizing that the project I'd been working on (a pretty big overhaul of the 3D interface for a tool) was probably not actually getting us any customers, was probably too complicated for the customers to use (our market was AEC, and the next generation of architects cannot take over fast enough!), and in general that I was getting paid to (seemingly) add no value to the company.
Because I didn't (presumably) see the bigger picture, I got into a pretty sad place as I tried to complete work on something that didn't seem to matter from my limited knowledge of things outside engineering. In short, a little extra knowledge is a dangerous thing; had I known less, I could've happily chugged away, and had I known more, I might've been able to see the point in what I was doing.
So, pegging rewards for engineering efforts to direct profitability could maybe have some bad side-effects.
Comments
Excellent points!
One thing I'll caution about, though. One of the more depressing moments I had at a prior gig was realizing that the project I'd been working on (a pretty big overhaul of the 3D interface for a tool) was probably not actually getting us any customers, was probably too complicated for the customers to use (our market was AEC, and the next generation of architects cannot take over fast enough!), and in general that I was getting paid to (seemingly) add no value to the company.
Because I didn't (presumably) see the bigger picture, I got into a pretty sad place as I tried to complete work on something that didn't seem to matter from my limited knowledge of things outside engineering. In short, a little extra knowledge is a dangerous thing; had I known less, I could've happily chugged away, and had I known more, I might've been able to see the point in what I was doing.
So, pegging rewards for engineering efforts to direct profitability could maybe have some bad side-effects.