> If the engineers had equity, we would've been high-fiving the sales team for pushing those gargantuan deals past the finish line.
That's a great example of why simple profit sharing or equity compensation is not enough: it corrupts even engineers to economic myopia!
What about the existing customers that need their stability problems fixed? No time for that! Gotta hajj together new features for the next big contract! You should never cheer sales making up vapourware. Any scheme that does has misaligned incentives.
This has been shown before though I don't have a source at hand: focusing on stock market value leads to short-termism which leads to lower stock market value in the long run.
That's a great example of why simple profit sharing or equity compensation is not enough: it corrupts even engineers to economic myopia!
What about the existing customers that need their stability problems fixed? No time for that! Gotta hajj together new features for the next big contract! You should never cheer sales making up vapourware. Any scheme that does has misaligned incentives.
This has been shown before though I don't have a source at hand: focusing on stock market value leads to short-termism which leads to lower stock market value in the long run.