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> One year we got $300 (or less...) bonuses. It was just how the math of this complicated system worked out.

I worked at a company where HR had too many people coming up with complicated reward schemes, but not enough money to make them worthwhile. Same thing: Reward levels were $100 here, $200 there, and required a relatively large amount of work to get.

The weirdest thing was watching a subset of people pursue these small rewards so aggressively that their primary work started to fall behind. Some people would be grinding away at the next step to win a $100 reward while neglecting real work that others were depending on.

Good lesson in how weird incentives can be for some people.



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