Joel on Software
Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
by Joel Spolsky Monday, April 03, 2000
Mike Murray, a surprisingly hapless HR manager at Microsoft, made a number of goofs, but the doozie was introducing a "Ship It" award shortly after he started the job. The idea was that you would get a big lucite tombstone the size of a dictionary when your product shipped. This was somehow supposed to give you an incentive to work, you see, because if you didn't do your job-- no lucite for you! Makes you wonder how Microsoft ever shipped software before the lucite slab.
麦克姆瑞，微软的一个神奇傻蛋HR经理，做了一堆蠢事， 但是最经典的还是在他上任不久之后提出的一个叫“交付”奖。 中心思想就是当你成功交付你的产品的时候你就获得一个字典大小的水晶奖座。这就是想设法让你完成工作， 你看， 因为如果你没能完成你的工作 – 你就拿不到奖牌！ 这就会让人不禁思索在没这种水晶奖座之前微软是怎么交付软件产品的。
The Ship It program was announced with an incredible amount of internal fanfare and hoopla at a big company picnic. For weeks before the event, teaser posters appeared all over the corporate campus with a picture of Bill Gates and the words "Why is this man smiling?" I'm not sure what that meant. Was Bill smiling because he was happy that we now had an incentive to ship software? But at the company picnic, it became apparent that the employees felt like they were being treated like children. There was a lot of booing. The Excel programming team held up a huge sign that said "Why is the Excel team yawning?" The Ship It award was so despised that there is even a (non-fiction) episode in Douglas Coupland's classic Microserfs in which a group of programmers try to destroy one with a blow torch.
交付奖是在公司内部的一次聚餐活动上无比大张旗鼓地宣布的。 这件事情之前的几个月， 公司办公点到处贴满了海报，海报上画这比尔盖茨和一段话“为什么他在笑？” 我搞不清楚他要说什么。 是说比尔笑因为我们现在有交付的激励了么？ 但是在公司的聚餐会上， 员工们很显然的感觉到像小孩一样被对待。 无数次的起哄。 Excel编程团队举起一块很大的告示牌“为什么Excel团队在打哈欠？”交付奖是如此受鄙视乃至于道格拉斯库普兰的经典作Micorserf里有一集（确有其事）描述一群程序员尝试口活儿把这玩意儿吹破。
Treating your rocket scientist employees as if they were still in kindergarten is not an isolated phenomenon. Almost every company has some kind of incentive program that is insulting and demeaning. At two of the companies I've worked for, the most stressful time of year was the twice-yearly performance review period. For some reason, the Juno HR department and the Microsoft HR department must have copied their performance review system out of the same Dilbertesque management book, because both programs worked exactly the same way. First, you gave "anonymous" upward reviews for your direct manager (as if that could be done in an honest way). Then, you filled out optional "self-evaluation" forms, which your manager "took into account" in preparing your performance review. Finally, you got a numerical score, in lots of non-scalar categories like "works well with others", from 1-5, where the only possible scores were actually 3 or 4. Managers submitted bonus recommendations upwards, which were completely ignored and everybody received bonuses that were almost completely random. The system never took into account the fact that people have different and unique talents, all of which are needed for a team to work well.
把自己的火箭科学家雇员像幼儿园小朋友一样对待并不是孤立的现象。几乎每个公司都有这样的激励项目来贬低侮辱雇员的智商。 至少我工作过的两家公司都是这样的， 压力最大的时候就是两年一次的绩效考核阶段。处于某种原因微软和Juno公司的HR部门肯定都是拷贝的迪尔伯特漫画式管理书籍里的绩效考评系统， 因为它们的原理完全一样。 首先你会“匿名”给你的直接经理好评（好像能做得更诚实似的）。 然后，你可选的填写一个“自我评价”表单， 然后你经理在准备你的绩效考评报告的时候会考虑进去。 最后， 在许多非标量的类别里，例如“和其他人合作良好”，从1-5 你会得到一个数值评分， 然后可能的分数实际上只有3和4. 经理向上提交奖金推荐，而这种推荐实际上完全会被忽略，然后每个人获得几乎完全随机的奖金。 系统绝对不会考虑每个人都有不同而且独特的才能， 所有的这些才能对于好的团队合作来说都是必不可少的。
Performance reviews were stressful for a couple of reasons. Many of my friends, especially the ones whose talents were very significant but didn't show up on the traditional scales, tended to get lousy performance reviews. For example, one friend of mine was a cheerful catalyst, a bouncy cruise director who motivated everyone else when the going got tough. He was the glue that held his team together. But he tended to get negative reviews, because his manager didn't understand his contribution. Another friend was incredibly insightful strategically; his conversations with other people about how things should be done allowed everyone else to do much better work. He tended to spend more time than average trying out new technologies; in this area he was invaluable to the rest of the team. But in terms of lines of code, he wrote less than average, and his manager was too stupid to notice all his other contributions, so he always got negative reviews, too. Negative reviews, obviously, have a devastating effect on morale. In fact, giving somebody a review that is positive, but not aspositive as that person expected, also has a negative effect on morale.
绩效考评之所以给人压力有几点原因。 我的很多朋友们， 特别是那些有着特别才能但是不会表现传统意义的标杆上， 他们通常会获得糟糕的绩效考评。 例如，我有个朋友是个快乐催化剂，他就是那种能够在项目遇到瓶颈的时候鼓励其他人的团队激励主任。 他是把团队凝聚在一起的胶水。 但是他却常常获得负面的绩效考评，因为他的经理不能理解他对团队的贡献。 另外一个朋友是绝对的远见策略师； 他跟其他人讨论应该如何完成一件事情通常能让其他人更出色的完成工作。 他更倾向于花更多的时间去尝试新的技术； 在这些方面他对项目其他组员的贡献是无法衡量的。 但是就代码行数而言， 他写的代码行数要少于平均， 但是他的经理太蠢了没法发现他的其他贡献， 所以他也经常获得负面的绩效考评。 负面的绩效考评，很明显，会对士气造成摧枯拉朽的打击。 实际上，给予一个人积极的绩效考评但是如果没有这个人预想的那么积极的话，也会对士气造成负面的影响。
The effect of reviews on morale is lopsided: while negative reviews hurt morale a lot, positive reviews have no effect on morale or productivity. The people who get them are already working productively. For them, a positive review makes them feel like they are doing good work in order to get the positive review... as if they were Pavlovian dogs working for a treat, instead of professionals who actually care about the quality of the work that they do.
考评对士气的影响是片面的：虽然负面的考评对士气影响很大， 正面的考评对士气或生产力却没有什么影响。 那些拿到积极考评的人已经在很努力的工作了。 对他们来说，一个积极的绩效考评让他们觉得他们要这样努力工作以便能获得正面的绩效… 就像巴普洛夫的狗努力搞点儿吃的一样 ， 而不是真正的专业人士来考虑他们做的工作的实际质量。
And herein lies the rub. Most people think that they do pretty good work (even if they don't). It's just a little trick our minds play on us to keep life bearable. So if everybody thinks they do good work, and the reviews are merely correct (which is not very easy to achieve), thenmost people will be disappointed by their reviews. The cost of this in morale is hard to understate. On teams where performance reviews are done honestly, they tend to result in a week or so of depressed morale, moping, and some resignations. They tend to drive wedges between team members, often because the poorly-rated are jealous of the highly-rated, in a process that DeMarco and Lister callteamicide: the inadvertent destruction of jelled teams.
而矛盾在于。 大多数人觉得他们工作的都不错（哪怕实际上没有）。 这只是我们的大脑为了让生活过得去跟我们玩的小把戏。 所以如果大多数人认为他们工作的很好很努力， 而考评仅仅是正确而已（要做到这点已经不容易了）那么大多数人就会对他们的绩效感到失望。 由此产生的士气的影响是很难估量的。 在那些绩效考评很诚实的进行的组， 他们通常会收获一两个士气低落的礼拜，闷闷不乐然后有的还会辞职。考评还会让组员互相揭短， 因为考评不好的通常会嫉妒考评好的，这这种被称作团队自杀式的过程中： 原来其乐融融的团队难免的走向瓦解。
Alfie Kohn, in a now-classic Harvard Business Review article, wrote: ... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all. [HBR Sept/Oct 93]
AlfileKonhn在现在著名的哈弗商业评论文章中写道：… 在过去的30年里至少有三四十篇研究表明那些期待着成功完成某项任务能得到奖励的人 表现没有那些根本不期待任何东西的人好。[HBR Sept/Oct 93]
He concludes that "incentives (or bribes) simply can't work in the workplace". DeMarco and Lister go further, stating unequivocally that any kind of workplace competition, any scheme of rewards and punishments, and even the old fashion trick of "catching people doing something right and rewarding them," all do more harm than good. Giving somebody positive reinforcement (such as stupid company ceremonies where people get plaques) implies that they only did it for the lucite plaque; it implies that they are not independent enough to work unless they are going to get a cookie; and it's insulting and demeaning.
他总结道：“激励（或者贿赂）在工作场所就是没用”。 把Demarco和Lister进一步指出：任何形式的工作场所的竞争，任何奖励和处罚计划，甚至那种传统的老式的“发现某人做对一件事情了然后奖励他们，” 统统弊大于利。给一些人积极反馈（就像那些傻X公司给员工颁牌匾一样）暗示着说他们就是为了那块东西才那样做的； 暗示着如果不给他们点儿什么饼干的话他们就没办法独立工作； 这就是贬低和侮辱。
Most software managers have no choice but to go along with performance review systems that are already in place. If you're in this position, the only way to prevent teamicide is to simply give everyone on your team a gushing review. But if you do have any choice in the matter, I'd recommend that you run fleeing from any kind of performance review, incentive bonus, or stupid corporate employee-of-the-month program.
大多数的软件经理没有选择，他们只能接受公司现有的这套绩效考评系统。 如果你正处在这个位置上的话， 要避免团队自杀的方法就是给团队里每个人都杠杠的评价。 但是在这个问题上如果你有选择的话， 我建议你里任何形式的绩效考评， 绩效奖金， 或者是愚蠢的每月员工计划之类的项目远远的。