Incentives for programmers?

[jason b]

Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?

Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.


At a meeting earlier today it was announced that our company will soon be
implementing incentive plans for programmers.

I should be happy about this but I'm not. Here's why.

Management's new system will (in theory) pay bonusses out to programmer's
when he/she acheives more than 30 direct billable hours for our clients each
week.

This is good but there are times when programmers are required to work 70+
hour weeks and only a fraction of those hours are considered directly billable
to a client.

One example is when sales have severly low balled a quote to a customer in
order to get business. Another example is when we are working on developing
new software that will be sold to many clients.

I admire our companies desire to reward hard working programmers but I would
like to help management come up with a better model.

Does your company have a bonus program that works well? Something based
on milestones maybe? Please let me know it works.

[Betty Buhr]

I will always go for higher salary and forget the 'bonus' for billable
hours. I got 'marketed' into accepting a job where one third of my
income was supposed to come from commission on the projects I
completed. Of course, there were two big problems since the
commission was a percent of the amount collected from the client: 1.
the marketing man always oversold the projects and 2. the favorite son
developer was given the projects while they had commissionable hours
on them and then the rest of us finished his work when the commission
had been paid out. Bad deal for everyone, including the clients,
except for the favorite son.

Your analysis of your situation sounds very accurate to me.

BettyB.


On 18 Jan 2001 23:51:52 -0800, "jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net>
wrote:

>
>Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?
>
>Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
>you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.
>
>
[...]

[David K.]

"jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
>
>Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?
>
>Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
>you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.
>

All of the companies that I have worked at have had some sort of bonus-type
plan. In all cases, the bonuses were tied to the performance of the company
overall. It was done either through stock options, whose value is tied to
the company stock price, or through a cash payment, where the amount was
based upon the employee's performance review and the overall performance
of the company.

>
>At a meeting earlier today it was announced that our company will soon be
>implementing incentive plans for programmers.
>
>I should be happy about this but I'm not. Here's why.
>
>Management's new system will (in theory) pay bonusses out to programmer's
>when he/she acheives more than 30 direct billable hours for our clients
each
>week.
>

From what you describe, that sounds like a terrible system:

1. It doesn't reward quality work. Programmers should strive to write good
code. If anything, it rewards the "bad" programmer because, bug fixes and
rewrites, the extends the project which means more billable hours overall.

2. It rewards you for something which is generally outside your control.
As you pointed out, how many hours you bill depends upon the type of project
that you are working on. A good programmer, through no fault of their own,
might be working on a project without a lot of billable hours. Why should
they be punished? Also, a good programmer might be on extended "down-time"
because the salepeople aren't getting contracts. Is that the programmer's
fault?

3. It de-emphasizes R&D and training which are very necessary parts of any
software organization. If you aren't getting your bonus for doing it, why
would you want to spend time on it?

4. It de-emphasizes teamwork. There is no incentive for people to work together
since bonuses are only tied to individual achivement. Under this system,
it sounds like people will be competing against each other to get onto projects
with a lot of billable works.

5. Because there is emphasis on billing hours, there is incentive to "pad"
hours just to build up one's time so that it reaches the threshold (i.e.
the movie _The Firm_). This hurts the clients since they end up paying for
work they didn't receive (not to mention that it's not ethical).

[Matthew Cromer]

"jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
<snip>

there are times when programmers are required to work 70+
>hour weeks and only a fraction of those hours are considered directly billable
>to a client.

Dude, that's insane.

Why on earth would you work for a company where you are expected to work
70 hours some weeks? They giving you $200K per year?

Matthew Cromer

[John Cantley]

I agree here. You would have to pay me a **** of alot more than incentives to work that kind of hours. I limit myself to under 50
and usually I keep it to 40. If they are working that many hours I would suspect the management and the quality of the programmers.

John
"Matthew Cromer" <matthew@sdaconsulting.com> wrote in message news:3a6a78cf@news.devx.com...
>
> "jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> there are times when programmers are required to work 70+
> >hour weeks and only a fraction of those hours are considered directly billable
> >to a client.
>
> Dude, that's insane.
>
> Why on earth would you work for a company where you are expected to work
> 70 hours some weeks? They giving you $200K per year?
>
> Matthew Cromer

[Peter]

I have worked for about 5 companies and none have offered bonus schemes
(salaries would rise at set periods based on performance)

I think it would be pretty difficult to come up with an incentive scheme
to satisfy all.

But you would have to factor in research, training, general work performance,
etc...

BTW: I a gree with some of the others. You must obviously get paid bucket
loads to work 70+ hours a week.
This maybe ok for a contractor who has the choice and gets paid for every
hour (Although I am a contractor and would definately rather not work that
much - 40-50 / week is fine for me.)

If a company wanted me to work thos sort of hours I'd have to be a bit worried...ie
if they are underquoting on projects it doesn't say much for management or
maybe the company is in financial difficulty - if so I'd say get the ****
outa there!!!

"jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
>
>Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?
>
>Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
>you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.
>
>
>At a meeting earlier today it was announced that our company will soon be
>implementing incentive plans for programmers.
>
>I should be happy about this but I'm not. Here's why.
>
>Management's new system will (in theory) pay bonusses out to programmer's
>when he/she acheives more than 30 direct billable hours for our clients
each
>week.
>
>This is good but there are times when programmers are required to work 70+
>hour weeks and only a fraction of those hours are considered directly billable
>to a client.
>
>One example is when sales have severly low balled a quote to a customer
in
>order to get business. Another example is when we are working on developing
>new software that will be sold to many clients.
>
>I admire our companies desire to reward hard working programmers but I would
>like to help management come up with a better model.
>
>Does your company have a bonus program that works well? Something based
>on milestones maybe? Please let me know it works.

[Peter Seymour]

My current company strongly hints that pay increases are influenced by
working over the normal hours. However this overtime is not paid for and
must be taken as holiday. So it seems to encourage us to go all out up to
pay reviews and then go on holiday. Other than that it's the usual
healthcare, pension and share options.
I've recently got a new job which I haven't started yet but 2 close
friends of mine work there. I'll receive a fixed salary but the hours are
40 a week plus whatever is necessary to finish your current project. This
seems like a system that could be abused with the wrong management, but in
this case team work is emphasized and employees are enthusiastic about the
work they do. I think however in a very large company with several levels
of management too much could be demanded of programmers with little or no
benefits in return.
Personally I'm in favour of fixed hours and fixed salary.

Pete

PS Thanks to all those who posted encouraging replies over the last couple
of weeks. Things have worked out well for me.

[Verbal Kent]

I hear you Jason. Our company has been touting an incentive program for every
milestone you meet on time. Basically, it's an excuse to not pay you overtime,
and get more work out of people. The ideal situation would be a decent salary
and then overtime pay, that way it reduces your hours, but makes your extra
spent at the office actually worth it.

Ask yourself this: when you get the bonus, will the amount equal your salary
broken down per hour compared to the amount of hours you worked? If not,
run as fast as you can. They are milking you.



"jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
>
>Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?
>
>Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
>you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.
>
>
>At a meeting earlier today it was announced that our company will soon be
>implementing incentive plans for programmers.
>
>I should be happy about this but I'm not. Here's why.
>
>Management's new system will (in theory) pay bonusses out to programmer's
>when he/she acheives more than 30 direct billable hours for our clients
each
>week.
>
>This is good but there are times when programmers are required to work 70+
>hour weeks and only a fraction of those hours are considered directly billable
>to a client.
>
>One example is when sales have severly low balled a quote to a customer
in
>order to get business. Another example is when we are working on developing
>new software that will be sold to many clients.
>
>I admire our companies desire to reward hard working programmers but I would
>like to help management come up with a better model.
>
>Does your company have a bonus program that works well? Something based
>on milestones maybe? Please let me know it works.

[Miguel Angel Gonzalez]

"jason b" <kiwis@pacificcoast.net> wrote:
>
>Does your company have an incentive plan for programmers?
>
>Does it work for you. Does it suck? Or have absolutely no relevance to
>you? Please drop me a note because I would like some ideas in this area.
>

Let me contribute this time with some ideas that a group of developers from
Mexico City have.

In our opinion an excelent way to give incentive to programmers could be
based on several criteria like:

a) how many certifications (or exams in case the certification takes more
then one exam to be completed) did u get in a certain period of time? (lets
say a year or half year).

b) how low or high is your bug-rate according with the standards and methodologies
used in the proyects where you have worked. I know this could be a little
bit difficult to implement 'cause we're assuming that exists a QA department
or staff that will be getting this 'grades' or 'notes' for all the developers.
A task that almost no one like to do, kind of be a tough profesor grading
exams with his/her red marker =).

Hope this could help.


Regards