Maybe I am the only participant.

I just saw there is a new article by Joel:

http://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/

All I know about it is the title which is in the URL.

Now here is my prediction. I believe this article is an attempt to justify the OTHER policy he has written about where he claimed he doesn't offer incentive pay to engineers because study after study has "proven" that "incentive pay considered harmful". Because at FogCreek it's all about being a community and a team and all the animals are equal, we are all in it together.

Now that he has found that sales people don't fall for that shit, he has implemented big ass bonuses, parties and commissions for these fellow Yale Business School grads, while the coder dweebs toil in the basement.

Of course this causes a tiny small amount of cognitive dissonance since Joel is not a full on sociopath yet, so he writes this article with some bullshit distinction about why the two things are completely different scenarios and can not be reasonably compared.

Ok, that is all from the title.

The game is I post my prediction here, THEN read the article, then I will post if I am right or wrong. Feel free to make your own predictions or guesses if that's what the article will be about in the meantime.

Here I go friends, wish me luck...

Not there yet, just gathering some landmarks.

Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
by Joel Spolsky
Monday, April 03, 2000
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html

OK, I'm back.

I was completely wrong.

Turns out Joel DROPPED sales commissions a year ago and he is here a year later to report that it worked, sales are up, and morale is better than ever.

I think Joel would be a great boss.  He seems to care about morale.

I think many of them do. They just don't know what to do with it.

Joel didn't write that article.

But it is great food for thought.

Oops, thanks.

When our migration project reached a critical phase at the end of last year, management gave all developers a (modest) bonus, before the work would peak. (extra hours were still double pay of course).

I think that worked good for morale, it felt like, we trust you will all do your best.

For a follow up article, someone at Fog Creek should write "Why do we pay tips?"