Here's a question to which most people experience revulsion, but must be thought of and answered honestly: Why not give everyone the same bonus based on company performance? Make it collective good. You'll probably think of reasons, like "good people should be rewarded," or "people who do things wrong need to have consequences," but you must realize the alternative is this vile demotivational anti-pattern with even w…
>Why not give everyone the same bonus based on company performance? Make it collective good. Because like all collective goods you suffer from the tragedy of the commons. If you work for a large company your individual contribution is so small it has a negligible effect on your bonus. Unless you're interested in moving up the management ladder the smart thing to do is just work hard enough to avoid getting fired. Of…
Your last line is crucial and one my experience can echo. If you strip away incentives, ones that attracted people to your place to begin with, you can expect turnover. You might as well be walking then to the door. You can fool new hires to a degree until they hear that there were performance bonuses at one point and then the same resentment starts to grow inside them too. You're only real recourse is to have every one of the "old guard" leave so you can continue your downward spiral into cheapness.