Comments on: How much do people matter? http://www.techventuresource.org/2009/03/how-much-do-people-matter/ A resource for creating viable technology businesses. Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:30:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: mulle167 http://www.techventuresource.org/2009/03/how-much-do-people-matter/comment-page-1/#comment-62 mulle167 Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:12:09 +0000 http://www.techventuresource.org/?p=410#comment-62 I completely agree with the idea of paying more to get the best, but how on earth do they justify the idea that they have the best? As far as I can tell, the "top talent" that AIG is paying to retain has failed miserably. The idea of a bonus is to reward someone for a job well done and to share the company's success with its employees. It is incentive to do well when it is used in this way. When you continue to hand out rewards after a failure, you have disconnected the cause and effect and the feedback mechanism is now broken. Instead of searching for new ideas and better ways to manage, these people are receiving the message that everything is alright, proceed as usual. Everything is not alright. I completely agree with the idea of paying more to get the best, but how on earth do they justify the idea that they have the best? As far as I can tell, the “top talent” that AIG is paying to retain has failed miserably.

The idea of a bonus is to reward someone for a job well done and to share the company’s success with its employees. It is incentive to do well when it is used in this way. When you continue to hand out rewards after a failure, you have disconnected the cause and effect and the feedback mechanism is now broken. Instead of searching for new ideas and better ways to manage, these people are receiving the message that everything is alright, proceed as usual. Everything is not alright.

]]> By: nachiket http://www.techventuresource.org/2009/03/how-much-do-people-matter/comment-page-1/#comment-61 nachiket Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:53:17 +0000 http://www.techventuresource.org/?p=410#comment-61 This is a typical strawman. I do not know if you are the best talent out there, would you like to work for AIG, given the publicity it has? I saw this same comment repeated often when I was researching the options backdating paper, we need to pay more to compensate and retain the best talent and since we do not have liquidity we will backdate. Reminds me of the Kenneth Lay chair in economics. No amount of endowed funds could fill that chair... This is a typical strawman. I do not know if you are the best talent out there, would you like to work for AIG, given the publicity it has? I saw this same comment repeated often when I was researching the options backdating paper, we need to pay more to compensate and retain the best talent and since we do not have liquidity we will backdate. Reminds me of the Kenneth Lay chair in economics. No amount of endowed funds could fill that chair…

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