original publish date: 6th May, 2010

decades on …

Many forms of remuneration have been tried, and will be tried in this world of KPIs and performance reviews. No one pretends that Salary is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that Salary is the worst form of remuneration except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …

– Winston Churchill (no, not that one. The one from Accounting).

transcript

FTE #1: Working back again? I hope they’re paying you overtime.

FTE #2: As a salaried employee, there’s an expectation that I stay until the work is done.

FTE #1: Who decides how much work there is to do?

FTE #2: They do… I guess.

Caption: How do you get someone to sign a fixed price contract that lets you vary the output at will? Call it a salary.