Re: Bonus Structures

>From: Bull, Jeff <BullJ1@Midas-Kapiti.com>
>Programmers should always write programs that contain bugs, restrictive
>functions, no frills or 'bells-and-whistles', the absolute barest minimum
>you can get away with.

It is said that Henry Ford, the patron said of manufacturing efficiency, once
"commissioned a survey of the car scrapyards of America to find out if
there were parts of the Model T which never failed. His inspectors came
back with reports of almost every kind of breakdown: axles, brakes,
pistons - all were liable to go wrong. But they drew attention to one
notable exception, the KINGPINS of the scrapped cars invariably had
years of life left in them. With ruthless logic, Ford concluded that the
kingpins on the Model T were too good for their job and ordered that
in the future they should be made to an inferior specification".

Ford's alleged ruthlessness was, indeed, entirely logical. The alternative
would be to improve all the other bits of the car to bring them up to the
standard of the kingpins. But then it wouldn't have been a Model T he was
manufacturing but a Rolls-Royce, and that was not the object of the
exercise. A Rolls-Royce is a respectable car to manufacture and so is
a Model T, but for a different price. The trick is to make sure that
either the whole car is built to Roll-Royce specifications or the whole
car is built to Model T specifications. If you are making a hybrid car,
with some components of Model T quality and some components of
Rolls-Royce quality, you are getting the worst of both worlds, for the car
will be thrown away when the weakest of its components fails, and
the money spent on high-quality components is simply wasted.



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