[allengeorge]

I don't think most people care about b), or would even consider b). It's more likely that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, context etc. that explains someone's behavior - and it's unlikely that an unemotional decision-maker would care. Having a bad stretch because you're dealing with personal problems at home? Perhaps your pay should be docked by some percentage since you're less productive than your peers. Trying to ramp up on a technology, but you're slower than your peers? Another pay cut - after all, you're not as efficient.

[HeroOfAges]

Having your pay docked because you're unable to work is standard operating procedure if you're an hourly worker, or if you bill a client hourly. And yes, if you are slower and less efficient than your peers, you should receive less pay. No more rewards for "looking" the part or being more "likable".

[bluejekyll]

What you're asking for is a pure form of meritocracy, which I think is generally a good thing but does have negatives.

The problem is, how do you measure impact and performance? If you have someone on a team that spends a ton of time helping other engineers with their coding problems, their own commit rate will be lower. If you have someone who checks in a ton of code (not a great messure of ability), they may cause a ton of breakages and bugs for others, a detriment to the group overall.

Meritocracies can be gamed, and any measure you decide to track, will be gamed. At some point machines will definitely be able to track all of these data points, and incorporate them into a model, but it's still only going to have a view of the world based on the data it is fed.

This means that people will game it, and then you have a similar issue as today. While I agree with you in principle, the implementation will not be perfect.