[lovich]

The team based compensation is interesting but I don't think any company other than some startups would go for it. The main reason would be falling afoul of discrimination laws. The teams would be highly incentivized to exclude people that they thought would be less productive, say a pregnant woman who the team thought would be out for a long period, but the government will be holding the company accountable and not the team itself.

It's the same result of you get what you measure

[mmirate]

Isn't this problem theoretically also suffered by e.g. ~5-person contract/consulting shops?

[lovich]

It is and in my experience small consulting shops are a lot more open to folding if something goes bad and reopening as a different entity or with a slightly different group of people. Any larger firm or group that's in it for the Long haul doesn't have that option.

The more I think about it the more it seems like small consulting shops basically are team based comoensation, but it still ends up with 1-2 people deciding who gets paid what more often than not