[srfvtgb]

Even if it were possible to accurately attribute revenue to particular contributions, I could see this compensation model leading to short term thinking. For example a contribution may generate a lot of revenue now, but could end up costing more when a security hole causes you to lose all your customers data. And who will fix bugs that don't directly contribute to revenue? Or work on behind the scenes code which isn't directly monetizable? Maybe this could work as a factor in a bonus that is a small portion of total compensation, but as a driver of total compensation there are far too many issues.

[EGreg]

Well this model assumes all the other mechanisms of the company are still in place. Including quality control and so forth.

People intentionally writing bad spaghetti code or bugs will have to fix it before going live. Companies do beta tests with a small sample all the time. We just measure revenue increases and share them with the person who is responsible :)