[craigie]

The way to do this fairly and transparently is piecemeal pay. Just like how instead of paying a factory worker £x per hour you can pay £y per widget. If superstar Bob ships 10x widgets he gets 10x pay and everyone will agree it is fair. Note CEO total compensation is usually £x per y% increase in share price or revenue. Salespeople get x% for each sale, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

You could always make things easier with min wage regs etc by giving a low living base wage and then a generous bonus based on what you ship.

[giantg2]

The performance measures for software dev are already extremely subjective. "Widgets" only work if they are the same. Each software functionally is vastly different in scope and complexity. The quality is very subjective too. Did they build it to be extensible/future-proof? Maybe that's good, or maybe that's a waste by your manager's opinion.

[leetcrew]

right but most people don't actually want this unless base pay already covers all their cash flow needs. quality of life is much better with a consistent $80k salary than making $100k on average but with huge variance.