[Tsarp]

Ian Rush said it best: "It's best being a striker. Miss five, score the winner, you're a hero. The goalkeeper plays a blinder, lets one in, and he's a villain."

Every place I've worked rewards the firefighter over the person who made sure nothing ever caught fire. And the worst part is the math is obvious to everyone except the people who set the incentives.

[joelthelion]

How would you set the incentives, though? Almost by definition, it's hard to reward things that aren't visible.

Note that there is also the flip side of the coin, people who spend all their time worrying about things that never happen, so it's not like you can just reward a defensive attitude things are more complicated than that.

[forshaper]

The equivalent of 'days since last injury' bonuses is the first method that comes to mind, until you consider that this would mean people would be more likely to hide things going wrong.

So then many things are to rely on executive culture, and an executive who will walk the line and get their info from people at the bottom is like a unicorn. That won't scale, but it does work if you do have such an executive. Naturally they would need a basic understanding of how supply is created in their firm.

Yet there is something. Toyota Hiluxes and Honda Super Cubs got popular due to maintenance ease. AK-47s. Miele vacuums. Older Thinkpads.

What measures would make the human equivalent visible?

[an0malous]

One basic example is not counting bugs as points in your ticket tracker. At my last job I had coworkers whose velocity was almost double everyone else’s but it was because they kept deploying and then fixing their own bugs.

[Tsarp]

I dont have an answer and you are mostly correct. I received some advice based on this that made sense which was to pick the roles in your career that naturally made it easier. Sales, PM, Dev etc and not support, Devops, escalation management, CSM etc.

[dilyevsky]

I dont think this comparison really works. Firefighter would be goalie or a defender and like you said in sports they are less appreciated/compensated for a simple reason - usually they don’t bring in views. There are exceptions ofc like Pippen or Seaman