Centerfield

It's somewhat amazing how many organizations, government or not, have perverse incentives in place for their staff. The patent office examiners being only one example.

For example, I make my living tuning computer systems to reduce resource usage (and hence the need to buy more hardware). And I've noticed that every applications (or systems) programmer is rewarded on two things: functionality and time-to-market. Performance only comes in if it is so bad that the users simply refuse to put up with it. (Including stuff which simply does not meet legal or regulatory requirements.)

And even then, the first reaction is just "buy more hardware." Which means that I have yet to see an application program that I can't improve by at least 10% -- and sometimes even 50% or more. Well, at least it's guaranteed lifetime employment for me, as long as I want to keep going.