Hacker News Reader

No part of your job should be gamified, or employees start optimizing to win the game and compete with each other instead of collaborating to create a better product/company. However, bug bounties and crypto bounties are a great way to "gamify" work that cannot be done by traditional employees.

View on HN

Work is very much a game. The reward function is your paycheck, and optimal gaming strategy involves outcompeting others for promotions and warping into new jobs to maximize that paycheck.

I agree, the metagame is your career, and if you're playing the metagame you're incentivized to take projects that look good on your resume, leverage experience for the highest possible offer at the next job, etc. But "gamification" of your tasks at work is not a fun experience and is not a good way to manage a team. It leads to tracking "gamified" metrics that probably aren't closely tied to the success of the business/product.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com