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Comment by throw101010 | Hacker News Reader

I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner).

So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place.

The CEO will care much more about it because their compensation/position is essentially tied to improving this side of the business.

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There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved.

In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.

Agreed. The ideal scheme would be anonymous reporting + objective third party prioritization + financial compensation if benefits realized.

The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an employee comes up with a change that saves the company $x, why don't they get bonused <$x for the year? Win/win.

Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should be incentivized to find a way to do their job better.

You aren't paid based off the value you provide. Companies don't know how to measure that anyways. Your salary is based off of how expensive it would be to replace you.

But in this case the measure is clear.

Sales is another job where value is very clear, hence good sales people are often some of the highest paid people in a company.

Value > Salary >= Replacement Cost

Companies can ignore that for awhile, but eventually it needs to be true.

There can even be an opposite incentive, where fixing an issue that was wasting time means more or different work is assigned to everyone

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