The number of people who started pushing code with subtle bugs so they could create a ticket for it, fix their own bug, and get closer to that $100 gift card was shocking to me.
I can’t imagine the chaos that would occur if something came with a $10K bonus attached. Some people will bend over backward to get even tiny rewards. Dangling a $10K reward would get the wheels turning in their heads immediately.
In my experience, it’s not a net win. They’ve budgeted the same amount for compensation either way, so you’re probably getting lower base comp if they’re allocating some of it for on-call.
It also creates an atmosphere where on-call becomes more normalized, because you’re getting paid extra to do it. Some people, usually young single people, will try to milk the overtime for as much as they can, dragging out the hours spent doing on-call work because every extra hour spent on the problem makes their paycheck bigger.