Bounty Program Design: Open Incentives Over Prescribed Work
Situation
Established that bounties at CIQ should be open to all engineers, not targeted at specific individuals. Rejected Bjorn approach of incentivizing Jesus and Alex specifically to work over holidays on Portal. Bounties should be available for anyone to claim if they want to accelerate delivery.
Reasoning
Incentive design philosophy: if people are not working the way we want, the problem is the incentives, not the people. Open bounties create proper incentives that attract the right behavior naturally. Prescribing who does what is the wrong approach - instead, design structures where the desired behavior emerges. This also enables cross-pollination (e.g., Wesley Kurtzer exploring Portal work).
Additional Context
Portal bounty was poorly executed - came up two weeks before deadline, targeted specific individuals, required pre-work that had not been done. Justin noted bounties need substantial SME pre-planning to be successful.
People Involved
Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Alex, Jesus, Wesley Kurtzer
Source
reflection
AI Confidence
88%
Outcome
Ongoing effort - building culture instead of perscriptive systems. Nothing more to do about this decision currently other than reinforce the importance of letting the stable of smart engineers that we have run as fast as they can. Which means few constraints.
Recorded on January 2, 2026
Decision ID: e78da883-b465-4949-9b38-e4ba272ecfd2