Companies need ways for individuals to bet against projects and people that are likely to fail. So much of the overhead in a large organization is from bad decisions, or people who usually make bad decisions remaining in positions of power.

Imagine if instead of having to speak up, and risk political capital, you could simply place a bet, and carry on with your work. Leadership can see that people are betting against a project, and make updates in real time. Good decision makers could earn significant bonuses, even if they don't have the title/role to make the decisions. If someone makes more by betting than their manager takes home in salary, maybe it's time for an adjustment.

Such a system is clearly aligned with the interests of the shareholders, and the rank-and-file. But the stranglehold that bureaucrats have over most companies would prevent it from being put in place.

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x3n0ph3n3 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Allowing people to bet against projects creates some perverse incentives, like encouraging someone to actively sabotage a project. It can create some very toxic conflict within an organization.

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chc4 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

brb taking out a 10:1 bet on a new project which will print money and then rm -rf'ing all the code so i get a payout

	▲	alphazard 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If a single engineer can sabotage a project, then the company has bigger things to worry about. There should be backups, or you know, GitHub with branch protection. Aside from that, perverse incentives are a real problem with these systems, but not an insurmountable one. Everyone on the project should be long on the project, if they don't think it will work, why are they working on it? At the very least, people working on the project should have to disclose their position on the project, and the project lead can decide whether they are invested enough to work on it. Part of the compensation for working on the project could be long bets paid for by the company, you know like how equity options work, except these are way more likely to pay out. If no one wants to work on a project, the company can adjust the price of the market by betting themselves. Eventually it will be a deal that someone wants to take. And if it's not, then why is the project happening? clearly everyone is willing to stake money that it will fail.
	▲	paradox460 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		<insert dilbert comic about wally coding himself a yacht>