“They held a little secret bonus award meeting, and we found that we each would be receiving a bonus total of $2000.”
DEC dangled $25,000 per engineer to cram a years-long workstation build into months. Then it kept manufacturing out of the secret program, so manufacturing had no reason to hurry the rework. The payout shrank to $2,000. The support staff who expected nothing got a surprise check and loved it. Same money, opposite result, and management designed both.