I don't want you to make more money because you're a pretty good negotiator; I want that money distributed to employees based on engineering results rather than negotiating skills. I don't want engineers who are focused on looking for and creating BATNA's and getting good at story telling rather than working as engineers.
> I want that money distributed to employees based on engineering results rather than negotiating skills
Why should money be distributed based on engineering results? Business results are what matter and a startling number of engineers are bad at assessing business results.
> I don't want engineers who are focused on looking for and creating BATNA's and getting good at story telling rather than working as engineers.
That's fine, but keep in mind that the easiest way I've found to influence my BATNA is to actually get great at my job.
> Why should money be distributed based on engineering results? Business results are what matter and a startling number of engineers are bad at assessing business results.
Well, for engineering staff, it makes sense that compensation is based on engineering results to the extent that that is what those employees have control over.
(If your staff are given broader responsibility, the results that figure into their compensation should be broader.)
I do believe in giving employees pretty broad responsibility, but even in area with narrower responsibility you should be able to connect your engineering work to the business metrics it's meeting.
Even if engineers aren't deciding what projects to pursue, they should be able to quantify their work in terms of how well they're implementing those business projects.