This is a funny anecdote wrapped in a lot of noise.

On the one hand we don't expect to get dinged $10k when we cause a $500K bug, on the other.. finding a $500k savings does feel like something worth rewarding.

The fact that this was rewarded with $30 is in fact worse than $0, as has been commented elsewhere in the thread.

I've been in recovery disaster hell where the entire team worked 18 hour shifts for 2 weeks including weekends to bail our our CTO & senior management who refused to pay for any backups/DR site. Similarly we were rewarded with $20 gift cards. It completely felt like it would have been better to just not give us anything.

Of course these are always symptoms of bad companies, and I encourage anyone in a similar situation to take it as a sign to move on.

My company I later found out had just secretly had a near-death experience, which they managed to do a second run at death 18 months later, requiring RIFing 50% of my team. Fortunately I was long gone by then.

This person sounds quite disgruntled and should find somewhere else to work for their own well being.

i get that its satirical but damn this article feels a bit self indulgent in its length if nothing else.