When you reward a number, people optimise the number — often in ways that make the real problem worse. The incentive backfires.
What is the cobra effect? Read the full idea →Colonial India paid for dead cobras; people bred cobras for the reward, and when the scheme ended, released them — more cobras than before.
Reward fixing bugs and developers quietly create bugs to fix later.
A bounty on rat tails led people to cut tails and free the rats to breed and earn again.
Measure productivity by code volume and you get bloated, padded software.
Reward schools purely on test scores and they teach to the test or quietly push out weak students.
That's just how memory works. Lock the cobra effect in with a 5-minute active-recall session — spaced repetition, no signup.
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