So we did it, and no catastrophes struck us. No earthquakes. No plagues, and no one quit. In the year since we dropped the commission system our sales have gone up. In fact, four of the last five months have been record months.

Fog Creek describes the pitfalls of paying salespeople commissions, but misses my favorite argument: Commissions give salespeople a skewed value system. Sales is an incredibly important (and often overlooked) part of your user experience. By telling salespeople that a sale (and revenue, to a further extent) is their ultimate priority, they put customer experience second. It is a problem akin to dark patterns in UI design: By only testing the quantitative and not qualitative, you run a significant risk of slowly and quietly killing your brand.

In particular, this passage does a fantastic job at articulating the hardest part of my job:

Removing dark patterns from any site involves a leap of faith. A company has to shift from a short-term quantitative measurement mindset to one that values relatively slow, steady growth of “warm fuzzy” qualitative things like brand image, credibility, and trust.

While Paul makes a powerful commentary on the balance of choice and simplicity, and its role in your success, his evaluation of In ‘N Out vs. Wendy’s burgers is downright deplorable.