Back in 1999 or 2000, shortly after Steve had rejiggered the cafeteria staff, I was walking back to my office in another building with an "afternoon doughnut" - that is, one that hadn't sold in the morning at the coffee place in the main lobby, and probably sold at a discount.

I passed Steve in the hall and he glared at me as I walked with my doughnut. Steve was in great health in those days while I was pasty and obese. (Still am, sad to say.).

But I was happy with my doughnut. Steve glared at me but didn't say anything. I slunk away.

The next day, there were no more doughnuts at any of the cafés on the main campus. I don't think it's a coincidence.

In large production environments it's almost impossible to avoid bugs - and some of them are going to be nasty. What sets great and security conscious companies apart from the rest is how they deal with them.

This is an examplary response from google. They respond promptly (with humor no less) and thank the guys that found the bug. Then they proceeded to pay out a bounty of $10.000.

Well done google.

Your wife seems to be affected by the recently discovered vulnerability. It would be advisable to upgrade her firmware to the latest version.

Note the almost painfully predictable response to the thread. Instead of focusing how OpenSSL can pull in, let me pick a number, $800k in revenue in the next year, they immediately zero in on $70 of Paypal fees as the organization's leading financial problem.

When you talk about IV, use the name Nathan Myhrvold. Hell, they have a picture of him right there.

One of the best measures we have against Mr. Myhrvold -- given that he seems interested in portraying himself as a public genius of some sort -- is to drag his name through the mud over this. He's not the guy who studied with Stephen Hawking. He's not the guy who wrote the molecular gastronomy tome. He's the very, very rich guy who wants to drag down the entire tech industry to get even richer.

The first (and stated) effect of this policy is to weed out the unmotivated employees.

However, Dan Ariely has explained that the secondary effect is potentially more powerful. For those that choose to stay, they will forever live with their past action of having turned down lots of money to work there. So, when they're having a crappy day and hating their job, they're probably thinking "why didn't I take the money and quit?!". The only way to reconcile their thoughts and actions is to explain that, in fact, they must really love this job and therefore should work hard at it. This effect is known as ‘Cognitive Dissonance’[1] and is fascinating.

Here's a link to a video of Dan explaining this[2] and a really excellent Coursera course he does on Irrational behaviour[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

[2] http://bigthink.com/videos/dan-ariely-zappos-and-the-offer

[3] https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon