Associated Press

I wasn’t surprised to hear that some 17-year-old, who struck a deal with CertiCell, was able to crack the code preventing the iPhone from being used without an AT&T calling plan. At Microsoft we have been using creative incentive structures (or as I like to call them “prizes”) to get our toughest coding jobs done by outsourced workers for years.

Paul Allen got me to drop out of Harvard and work in his mom’s garage simply by offering to buy me an ATARI and a beanbag chair. More recently, we’ve used “incentives” in our Chinese branches with great results. Last year, I promised that whomever was able to code translucent windows for Vista would get a 20 kilogram Yangtze sturgeon (prepared with their choice of either lemon butter or traditional Chinese spices). And I got our pop-up blocker built overnight; all I had to do was offer the fastest coder a permission slip signed by a party official of Zhejiang Province authorizing the birth of a second child.