There Are Bad Ideas For Bonuses; And Then There Are Bad Ideas For Bonuses

A project manager friend is really frustrated with the quality assurance testers that are getting resourced to her projects. It isn't that the testers are all that weak, the point that is frustrating to her is that they are being discouraged from finding and filing defects.

The geniuses who set the goals for QA decided that a good metric for a Quality Assurance department is one that reports as few defects as possible. I'm not sure how they came to this conclusion, but WTF?

Is there an osterich running QA?

My understanding is that the company has redefined the role of a QA tester to be a validator. Their responsibilities are to sign off on an application before it is promoted and that's it. Why not just get a monkey with a rubber stamp? It would add a lot more value to the company, and people could have fun dressing it up in fun little outfits.