Boomerang Hire Premium is re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0044, within the Corporate Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions.
Plain-English Definition
Re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions.
Feynman Explanation
Leave to come back, get paid. Stay, stay underpaid.
Core Principle
Re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Loyalty punished structurally.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Leave to come back, get paid. Stay, stay underpaid.
Examples
- Tech firms where leaving and returning beats sticking.
- Loyalty punished structurally.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
Executives usually notice this element only after it has cost something. By then it looks like a one-off. It is not. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: leave to come back, get paid. Stay, stay underpaid. Every element in the Incentives dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, loyalty punished structurally. It is amplified whenever loyalty punished structurally. Inside organizations that shows up as loyalty punished structurally. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to comp benchmarking against external market for internal moves. Measure the behavior, not the sentiment. A survey will tell you how people feel about this; only observed action tells you whether it changed.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Comp benchmarking against external market for internal moves.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Comp benchmarking against external market for internal moves.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Earn-outs designed to retain founders often demotivate the team they bought.
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
Cuts that lift margin this quarter erode product quality and brand equity over years.
Narrowly tied bonuses get gamed; people optimize the metric, not the underlying goal.
Pay tied to stock price encourages short-term price management.
CEO pay tied to size rewards deal-making even when acquisitions destroy value.
Sales forecasts under-set to ensure attainment bonus.
Capital tied to growth rates funds unsustainable scaling and unit-economics denial.
Managers measured by team size grow teams beyond need.
Awards reward visible novelty; quiet excellence goes unrecognized.
Innovation programs designed to signal innovation, not to produce it.
Managers hoard talent; cross-team mobility dies.
Where Boomerang Hire Premium is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- Field guideIncentives: definition, types, examples
The parent field guide for this element.
- ReferenceThe laws of incentives
Goodhart, Campbell, and the Cobra Effect.
- EssayThe Comp Plan Is the Strategy
Where this element meets compensation design.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Boomerang Hire Premium
- What is Boomerang Hire Premium?
- Boomerang Hire Premium is re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0044, within the Corporate Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Boomerang Hire Premium?
- Loyalty punished structurally. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-INC-0044).
- How is Boomerang Hire Premium exploited?
- Loyalty punished structurally.
- How do you design around Boomerang Hire Premium?
- Comp benchmarking against external market for internal moves.
- Which behavioral dimension does Boomerang Hire Premium belong to?
- Boomerang Hire Premium is classified in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Corporate Perverse Pattern", class "Perverse Incentive". Its permanent identifier is HBT-INC-0044 and its evidence grade is C.