Dan Arieli of Duke University's Faraq School of Business, noted that money isn't always the best motivator. For example, Arieli shows, providing competitive bonuses isn't the best way to promote cooperation or mentoring—as helping others endangers the personal quest for that bonus. Throwing money at employees is backfiring in other ways as well.

Dan Price, CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Products, is learning that money might rent happiness, but it won't necessarily buy it. Earlier this year, Price raised the starting salary for his employees to $70,000—which he financed by contributing his own million-dollar annual salary and a significant share of company profits. He became an overnight media darling, justified in believing that the expense would more than be recouped in the publicity his move engendered.

But in the months since then, the party has ended and the reservoir of goodwill has been depleted. Key employees saw subordinates' wages double and more, with no increase in effort or performance, and they felt short-changed. "People who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me," said one departing Web developer. "He gave raises to people . . . least equipped to do the job," said another recent departure. Other local businesses are also reportedly upset that Gravity so skewed the salary curve. No good deed goes unpunished.

Generally, employees pay a price for extra salary and perks. The Silicon Valley giants who provide food to their employees—all day and all over their facilities—do so to keep employees tethered to their desks. Female workers who receive "egg freezing" perks worth over $10,000 delay childbirth in favor of their careers and increased hours on the job. This is reminiscent of the go-go '80s, during which Silicon Valley companies paid $50,000 or more for arena rock stars to perform on their campuses—after which employees would return to work to literally burn the midnight oil.

Tears for fears: confrontational culture

The work-around-the-clock culture is found at Amazon, now a $250 billion company, which is publicly proud that its employee expectations are "unreasonably high." Far from promising job security, one HR person described Amazon's view of attrition as "Purposeful Darwinism"—the survival of the fittest. Supervisors are encouraged to disagree and confront, while pushing for maximum performance. Employees are given confidential approval apps that allow them to provide "Collaborative Anytime Feedback" about their peers and supervisors, which creates the danger that groups of employees will enter joint schemes to punish disliked colleagues or lavish others with unwarranted praise.

Amazon also reportedly employs software that aggregates and analyzes employee communication and action, thereby creating a continuous loop of performance appraisal. Being judged everywhere all the time. This work-life pattern has been described as "burn and churn" and the heavily metric-laden evaluation process dubbed "rank and yank!" Employees reported in a recent New York Times exposé, "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk!"

We are seeing an interesting echo in today's workplace. After a decade of moribund hiring and lagging wage growth, we return to a robust hiring cycle with wage increases. Expenses are concomitantly rising, with housing costs leading the way. Higher income and greater productivity carry their own price through increased job demands and attendant stress. What passes for job satisfaction and employee motivation under that scenario?

The "work-life balance" has always been a moving target, with American (and especially California) employees trending toward more work—ironically, something our labor-saving devices encourage, making us accessible to toil 24/7. Watch for new laws and regulations requiring employers to contribute toward the phones their workers are required to carry.

Wall Street's rallying cry in the 1980s was "greed is good." Today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, number 15 on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires, tells Amazon employees, "You can work long, hard, or smart . . . but you can't choose two out of three." For a company that thrives on change, the revolving door generated by that mantra might promote exactly the churning talent culture Amazon wants.

Mark I. Schickman is a partner with Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP in San Francisco and editor of California Employment Law Letter. You can reach him at 415-541-0200 or schickman@freelandlaw.com.