[HN Gopher] Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit
___________________________________________________________________
Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 1139 points
Date : 2021-04-17 21:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (madned.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (madned.substack.com)
| boomskats wrote:
| One of my favourite HN reads: The Tragic Tale of DEC, the
| Computing Giant That Died Too Soon (digital.com)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25319539
| xyzelement wrote:
| "One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead."
| --Dan Gilbert
|
| In my experience, successful people go work hard and are excited
| about "the right things" and incur financial benefits along the
| way. If you are working on the right stuff in the right way, on
| average you should get good comp/bonuses.
|
| On the flip side, if your only connection to your work is the
| bonus then you're probably unhappy anyways.
|
| "Sometimes people mistake generosity for not being fair.
| Generosity is good, entitlement is bad, and they can easily be
| confused, so be crystal clear on which is which. Decisions should
| be based on what you believe is warranted" -- Ray Salio
|
| Other comments talk about becoming entitled to bonuses, while
| they are genuinely discretionary. Broader, people get used to any
| perks and complain if they go away. This is reality of life on
| one hand but a flaw in individual thinking on the other.
|
| Personally - as an employee I seek places where I can feel good
| about the _relationship_ between the company and the people. When
| that 's right, I'm more understanding if bonuses are tight during
| a lean year or the espresso machine gets downgraded. As an
| employer I look for the same thing in employees. Why would I hire
| those who don't care about their work mission in an emotional
| way? It's not that everyone has to love derivatives trading, it's
| that the best people find a way to connect and care about what
| they are working on and be genuinely excited about it and want
| their team to win. It's a great attitude and I believe it leads
| people to much more success (and none of this is to say you
| should stay on a sinking ship or tolerate a bad work situation --
| never do that. But there's something to say about maturely
| weathering the ups and downs of a worthwhile relationship)
|
| In a good company, it's ride or die together and both the company
| and the people feel that way. If this is crazy to some people I
| feel they are missing out on some genuine upsides of what work
| can be like.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| > In my experience, successful people go work hard and are
| excited about "the right things" and incur financial benefits
| along the way. If you are working on the right stuff in the
| right way, on average you should get good comp/bonuses.
|
| Is this true, or a form or survival biais ? I am most of us
| agree that working hard is somewhat a requirement for
| meaningful success. What is in question here is whether it's
| sufficient. We all know a lot of hard working people who aren't
| successful
|
| From my experience, in the business world, unless one if very
| lucky or incredibly talented incuring financial benefits
| doesn't just happen from hard work. And the first step is the
| ability to ask a fair share of the value one is generating.
|
| > "Sometimes people mistake generosity for not being fair.
| Generosity is good, entitlement is bad, and they can easily be
| confused, so be crystal clear on which is which. Decisions
| should be based on what you believe is warranted" -- Ray Salio
|
| I think one can be unfair in the way one is generous.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I don't get the idea of bonuses. If employer wants people to do
| more work, they should just pay more. I'd never work under "if
| you achieve X you'll get Y". Too many times I found it to be a
| manipulation or just a scam to get more work for free. Not worth
| the mental health damage.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| Bonuses always seem like a perverse way to do compensation
| anyways; if a worker requires a bribe to do their job properly,
| they should be fired.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Why do workers even want to be paid at all, right?
| dnndev wrote:
| If you are incentivized by bonuses your probably not being paid
| enough.
|
| Even worse when you depend on others to meet a goal (you almost
| always do).
|
| Jump ship if you can. The other scam is healthcare tied to
| employment.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I don't know if that was the lesson I would have taken. The
| lesson I'd take is "don't work for a company that tries to
| manipulate employees to work ridiculous hours for the possibility
| of more pay".
|
| First of all, it's a bad idea for all of the classic Goodhart's
| law measure-becoming-a-target reasons. Management throwing money
| at a problem reveals a certain amount of stupidity fostered by
| desperateness. Second, it's a very devious practice. This person
| made 2,000, but most likely worked an extra 10-20 hours a week
| for a few months. That's 2,000/120 = 16.6 dollars per hour. The
| company effectively got a lot more work out of some employees for
| a pretty cheap price. Yeah, sure the other team got a lot more.
| But never, ever work your ass off for the _possibility_ of more
| money.
|
| What's fascinating about this post is how the author manages to
| frame his exploitation in terms of how he was ungrateful or
| unreasonable. Yeah, sure, for your own benefit you shouldn't care
| that much about bonuses and you should be grateful for what you
| have. But that doesn't mean you should let your company exploit
| you! It's perfectly okay to fight your damnest to get more money
| from the company. Lord knows they're fighting to pay you the
| least they can get away with.
| rademacher wrote:
| Moral of the story, the key to happiness is low expectations.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > The issue with there being five volt rams on our board was, the
| power supplied to these chips was three volts, not five. Our
| design was made to power a variant of the chip that could run on
| three volts, but the board apparently had the wrong chips
| installed on it.
|
| Ah yes, classic manufacturing error (I'm not being ironic here).
| BOM says X but why can't we use Y?
| wccrawford wrote:
| A bonus like this, I would never expect to actually get any
| portion worthwhile. Even if I performed well, there's going to be
| someone who doesn't. And it might even be me that doesn't
| perform. Who knows?
|
| Instead, I would just work at my usual pace, which is already
| quite fast, and I'd probably already have been being smart about
| the cost of components anyhow.
|
| In general, this leads to good outcomes anyhow, and I didn't have
| to stress out about it.
| musingsole wrote:
| I did just this about a year ago. Big project, lots of "company
| will fail if this project fails" type of talk. So they trot out
| a bonus system. I literally didn't read the email.
|
| Turns out it had a 2 part payment plan. Our team nailed the
| metrics for the first payment...and then didn't for the second.
| Which left management in the weird position of explaining how
| even though we had just signed 5 customers (in a quarter that
| had anticipated maybe 1 sale), we hadn't met metrics...and so
| no bonus. Watching execs peddle obvious bullshit to an
| undeniably successful team not interested in the smell was more
| my bonus than anything.
| salmo wrote:
| Luckily when I started at my company, FY-end bonuses had already
| bounced around I learned to treat them like a Christmas present.
| The individual performance aspect existed on paper, but no
| management chain exercised that because it ruined team dynamics.
| The only time I saw that done was because someone was basically
| no-show but it was too hard to fire them, so they got 0 bonus,
| and their share got spread to the rest of the team.
|
| Awards are similar. I rarely get them for the things I really
| deserve them for. Sometimes I'd get $250 for 2 hours of work
| helping some big project and got roped in the list because I was
| on an email chain. Sometimes I'd get one because the project I
| did the year before got eclipsed by something else, and nothing
| this year under my VP merited it.
|
| Folks get angsty about what/who deserves one and what doesn't. It
| seems the less talented/hardworking the person, the angstier they
| are.
|
| I try to teach the newer folks around me:
|
| - Don't expect them - Don't get jealous, you don't know the whole
| situation. - Just be happy when you get a little cash. - You
| won't get them when you should, you will sometimes when you
| shouldn't.
|
| You have absolutely no control of end-of-FY bonuses. Buy
| something fun (a new TV, game console, or hobby thing) and stash
| the rest. Do not use it for a down payment on something like a
| new car/boat/house (unless it's just tacking more on to something
| you were already buying). I've seen too many people do that and
| end up underwater the next year when we get nothing and they were
| banking on it for payments.
| Kalium wrote:
| I once worked for a company where bonuses were literally
| Christmas presents. They gave them out at the company holiday
| party and everything.
|
| I remember being enraged when the company Christmas bonus was
| $50. It struck me as showing that management stopped to think
| about it before deciding that a larger bonus was too expensive.
| It felt like an insult.
|
| I would have been happier with $0.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I've been thinking about hiring a couple of interns to work on
| projects that I don't have enough spare time for. One thing that
| came across my mind is whether I should have some sort of an
| incentive for coming in under budget or ahead of schedule. On one
| hand, with hardware projects, sky is the limit for the potential
| costs (and they wouldn't have a reason to not overspend). On the
| other, having such an incentive would bias the planning and could
| result in issues seen in the article.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The problem would be estimating the budget and schedule in the
| first place. If you are too aggressive it will seem unfair, too
| lax and you could actually slow the project down.
|
| Pay your bonuses to those people who show up for work on time,
| work well with others, make smart decisions, and who you would
| like to work with again in future.
| pmlnr wrote:
| My bonus target was 15%; our CFO's was apparently 1600% in 2020.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I love stories like these. Reminds me of the PacificTech graphing
| calculator story (https://www.pacifict.com/Story/). Oh the weird
| things motivate some of us weird engineers.
| jedberg wrote:
| When I worked at eBay, we had a bonus program based on company
| revenue. It was around 6% of your salary max and managers got
| around 25% max based on the same formula. For the first few
| years, you could count on getting a max bonus every quarter. To
| the point where most everyone who worked there had always gotten
| one.
|
| And the one quarter, we didn't get the max bonus. In fact, I
| don't think we got it all. People screamed and yelled and were
| pissed. At the company all hands they spent a lot of time
| explaining that bonuses weren't guaranteed. Some of the lower
| paid folks were actually crying about not making critical
| payments because they counted on the bonus. Morale went way down.
| People left because of it.
|
| Stories like this are one of the stated reasons Netflix doesn't
| do things like bonuses or any sort of variable comp. Because once
| you get one once, you feel entitled to it in the future, and it
| feels like a loss when you don't get it.
| phyzome wrote:
| My current employer does bonuses based on both individual and
| company performance, and I _think_ they can be sizeable, but I
| pointedly never did the math when accepting the offer or since
| then. I don 't want to know.
|
| Base salary is in the contract, bonuses aren't. Base salary
| gives me a floor for how competitive the offer is. Bonuses, if
| they actually materialize, could theoretically help keep me
| from wandering off to a higher-paying job -- but I'm probably
| not going to do that math until I want to leave anyhow.
|
| It's basically like stock options and whatnot. Lottery tickets.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, but your example is a little different than the OP's - I
| think part of this though is that the company is using the
| 'bonus' effectively as salary but with the idea that they don't
| have to guarantee its future.
|
| The company treats it like salary, the employees treat it like
| salary, recruiters probably mention it as part of comp like
| it's salary, etc.
|
| Then one day they decide not to do it, of course people are
| pissed. Netflix is right - you can't have 'bonuses' that are
| not tied to something real (like the article, and even then
| there are issues). If the formula is explicitly defined and
| publicly known then fine, otherwise it's a bad idea.
|
| I've found companies that rely on this also tend to underpay on
| salary, but say things like "we're competitive when you factor
| in the bonus that basically everyone gets".
|
| If you run a company this way and don't expect blow back when
| you slash everyone's comp by 6% you deserve the loss of talent.
|
| Michael Lopp has written something similar about the "Thanks
| for the Bonus, I Quit" in one of his management articles
| somewhere. The idea being that if you have a direct report and
| give them a smaller raise than they're expecting when they know
| peers are got larger raises (in percentage) the act of giving
| them the raise could be the trigger that gets them to say "I
| quit". It might be because they're already on the higher end of
| the comp range, but without knowing this they'll be frustrated.
| Working effectively with people and comp takes effort and
| understanding how people will feel/think about comp.
|
| This kind of sense of fairness goes back a long ways:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
|
| I don't think it's realistic to expect people not to behave
| this way, good managers (and companies) should model it.
|
| ---
|
| Also - I doubt the execs at eBay saw less comp during that
| time.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| That's exactly what a bonus is: part of your salary that your
| company can at it's discretion not pay you. Marketing and HR
| has spun this into the sham that it's some kind of additional
| benefit, but it's not. It is directly at odds with the
| individual employee's end of the risk / reward trade off, and
| he should almost always reject it in lieu of some other form
| of comp.
| jrodthree24 wrote:
| Exactly. At my company, salaries are capped and the higher
| end of your comp comes from your bonus. At the end of the
| year, instead of raising salaries, they give out larger
| bonuses. If one day they just decide not to give it to you,
| you will have earned anywhere from 20-70% less in total.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > I've found companies that rely on this also tend to
| underpay on salary, but say things like "we're competitive
| when you factor in the bonus that basically everyone gets".
|
| If I had money for every time I heard this it'd be a nice
| bonus unto itself!
| chris11 wrote:
| Yeah, bonuses are nice, but I prefer raises or equity.
| Bonuses aren't necessary.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| > you can't have 'bonuses' that are not tied to something
| real
|
| But many successful companies and employees do, including
| everywhere I've worked.
| fossuser wrote:
| s/can't/shouldn't
| hkmurakami wrote:
| This happened at the Japanese megaCorp I worked at but wrt
| overtime pay after the financial crisis.
|
| Everyone worked huge overtime, boosting their pay by 50-80% in
| some cases. Economy crashed, corporate orders to cut overtime (
| but obv not the work deliverables), and people were having
| difficulty paying their mortgages.
| hinkley wrote:
| I know of a few companies where the pay isn't quite competitive
| without the bonus. If you lose 10% of your income with the same
| or greater responsibilities (life often gets harder when the
| money gets scarce), your finances and plans don't give a shit
| what you called it, they just know it's gone.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| It is foolish to include you bonus in your financial
| planning.
| emodendroket wrote:
| In many cases your variable comp ends up being like half or
| more of what you're paid which makes it hard to really
| adhere to that in reality.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I meant monthly expenses by financial planning. You
| shouldn't be missing bill payments because you only got
| base. Of course you will include it in your broader
| financial plan.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| The compensation expert Graef Crystal was for a long time a
| consultant to executives who were negotiating their contingent
| bonus packages. Sometimes there wouldn't be any bonus at all in
| bad quarters/years and his clients would claim bitterly to him.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graef_Crystal
|
| As to eBay, for people who aren't truly poor, running your
| expenses up so close to the limit that losing 6% means your
| financial life is in ruins is a very bad way to live.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Welcome to Silicon Valley, where people bid the most they
| possibly could afford, assuming a great bonus, for
| everything.
| wdb wrote:
| Yes, my experience is that companies always come up with
| reasons not to give the bonus. Recruiters like to include them
| as part of the compensation. As yeah you ask X but you get a
| bonus of Y which makes your request Z salary, awesome right. Of
| course the contract says it's a discretionary bonus...
| peteretep wrote:
| > my experience is that companies always come up with reasons
| not to give the bonus
|
| This isn't true in my experience. If you're trying to make a
| decision based on comp+bonus then ask what the bonus ended up
| being the last few years
| suifbwish wrote:
| By the same token I'm not going be doing ANYTHING beyond job
| description scope for a company that doesn't give bonuses.
| Bonus goes both ways.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Ouch, 25% vs. 6%. That's how they value managers vs.
| (engineers? or everyone else?). Sad.
| human wrote:
| Well, if the managers have a base salary of 100k and the
| engineers, 150k, I think it's fair.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I'm surprised there isn't more discussion on this. That's
| more than 4x more for managers than engineers.
| slyall wrote:
| It's a standard sort of thing.
|
| The idea is that a non-manager has minimal ability to
| affect the company's bottom line. While those further up
| have the ability (and now have the incentive) to affect the
| profit of their division or the whole company.
|
| So a worker gets 100k with a 10% bonus, his boss gets $120k
| with a 40 percent bonus etc. In a good year the boss will
| get almost twice the worker but in a bad year he will make
| just 20% more.
| Thorrez wrote:
| 0.0004% is 4x 0.0001%. If it's a small amount then 4x
| really doesn't matter.
| hagy wrote:
| The compensation progression for a manager generally
| consists of a slow (if any growth) in base salary and most
| compensation increases come from stock and bonus. I believe
| this is generally the same for high level ICs. Some
| companies make it explicit that there is an IC level that
| corresponds to each manager level and both have the same
| compensation structure.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Yes, 4x is a big gap, not just % wise, but dollar wise too.
| I'm sure they don't talk about it during the interview. But
| if somehow that information slipped in during interview, I
| would honestly just thank them for the time and walk out
| because I would never work for a company that believes in
| the large gap of the output of the 2 groups.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| In any human hierarchy, the management of the hierarchy tends
| to view itself as the most important component.
|
| At the same time, it is literally the least talented.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Well, a) it's based of base salary, so managers may be making
| a lower base than others, and b) while both bonuses are based
| on company revenue, managers may have a higher target.
|
| It makes sense to have a larger part of sales' income be
| commission than, say, engineers, who may have less control
| over meeting revenue targets.
| ryandrake wrote:
| In what universe are managers averaging less base salary
| than individual contributors? Aside from a few outlier
| engineers you see from time to time...
| supernovae wrote:
| I see it quite a bit... Managers will often have larger
| equity or bonus comp.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg
| each have a $1 salary.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032315/why-did-
| larr...
| liamwire wrote:
| This is just arguing in bad faith.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I don't think I'm intending to deceive anyone. It's an
| interesting salary setup that popped into my mind when I
| read CamelCaseName's, ryandrake's, and supernovae's
| comments.
|
| I'm sorry if it came off as deceitful or misled anyone.
| karaterobot wrote:
| In addition to being edge cases, the people you listed
| are not managers.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I think they are/were, or at least some of them have been
| at some points in time during which they had a $1 salary.
| Although maybe there are different definitions of the
| word manager and I'm not really familiar with them all.
|
| >Typically, responsibilities include being a decision
| maker on business strategy and other key policy issues,
| leader, manager, and executor.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_executive_officer
|
| >"We've never been ones to hold on to management roles
| when we think there's a better way to run the company.
| And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a
| President," their letter said.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50653345
|
| That was said when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were
| stepping back. So it seems to imply their old roles were
| management roles and their new roles aren't.
| Lev1a wrote:
| They've already made more money than they or their
| descendants (probably for generations) will ever need and
| are _very likely_ also getting capital gains on that
| wealth through one way or another.
|
| The $1 salary is just posturing.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I wasn't saying whether it was moral or immoral or good
| or bad. I was just giving an example.
|
| I'm curious, would you say it is better for them to have
| a $1 salary, a $100k salary, or a $100M salary?
| vidarh wrote:
| In 25 years, exactly once have I had someone in my team
| that was paid more than me.
|
| It was someone who had been in the job 5-6 years longer
| than me, and consistently been one of the highest
| performers. I believe I was the one to give him a raise
| to a higher base than me.
|
| So it does certainly happen, but as you say I think
| they're outliers.
|
| Usually I think you'll see this happen because companies
| are poor at having a separate tech promotion track that
| doesn't lead into management, and so it sometimes happens
| with people that really ought to have been promoted, but
| that neither they or you want to become managers.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| I've been at places where you get bonuses and me and the wife
| always call it "magic money". We don't bank on it and we try to
| pay down debt or invest it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We had a quarterly cash bonus program that was variable based
| on company performance. In the fastest-growth times, it often
| paid out at the cap (250%). After one such payout, my
| neighbor stood up and theatrically loudly exclaimed, "I have
| no idea how this gets determined; I've just been _strongly_
| incentivized to act randomly! "
| sigstoat wrote:
| > "I have no idea how this gets determined; I've just been
| strongly incentivized to act randomly!"
|
| that was certainly how i felt about raises at one job. good
| reviews every year, but sometimes a big raise, sometimes a
| tiny raise. no pattern.
|
| once that realization sunk in, i basically checked out of
| the work.
|
| raises continued with no pattern.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| I've had that experience too. I've gotten a big raise, a
| promotion, and a tiny raise all off an employee "report
| card" that has had the exact same letter scores each time
| to the point I think the majority is copy pasted.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah, that is the smart way to do it, but as I learned, very
| few people treat it that way.
|
| I know that sales people usually are smart enough to "live
| off the base, play on the commission", but that's because
| commissions are quite variable. When you get a fixed bonus
| every quarter, it starts to feel very much a forgone
| conclusion.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Same with me.
|
| We pamper ourselves with something nice with a (small) part
| of it and put the rest of them on our rainy day savings.
| alistairSH wrote:
| We're in the same boat.
|
| In my case, the bonus is based on company revenue goals. And
| it's small (relative to salary). So, I ignore it. It does
| nothing for my motivation. As a line manager at a large
| company, in a non-customer facing business unit, I don't have
| much impact on revenue (I can't bill more hours or sell more
| units). My personal goals have very little impact on the
| bonus. If my bonus wasn't part of my stated comp plan (ie, it
| only paid on years where revenue was actually good), I would
| appreciate it more. As it is, it doesn't factor into my daily
| thinking at all.
|
| Wife's bonus can be considerable. And it varies by a huge
| amount (low end 8% of salary, high end ~30%). It's more of a
| motivation for her - the high end is based on her
| performance, not company metrics she can't impact. Of course,
| if she busts her ass and doesn't get the high end, she is
| miserable until the next cycle. Hasn't happened yet, but two
| years without the high level and I bet she looks elsewhere.
|
| We're fortunate to be able to budget and live within our
| means without the bonuses. At lower salary levels, in a high
| COL region, that might not be easy. Like you, we either use
| them to pay down student loans, pay off cars, or go on a more
| extravagant vacation than normal.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Same. My wife and I actually live within the lowest salary
| between the two of us so we have no stress even if one of us
| loses our job. We have an emergency fund and invest the hell
| out of the rest of the money. That means the second salary is
| like a year round bonus, which lets us take nice vacations,
| buy our kids nice stuff, buy nice cars, pay for our kid's
| college when that time comes, etc. Our actual bonuses go into
| the year round bonus fund.
| spdustin wrote:
| Did you at least get a jelly of the month club? That's the gift
| that keeps on giving.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I had a similar program and there was also incentives based on
| year end leveling.
|
| We met all of our goals, but because I was 11 months in they
| cut it in half.
|
| Then I was supposed to receive the top performance award.
| However, they gave it to another coworker because I had only
| been there not quite a year. This of course reduced my bonus by
| half, but again the monetary award was further reduced again.
| In the end, even though I was leading all the projects and
| getting things done I received a quarter of what I should have
| gotten. The full top grant was given to someone who did
| basically nothing and came to work maybe three days a week. He
| was also drunk those three days.
|
| I quit two weeks later. Mostly because a friend called because
| they had reqs open and they were offering me a 25% increase in
| pay. That wouldn't have been as competitive if they hadn't
| played so many games.
|
| I heard all on my in progress projects stopped because no one
| knew what they were doing.
| zz865 wrote:
| Same with stock RSUs. Most tech companies have been blessed
| with rising stock prices - it wont last like that. Sooner or
| later big names will disappear like Enron, Lehman did.
| anonu wrote:
| This is sort of the deal on Wall Street. You get a
| "discretionary bonus" and its more mysteriously tied to the
| performance of the firm. This is the secret, you can't give
| people too much of a formula. Bonuses have to be conjured up in
| a nonsensical way, otherwise stuff like this happens.
| kblev wrote:
| It seems odd to me why bonuses are tied to the performance of
| the company rather than the employee's performance.
| anonu wrote:
| Its usually both. So you get into the great situation where
| you did great but the firm did poorly, so you get a
| doughnut. As you move up the ranks, the process becomes
| less murky.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well 1) no money to pay the bonuses out of if not 2)
| supposedly it's incentivizing you to act in the company's
| interests.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Yes. I had a high school teacher [underpaid] that gave us
| donuts in the morning. One day that didn't happen. Anarchy.
| Screaming, yelling, crying, breakfasts ruined. WHAT WILL WE
| EAT? This teacher was now an evil villain. The teacher learned:
| never give out free donuts again.
| BugsBunny1991 wrote:
| Should've doled them out based on performance. My fourth
| grade teacher used to give out candy bars for good grades.
| King sized ones, too. No other teachers gave out much of
| anything except gold stars. I was an overachiever so I
| usually managed to get a treat.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Being the best served by the teacher is already a reward;
| no need to rub additional salt in the wounds of the
| students the teacher is failing.
| discordance wrote:
| There's a pretty strong dopamine response with sugar, so
| there would be a strong association with that and class
| starting.
|
| No wonder they went nuts.
| rat87 wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-.
| ..
| flemhans wrote:
| 20+ donuts, for how long?
|
| If daily and at $1/nut, that comes out to $100 per week.
|
| Was it just on some occasions or every morning?
| mod wrote:
| That is a grossly over-exaggerated price for donuts imo.
| sneak wrote:
| Dunkin' Donuts are over EUR1/donut ($1.20) in Berlin,
| even by the dozen.
| minitoar wrote:
| 1 dozen krispy kreme glazed donuts is like $8
| unishark wrote:
| Isn't that a bit like evaluating the cost of coffee based
| on starbucks prices?
|
| We also don't know how recent this story is. When I was a
| kid, in the days before gentrification and gourmet-
| everything, there was a doughnut shop nearby that was
| like $2 for a dozen. It was way cheaper than regular fast
| food. I remember thinking what a great discovery it was
| until I found I couldn't handle more than a couple of
| them before the sugar was too much for me.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Are doughnuts different in America to other parts of the
| world? I couldn't imagine ever eating 12 Aussie-style
| doughnuts in 1 sitting, unless it was some sort of eating
| competition. It'd be like eating 3 hamburgers or 6 hot
| dogs.
| vxNsr wrote:
| 1 dozen donuts from DD where I live is $13+tax
| ipaddr wrote:
| What about the supermarket? You can get those little
| white ones fairly cheaply.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Most big grocery stores in the US sell day old donuts for
| half-off and in bulk, probably working out to something
| like $0.30/donut.
| pbourke wrote:
| > The teacher learned: never give out free donuts again.
|
| Or do it either predictably infrequently (major holidays or
| whatever) or truly randomly.
| taf2 wrote:
| I visited China in 2000 and remember one night in Beijing I
| very poor sad little came up to me asking for help for food
| and I handed her 5 dollars. As I recall at the time the
| little ones always were asking for "one dollar" so i felt it
| very nice to give 5... after an hour or so eating in the
| restaurant when I came out a literal sea of children were
| gathered all around me begging for the same gift... I had
| given the little girl the only cash on me at the time so when
| a little boy very angry dropped the f bomb at me multiple
| times for not giving him the same - I stopped and asked, "do
| you know what you just said?"... he was thankfully much
| smaller then me but definitely didn't seem to phased
| fortunately he gave up after a few blocks of walking... I'll
| never forget this... both sad how desperate they were but
| also the effect of being generous... as they say you can't
| win
| bsder wrote:
| > very poor sad little came up to me asking for help
|
| Never give to beggars. Ever. For any reason.
|
| If you just feel you must give, give _food_ --something
| that can't be converted to cash. Nothing pisses off
| "beggars" faster than giving them a sandwich.
|
| 1) Most of the time it's a scam.
|
| Often the individual isn't really that badly off or, if
| they're children, the money is being skimmed by adults.
|
| 2) A lot of the time it's criminal.
|
| Many of these encounters are used to snag your attention
| while you become the victim of a crime.
|
| 3) You are not solving the fundamental problem but you are
| making the area worse for the people who have to live there
| and deal with the beggars on a daily basis.
| hibbelig wrote:
| Once I saw kids begging and I wanted to give them money.
| But they pointed at the packed leftover food from the
| restaurant. Then I knew it was not a scam and it taught
| me about the living conditions in that place. Thank you
| for the chance to remember this incident.
| bsder wrote:
| Yeah, if someone actually asks for food, I'll probably
| help them out--certainly if I'm holding it in my hand.
| That's only happened once in all my years of walking
| around cities (and I generally walk a lot wherever I live
| --which is why I recognize all the habitual beggars).
|
| For almost a half-dozen of my too sympathetic friends, I
| have introduced them to the local beggar population that
| they wanted to help by saying: "All right. I'll split it
| with you. Go there (whatever close food source), buy some
| form of sandwich and drink--no mayo, and come back and
| give it to him. He'll still be here; trust me on this."
|
| They have quite the reaction when the cursing starts and
| the food gets thrown back in their face. It's been sadly
| invariant.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Supposing someone didn't want food, I don't see that it
| changes the fundamental reality that they are homeless
| and begging. In fact it's hard to blame them for wanting
| a drink in that situation.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > Often the individual isn't really that badly off or, if
| they're children, the money is being skimmed by adults.
|
| This is a comforting thing to tell oneself but I don't
| think it's true.
| taf2 wrote:
| Yup , yup and yup... 20 years ago many lessons learned
| memling wrote:
| > If just feel you must give, give food
|
| If you have the time, consider taking them out to eat if
| they're comfortable with it. A little food _and time_
| goes a long way.
| ghaff wrote:
| Past some point, it's just more money to put into savings--and
| lack of it is annoying and something to take into account for
| evaluating future options but not much more.
|
| But, yeah, you have people making less money for whom the
| expected quarterly bonus was factored into paying their
| mortgage.
| mattm wrote:
| There are plenty of stories of people making high incomes and
| still living paycheck to paycheck.
| foobiekr wrote:
| One reason to do a company with variable comp is if you have a
| handshake agreement with the hiring manager that they will
| guarantee to the extent of their ability a high multiplier.
|
| This approach is used a lot in companies where the average tech
| talent isn't highly valued and so genuine talent is otherwise
| unattainable. It's 100% misusing the system to overcome flaws
| elsewhere.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Because once you get one once, you feel entitled to it in the
| future, and it feels like a loss when you don't get it.
|
| That seems to be the risk of any company that tries to convince
| you that you have to do your absolute best as an employee (also
| known more succinctly as "any company").
| Redoubts wrote:
| > And the one quarter, we didn't get the max bonus. In fact, I
| don't think we got it all.
|
| Was there a clear reason for this? Given how it's framed, it
| sounds like there wasn't.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah it was clear, it was because the total company profit
| didn't meet the internal target, but that hadn't happened
| ever in the history of the company, so people were surprised.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Was it because the target was set unrealistically high or
| because the company underperformed?
| eCa wrote:
| If the target had been hit every quarter for a few years,
| if anything it was set too low.
| unishark wrote:
| Depends how scalable it is. For some products you need to
| accurately predict how much you can produce and sell. So
| targets are a matter of everyone executing their part on
| schedule.
| jedberg wrote:
| The company underperformed.
| californical wrote:
| Does it really make a difference? Seems like it should be
| set fairly high, if your company is aiming for growth,
| and sometimes growth is slower for various reasons
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _Does it really make a difference?_
|
| In my view, it does. Maybe this was a good company with
| reasonable management who set realistic targets. Maybe it
| was a not-so-good company, someone in management saw the
| line item for bonuses and decided to "solve the issue" by
| setting a target he was sure would not be achievable,
| just so they could reduce payroll costs with minimal
| hassle. I am sure both happen in the real world.
| crocsarecool wrote:
| Pretty sure my old job did this. People on programs that
| were successful would get a little bonus. This ended up
| changing to "every program across every sector must meet
| all business goals for bonuses to be paid." That made it
| impossible to get a bonus when some programs were
| experimental or R&D type things that were kind of
| expected to run on a deficit for a while.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Bonuses also mess up tax withholdings.
| kec wrote:
| How? Company should withhold just as they would any other
| pay. Even if you get dumped on and it bumps you up a bracket
| it likely won't have a huge impact as you'll likely not have
| a ton of pay in that bracket.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Companies often withhold a flat-rate on bonuses, and it's
| wildly different from your calculated withholding based on
| your actual tax bracket.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Honest question, what's a reasonable solution for a small
| company (since it's easier to do thought experiments on a small
| company).
|
| You're a business owner. You hire 3 people. You pay them
| salaries. That year the company does really well. You want to
| thank your employees. You're not going to just give them raises
| because there's no guarantee you'll do as well next year
|
| It sounds by Netflix logic you should just keep all the money
| and not reward your employees. They got what they asked for.
| mst wrote:
| Find a project to call the justification for a bonus - that
| way the project is the thing, and there won't be a repeat
| expectation set up.
|
| (we paid december bonuses on exactly that basis once and then
| the next year wasn't as good and one of my team thought he'd
| fucked up to not get a bonus again, so the project oriented
| thing is way superior even if it's the same money being given
| to the same people for the same reasons overall)
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You can decide to give a bonus because your company did well,
| and tell folks it is probably a one-time bonus.
|
| It is a bit difficult to then make this apply to Netflix,
| though: They are Huge at this point. If I remember correctly,
| they profit. They can probably safely give small raises,
| increasing overall financial security for workers. They can,
| however, still give employees a one-time bonus.
| foogazi wrote:
| What about profit sharing? The first time I ever got stock
| options I discounted them as being worth $0. This was small
| private company.
|
| But the company paid out profit sharing based on all the
| outstanding shares including unvested ones.
|
| So if we made a profit everyone got a profit bonus early in
| the next year. We were all stakeholders.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| By netflix logic you're already paying top of the market so
| you should be good.
| 55555 wrote:
| Note the Netflix strategy only works for high profit per
| employee, highly scalable firms.
| peteretep wrote:
| When I take dividends, 20% of the value I take gets
| distributed to the staff
| ipaddr wrote:
| I think by pooling and sharing a fixed amount the reward is
| company wide not connected to individuals. That aligns
| everyone to work as a team to generate enough income that
| you will allow you to take a dividend. I like the approach
| for smaller business.
| jacurtis wrote:
| For a small company like that I would implement basic profit
| sharing. Set aside a certain percent of company profits
| (10-15% is fairly common) and those profits are distributed
| among the employees.
|
| The way you distribute it among employees can get tricky. If
| everyone is in a similar position you could split the pot
| evenly. Otherwise you can implement a points system. Maybe
| the lower level employees get 1 point each. The manager gets
| 2 points. At the end of the year the profit pool is
| distributed per share (so the manager would get twice the
| bonus of the lower level). This is the easiest way to manage
| it. You'd want to run some hypothetical numbers first and
| talk to an accountant, etc. But this is a good way for a
| small company to manage bonuses.
|
| Don't worry about Netflix. The Netflix strategy is that they
| are overpaying you to begin with, so bonuses become less
| important. They also have programs where employees can buy
| discounted public shares in the company and stuff like that.
| So it's a whole different ballgame they are playing. Don't
| even try to compare yourself to them. I am currently in the
| interview process right now for a position at Amazon and they
| follow a similar strategy to Netflix. You have public share
| buying program that allows you to do well with a growing
| public stock, plus the base salary they are offering is
| insanely high (higher than it should be honestly). So despite
| not offering a bonus program, it is still a good deal because
| they are paying you so much that the bonus doesn't matter.
|
| I worked at a small company of < 10 employees when I was
| first starting my career and they did a profit sharing
| program like what I listed above. A certain percent or
| profits were set aside and split among employees. I was a
| higher-level position so I got a significant portion of the
| profit pool. As the company did better the bonuses became
| VERY SUBSTANTIAL. I was getting under-paid with my salary,
| but after bonuses it put me in the top 5% for salary ranges
| for my job title. The owner was happy because he allowed me
| to be highly paid, without the risk of paying high salaries
| up front. Granted it wasn't all wonderful. I did hold a
| grudge that I felt like I had to wait out the bonus each year
| because if I didn't get the bonus than I was just getting a
| moderately low salary for my position.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Well, why don't you consult them? First set aside the amount
| of money you were thinking of paying. Now think of some
| options, e.g.:
|
| * Paying the bonus.
|
| * Improving office amenities.
|
| * Buying each employee an expensive present.
|
| * Funding a family vacation for each employee.
|
| * Making a sizable donation to a worthy cause (collectively
| or for each employee).
|
| * etc.
|
| Then have a meeting with them, and ask them which they would
| prefer. Try to reach a consensus they all say they can live
| with.
| loginatnine wrote:
| This. At a scale of a small company, everyone could benefit
| from it the way they want and you get transparency and
| include them in the discussion.
|
| It doesn't really scale when you are bigger though.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I can practically guarantee they are going to want the
| cash.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Yeah, seems like a straightforward choice.
|
| > Paying the bonus.
|
| Gimme, gimme!
|
| > Improving office amenities.
|
| Not bad, but... it would depend on how much money we are
| talking about, and what office amenities it would buy.
| For example, once I got a new $1000 office chair that
| felt _less_ comfortable than the old cheap one -- I
| definitely would have preferred the cash. On the other
| hand, once I had to work with a barely functional mouse,
| and I would gladly spend my own $5 to buy a new one, but
| that would be against the company policy, so I couldn 't.
|
| In general, greater computer screens, more memory, more
| disk, better mouse -- good idea. (I have no idea what
| makes many software companies try to save money on this.
| It is a fraction of the developer's salary, and it can
| have huge impact on productivity.) Expensive chair,
| expensive table, art or whatever -- I would probably
| prefer its worth in cash, because companies typically buy
| stuff way more expensive than I would. Fit ball could be
| fun, though.
|
| At the end of the day, the cash remains mine, especially
| if I invest it wisely. The office amenities that company
| gives, the company can take away. And I can't bring them
| to my next job either.
|
| > Buying each employee an expensive present.
|
| Just no. If it's something I want, I can buy it myself.
| If you buy it without asking me, there is 99% chance it
| has zero value for me.
|
| > Funding a family vacation for each employee.
|
| Again, I can do this myself, if you give me money. And I
| prefer to keep my family separated from my job, thank
| you.
|
| > Making a sizable donation to a worthy cause
| (collectively or for each employee).
|
| Another thing I can do myself, thank you. Also, high
| chance the "worthy cause" will be something super
| politically correct, and I don't want to be that bad guy
| who publicly opposes it.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| If i recall the same happened when google replaced their
| holiday gift phone with donation to some charities they picked.
| mulmen wrote:
| Wait what? Who gets the tax break there?
| Thorrez wrote:
| When you make a charitable donation of cash, you get a tax
| deduction to undo the income tax you paid when you
| originally got that cash. If a company directly donates to
| charity, you don't pay income tax on that money in the
| first place, so you don't need a deduction to undo it.
|
| The end result is the same $0 net change in your bank
| account balance.
|
| Also, companies can deduct all expenses from corporate
| income tax. So if a company pays you money via payroll, or
| pays that money directly to a charity,t he company will
| deduct it from corporate income tax either way.
|
| The benefit of a company making charitable donations
| directly is that payroll taxes are avoided (not to be
| confused with income taxes). Both the employee and the
| company benefit from this, because normally both the
| employee and the company pay payroll taxes.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| They didn't share the details but most likely the company.
| The donation was "on behalf of all employees"
| thyrsus wrote:
| Obliquely relevant question: can U.S. sole proprietors make
| expensed charitable contributions? I'm guessing not,
| because that would decrease the 13.5% Social Security
| "contribution", and would be on top of the "standard
| deduction" that was increased to make Schedule A
| itemization preferable only in exceptional cases.
| dboreham wrote:
| I don't know anything about sole trader taxation but
| corporations can make charitable donations that are
| treated as business expenses (hence not taxed). They
| pretty much have to be cash, not in-kind contributions
| though. Ianaa, etc.
| jartelt wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the employees just picked a charity
| and Google gave the donation. The "gift" was being able to
| pick the charity. I don't think there was any employee tax
| break.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Well the employee doesn't have to pay income tax or
| payroll tax on the money, so in that sense there is a tax
| break compared to if the money was given to the employee.
| Salgat wrote:
| Not a tax break for the employee, since the net effect is
| still less money. Unless you consider losing your job and
| having no salary to tax also a tax break.
| [deleted]
| Thorrez wrote:
| Yeah, it depends on what situation you're comparing
| against.
|
| If you're comparing against the employee getting a gift
| and keeping it, then yes, the employee was better off
| before.
|
| But you're comparing against an employee who was
| previously donating the gift and getting a tax deduction
| on that donation, the employee is better off now.
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's not "still less money" compared with the situation
| where the employee gets the money AND donates the money.
| Of course if the employee was not going to keep the money
| not getting it is a net loss.
| jartelt wrote:
| People were mainly just annoyed that rather than getting
| a free phone or some cash as a gift, they instead got the
| ability to choose a charity to receive a donation from
| Google (which has "value" but not monetary or physical
| value to the employee). The expected to receive a
| phone/cash so it felt like less compensation/bonus when
| they didn't receive it.
|
| I doubt anyone was thinking about donation related tax
| breaks or anything like that. It was simply "sure I will
| have Google give $500 to this food bank, but why don't I
| get a new phone or cash bonus?"
| khuey wrote:
| It should be a wash either way unless someone falls into
| some weird edge case where deductions are limited. The
| corporation is deducting the payment either way, either as
| comp paid out to employees or as a charitable donation
| directly.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| That's probably correct but previously they were also
| paying your taxes on the gift for you (i know). Since
| they didn't share all the details it was hard to figure
| out if how it played out financially.
|
| I didn't have a dog in that race bc I couldn't stand
| android so I wasn't even claiming my gift previously but
| it was interesting to watch the political pickle they got
| themselves in
| mcny wrote:
| If it is a thousand dollar donation, what am I going to do
| with the tax break? I still have to take a standard
| deduction. What am I missing?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Majority of goog employees were making high salary in
| California so very few people in head office were taking
| standard deduction especially before trumps tax changes
| compiler-guy wrote:
| You didn't get the deduction. It was just a way to direct
| company funds.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Charity is an above the line deduction.
| astrange wrote:
| It wasn't last year, now it is again, so people might've
| missed it. I thought you could only deduct $300 though.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Yes, it's limited to $300. So it's not very useful for
| people significantly more than that but still below the
| standard deduction.
| dboreham wrote:
| Are you talking about California state tax? The $300
| thing doesn't jive with my federal tax spreadsheet..
| Thorrez wrote:
| No, we're talking federally. There's a $300 federal
| above-the-line charitable deduction. Everything after
| that is below the line.
|
| https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/how-to-
| deduct-202...
| Thorrez wrote:
| No it's not. $300 can be an above-the-line deduction. Any
| donation beyond that is below the line.
|
| https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/how-to-
| deduct-202...
| harryh wrote:
| Before it was a gift phone it was $1,000. They changed that
| in....2008ish maybe. I can't remember the exact year.
| fred256 wrote:
| 2008, it was a T-Mobile G1 which was the first Android
| phone on the US market.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| The year before i joined - 2010 was last one afaik (also
| when it got leaked)
| rachelbythebay wrote:
| 2009 leaked. Tweeted while most of us were still in line.
| Still got the screenshot.
|
| <name> One thousand dollar impromptu cash bonus. I work
| for Google!!
|
| ... October 16th. Dumb.
| lokar wrote:
| Thanks Randy!
| [deleted]
| rachelbythebay wrote:
| 2009 was both. Cash a few months before, N1 right before
| Christmas.
| quelltext wrote:
| "The Human Fund"
|
| - since Festivus 201X
| sjwright wrote:
| And then the accountants probably tabulated them as corporate
| donations. So were they gifts from the employee or not?
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you make a donation in someone's name, _you_ get the tax
| deduction, not them. Google couldn 't "pay" the employees
| in some non-taxable form and then let the employees take
| the $1000 deduction even if they wanted to (which they
| don't).
| sjwright wrote:
| That's my point. The donation is financially a corporate
| donation, but is being marketed to the employee as a perk
| of their employment. That it's "their" donation.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| The perk is your charity gets the money, the point of
| giving to charity isn't the tax benefits...
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I care about cause XYZ and as part of my employment,
| my company gives $1000 to a charity that I picked which
| supports cause XYZ, that absolutely has value to me.
| voisin wrote:
| Bonuses to employees are compensation, so tax deductible to
| the corporation just like a charitable donation.
| kevinyew wrote:
| Not to sound miserly, but how is this a bonus for the
| employee whatsoever?
| brandmeyer wrote:
| The Christmas gift was in addition to the normal annual
| bonus payed out in January.
| hintymad wrote:
| Is this natural dynamics in an increasingly large company? As a
| company grows, individual's impact diminishes and so does
| visibility, and revenue per employee dwindles. Consequently,
| resources increasingly concentrate to the top. That's why we
| hear Microsoft's engineers below level 68 complain about pay,
| and Amazon's entry-level engineers are known for their
| relatively small package. Ebay's situation was probably even
| worse, as their business stopped growing fast long ago.
|
| All the more reason for working for a blow-out small-to-medium-
| sized company, except for those few who are truly good at
| climbing up corporate ladders. The accumulated chance of
| getting outsized equity return is larger than working for a big
| company.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Depends. The US is a bit special and not everyone works to
| maximize salary. But where I work, small startups absolutely
| struggle to compete with large banks on salary (Hong Kong, we
| do banking like France does croissant or the US middle east
| wars).
|
| It doesn't matter, the perks. In fact each time I hear of
| some I think they must have huge salary issue vs the
| competition and try to find leverage points real company cant
| follow (a bank wont do your laundry, as I heard FB was
| offering at some point).
| jedberg wrote:
| > Ebay's situation was probably even worse, as their business
| stopped growing fast long ago.
|
| I worked there a long time ago. :) This happened right as
| they peaked in growth and started slowing down.
| analog31 wrote:
| Management lesson: Money is fungible. Making some part of
| compensation variable on a whim is giving management a rope to
| hang themselves with.
| astrange wrote:
| There are differences in types of compensation in the very
| short term because of IRS withholding rules. I think a lot
| more gets taken out of a bonus early in the year, although of
| course it's all the same when you do your taxes.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and while it certainly makes a difference for
| someone who is living paycheck to paycheck, if a person has
| relatively stable finances in a stable economy and a cash
| cushion, then money is money.
| cmauniada wrote:
| This reminds me of the (roughly the same) saying that people
| always spend their next pay-check instead of their current one.
| im3w1l wrote:
| This is the curse of 95% reliability. People will rely on it
| even though they shouldn't. It's better if it's only like 66%
| reliable.
| praptak wrote:
| We know how to deal with this in the technical domain - we
| break things on purpose in a controlled way so that people
| don't rely on an SLO that is there by mere chance.
|
| Maybe companies should do "bonus tolerance breaks" for the
| same purpose.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Considering typical turnover that's not possible unless you
| pay out the bonuses on a much more frequent than annual
| schedule.
| im3w1l wrote:
| He said they were quarterly.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| The right way implement this is to tie a sizable chunk of
| the quarterly bonus to an ambitious company-wide goal that
| fails 30% of the time. If the company is hitting the
| bonusable goal 95% of the time, the bar is probably too
| low.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > they spent a lot of time explaining that bonuses weren't
| guaranteed.
|
| In Israeli labor law, if an employee repeatedly gets the same
| bonus regardless of any concrete criteria, then that bonus is
| considered as part of that employee's salary as though it had
| been part of the contract. This is due to many employers
| calling a part of the salary a "bonus" so as to avoid it
| counting towards retirement benefits and other allowances; and
| for the flexibility of being able to cut salaries without
| ostensibly having done so.
| tartoran wrote:
| >And the one quarter, we didn't get the max bonus. In fact, I
| don't think we got it all. People screamed and yelled and were
| pissed. At the company all hands they spent a lot of time
| explaining that bonuses weren't guaranteed.
|
| This is only understandable if the company didn't perform well
| but did the CEO and other executives not get a bonus as well??
| If they didn't it's 100% reasonable. Not so if they continued
| getting their fat bonuses while everybody else didn't. It's
| understandable employees become unhappy about this. Let's face
| it, compensation is mostly one of heaviest factor considered in
| a job and bonus is factored in to some extent. Hence from bonus
| to no bonus make that position look less attractive. Pissed?
| It's an overreaction but maybe it's time to move on. If there
| are better pastures some people will not hesitate to go. I'd
| appreciate if the downvoters tell me how is it fair that
| executives don't get affected by a downturn at all while
| everyone pays the price collectively, sometimes even the
| executives mistakes. It completely eludes me and I'm sure I
| didn't get downvoted by executives.
| matwood wrote:
| I think bonuses can work as long as they are an actual bonus.
| The base salary needs to be correct first. I worked at one
| place where the base salary was lower, but the bonus made up
| for it and it was super stressful. I ended up negotiating for a
| higher base.
|
| One upside I've seen with company performance bonuses is that
| it can (not always) force even a private company to share more
| information with employees. This is useful for knowing the
| general health of the company. Even if the company shares
| nothing, if bonuses drop significantly or go away that's a
| clear signal of problems. All too often I see stories of people
| getting laid off and having no clue it was coming.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| My approach is to think about the base salary as the "real
| salary" and the bonus as "lottery".
|
| I negotiate the base salary as high as I need to make. When
| discussing bonuses, I politely pretend to be interested, but
| what I actually think is "this is just some imaginary number,
| that _maybe_ I could get if I win a lottery, which probably
| is not going to happen ".
|
| My family budget is calculated on the base salary. If I get a
| bonus, I will probably immediately move it to a savings
| account, or maybe use it as an extra payment on mortgage, to
| get it out of sight.
| nirui wrote:
| > People left because of it
|
| So, one question: After they left the company, has their income
| increased/decreased/stood the same? Maybe it's a hidden key
| factor for the decision.
| jboy55 wrote:
| I worked at a company that instituted a very similar bonus
| program, it started just after the time the former COO of Ebay
| joined ... must have been coincidence. Anyways, we had similar
| formulas, pretty much the same thing. We were eligible for 6%
| of our salary but it would be paid out in 4 times a year in 2
| different ways.
|
| Our bonus was split in two, half would be used for quarterly
| bonuses, half would be used for yearly bonuses.
|
| Each Quarter you would make personal goals and take on team
| goals. Each goal which would be measurable and would contribute
| to your bonus. They would be scored each from 60-120%. Each
| employee would have a mix of personal and team goals, totally 5
| to 8.
|
| Rather than have yearly goals, your average score of all
| quarters would be applied to the yearly half.
|
| Finally, there was company goals, revenue and profit. If we met
| "guidance" we got 60% of our calculated goals above and if we
| hit the 'BHAG' we got 120%.
|
| .....
|
| So, lets say you are pushing a feature and you get it done
| super early. You your goal, complete on time, well you get
| 120%!
|
| Of 1 of your 5 goals. It happened to be weighted at 40%, but
| fixing bugs on time was 30%. You did that ok, no problems, so
| that's 100% of a 30% goal. And your team didn't get that CFO
| cost cutting project at all, so that's 60% of that 20% goal.
| Some finally team sports participation one gave you the
| remaining at 100%.
|
| Well how much did you earn from that 120% burst of hard work?
| Well, its 120% of 40, so 48 points. 30 points for the team and
| only 12 points for the CFO one. Finally throw in that 10. So...
| you got 100% of your bonus.
|
| How much was that, well, its 6% of your salary. But really only
| 1/8th of that 6%, so if you earned 100,000, that was $750!
|
| Wait how did the company do? Well, Rev was lower than expected,
| so it was 80% of that. so $600.
|
| Profit? No, the revenue drop ate away the profits. So is that
| 60% of the $600?
|
| No, the bonus pool was funded from profits, so we get nothing.
| And.. we didn't made a profit in all quarters but one, one that
| you didn't bust your ass, so you only got $400.
|
| So year end bonus of 6%? All you see if $400, but your math got
| better.
| ganafagol wrote:
| Sounds like lots of time wasted for coming up with such a
| complicated scheme, communicating it and everybody thinking
| through how to maximize their own benefit from it.
|
| Sounds like the articles point. But on steroids.
|
| All it does is keep people from doing actual work and be
| happy doing so. This is just infighting waiting to happen.
| Cogito wrote:
| It's fairly standard, in my experience, and makes sense if
| you come form the position of the company.
|
| In the budget a certain amount of money is allocated
| towards the incentive scheme. If the company does not
| perform as well as planned this pool is reduced
| appropriately (you can't pay bonuses with money that
| doesn't exist).
|
| If you take the original pool of money you can express it
| as a percentage of the entire payroll, and that percentage
| is what, on average, everyone's bonus will be (for example
| 6%). Alternatively, that percentage is used to calculate
| what the pool will be in the first place (before scaling
| for company performance).
|
| You then have the individual perfomance scaling, which is
| designed to reward people excelling at their job. The
| individual has a starting percentage-of-salary bonus, and
| that percentage is moderated up or down depending on how
| they performed relative to their peers. Relative to their
| peers is super important here, because the total bonus pool
| was worked out based on the starting percentages (and then
| moderated by company performance) so the final bonuses are
| really just an allocation of that pool between the
| employees. In some companies managers will literally take
| their employees' performance reveiws into a big round-table
| meeting where they argue why specific team members should
| receive a 4 or 5 rating (the highest), as there are a
| limited number of 4s and 5s available in the incentive
| scheme.
|
| The final calculation is fairly straightforward then.
|
| From the company's perspective, an individual's bonus is =
| (total payroll) * (incentive scheme budget allocation
| percentage) * (company performance factor) * ([potentially]
| business unit or department performance factor) *
| (individual performance factor)
|
| For the individual it's built up in reverse, and it's the
| accountants jobs to make sure the numbers match in the end!
|
| bonus = (employee salary) * (base bonus percentage +-
| individual performance modifier) * (company performance
| factor) * ([potentially] business unit or department
| performance factor)
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| To be frank, it doesn't matter how much sense it makes in
| theory when in practice it has obvious downsides.
| Cogito wrote:
| I think it makes sense in practice too, if you accept
| _some_ incentive scheme. Perhaps no incentive is the best
| incentive, but I don 't know the data on that.
|
| In my experience there was never a huge disconnect
| between an individual's performance and their expectation
| of their bonus.
|
| Your starting point was based on your position - say 5%
| for junior positions and 10% for senior positions.
|
| The thing you had control over was if that starting
| position went up or down. There are 5 performance review
| levels, and each has a matching percentage associated
| with it. A '3' is "doing your job satisfactorily" and
| gives your base of say 10%. A '4' might be 15%, '5' 20%,
| '2' 5%, and '1' 0% (I don't remember if they actually
| went to 0% or not).
|
| The last important factor is the companies overall
| success, but that is largely out of your hands so it 'is
| what it is'.
|
| The bigggest downside with this system is that it's not
| capable of handling everyone getting a '5'. If you really
| had a team of superstars it would be a hard and long
| battle to get them all recognised (though I did see that
| happen on occasion).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Originally it might boost peoples morale, as they think
| there is a bonus to be gained. But after people figure it
| out, there morale drop will probably be a net negative.
|
| It definitely would be a net negative for me, as I would
| feel screwed.
| labster wrote:
| But bonuses are compensation! At my last job I had a negative
| slope on my total compensation, because I'd get raises every
| time that barely beat CPI, but the bonuses kept shrinking by
| thousands. I ended up quitting because my promotion to team
| lead came with a net pay cut and the CTO refused a pay increase
| flat. And thus ended eight years, because they wouldn't pay me
| as much as my colleagues, and cut enough bonuses and perks that
| I was making thousands less than I used to make.
| u678u wrote:
| See banking. TC is still less than 15 years ago, esp in
| London
| heymijo wrote:
| Compensation is like hygiene. When it's taken care of, no one
| notices. When it's not, things begin to stink.
|
| Drucker was talking about this 50 years ago. I think he got the
| idea from Herzberg [0].
|
| There is so much knowledge that is not yet Common Knowledge.
| Instead we see the same mistakes on repeat.
|
| [0] https://www.managementstudyhq.com/herzbergs-two-factor-
| theor...
| chithanh wrote:
| Also standard works on this are:
|
| Robert D. Austin, Measuring and Managing Performance in
| Organizations (1996). This book coined the term "measurement
| dysfunction" to describe how reward structures work against
| company goals.
|
| And Alfie Kohn's 1993 article in Harvard Business Review
| where he summarizes decades of motivational research (also
| citing Herzberg), concluding that giving bonuses to staff is
| usually a bad idea, and it is an especially bad idea for jobs
| that require cognitive sophistication.
|
| https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work
| kqr wrote:
| I'd also suggest the book _Drive_ about motivation and how
| economic compensation can have counterproductive effects.
|
| Edit: Oh, and dear Lord how could I forget Deming?! Most of
| the time we think we're measuring individual performance
| we're really measuring noise. And it's not individual
| performance but organisational performance that matters
| anyway.
| heymijo wrote:
| Yep, Red Beads [0].
|
| The system determines performance. Measuring variation
| within statistical process control and attributing it to
| individual effort is a mistake that keeps being made.
|
| Many have made the effort to translate these ideas to
| knowledge work, so it's not like the manufacturing
| context is holding this concept back from being
| understood.
|
| [0] https://deming.org/lessons-from-the-red-bead-
| experiment-with...
| Lammy wrote:
| I appreciate your use of "stated" here (serious)
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| This reminds me of a story back around that time about a guy who
| was, like, employee 200 at Amazon. He goes to the can, and sees a
| vestment sheet for the early employees, and realizes that he's
| been hired just after people were getting stock grants. Just just
| prior to him are shortly to become millionaires, and he's sitting
| there with a regular job. He quit because of the inequity, and
| did a tour with this story as a "comic," but it was just bitter.
| (I can never find this story any more.) Anyway, the point is that
| he has a great job at a booming company, with nothing but bright
| days ahead, and he can't enjoy it because he knows other people
| are getting a lot more. I mean, I get it, but everyone can point
| to someone who has made a better deal for themselves. It doesn't
| mean you have to despise the deal you got. I know I can't make
| that kind of money because I know I don't have the personality or
| family situation to make that kind of deal. And that's ok. I
| can't complain. I do alright.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| There is something buried deeply in our minds that recoils at
| being treated unfairly. I have a good job, the pay is decent,
| the work is interesting - but I'm in the process of looking for
| a different job because I didn't get a promotion. Some junior
| members on my team did get them though, and it _feels_ unfair
| (I absolutely have no idea if they _don 't_ deserve it, and I
| like them as team mates). However, I had previously talked to
| my about the promotion, set the targets, and went above and
| beyond to meet those ambitious targets.
|
| I've introspected a bit, and I admit it's weird reaction -
| nothing changed about my job, except knowing my colleagues were
| being recognized and getting something I am not. The perverse
| thing is, if _no one_ got a promotion, I wouldn 't be this
| pissed.
| ickelbawd wrote:
| Wow. I had a similar experience last Monday. A coworker I
| like personally, but who I consider myself more senior than,
| was given an important role on the team that I had been
| working towards and discussing with my manager. I felt this
| incredible, irrational anger as soon as it was announced and
| it stuck with me for days. I went to bed angry and woke up
| angry. It really surprised me how visceral and uncontrollable
| my reaction felt. It consumed my thoughts. I'm halfway
| through a four day weekend to disconnect and try to reset
| myself mentally because while I still think it was unfair, I
| can't actively feel this way and still function well at work.
| Time will tell if this weekend was long enough...
| _nalply wrote:
| I experienced the same thing more than ten years ago. My
| coworker and I we were even of the same CS class, and my
| grades were better than his and I worked two years longer
| than him in the company but yet he turned out to become my
| boss.
|
| In my case it seems to be simple to explain why. Have a
| look at my profile and perhaps you discover the probable
| cause.
|
| Now I stopped working as an employee and I look forward to
| never return at slaving away.
| ascorbic wrote:
| There's a famous psychological experiment where people are
| split into pairs and given a pot of cash to share. One person
| decides how it should be apportioned, and the other decides
| whether to accept that share. If they reject it, neither
| person receives any money. The logical decision is to always
| accept the money, because a small amount is still better than
| nothing. However people don't do that. At a certain point,
| the desire to punish unfairness outweighs the desire for the
| money, and people will reject money in order to prevent the
| unfair person getting anything either.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _The logical decision is to always accept the money,
| because a small amount is still better than nothing_
|
| This is a moral decision for me, not a logical one. Someone
| trying to make you accept an unequal portion is 100% trying
| to take advantage of you.
|
| The only situation I would accept an unequal share is if
| the portion was significant enough for the fact that it's
| unequal to not matter.
| sneak wrote:
| Morally you are entitled to zero, so it's still a good
| deal to take whatever you are offered.
|
| It's not like you both did an equal amount of work.
| You're not being taken advantage of.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Which is exactly why I'm comfortable turning it down if
| it's not equal. I didn't lose anything.
|
| Neither person did any work so I don't understand your
| point. Why would you offer someone less than half the
| money when you are no more entitled to it than them?
|
| The only reasons I can think of is to take advantage of
| them settling for less, or because you think you are
| entitled to more money. Both of which are morally wrong
| to me.
| 317070 wrote:
| You write as if "equal" is the objective correct way to
| distribute.
|
| It is a really fun experiment which they replicated in
| different cultures and got vastly different results. Even
| both extremes of the spectrum are good ways to describe
| expected behaviour in some cultures.
|
| In some places, the first person would take all the
| money, and the second would happily accept that split. He
| could have been first after all and would have done the
| same thing. In other places, the first person would give
| everything to the second, who would still reject this
| split. Neither wants to receive money 'undeserved' by
| being lucky in getting first or second.
|
| All participants would describe their local approach as
| fair, despite the split definitely not being equal.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I'm explicitly writing from my own moral perspective,
| which is obviously highly subjective.
|
| I also purposefully didn't use the word "fair" because
| it's very subjective.
|
| It would definitely be interesting to see the result of
| this experiment in different cultures. Any sources?
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Is there a task beforehand where participants could
| potentially do more/less perceived work than their pairs?
| watwut wrote:
| On repeated version of game, it pays off to reject unequal
| deal. So that the other person is incentivized to offer
| more. So apparently, the desire to punish feeling is
| optimizing our behavior for repeated game.
|
| Pls, if we are competing in some sense, say socially, then
| it is better for you to prevent advancement of person you
| are competing with.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| One of the companies I worked at previously made a big deal
| about employee -driven performance review / promo packets
| every year. Everyone's title had a level like a role playing
| game. There was also a culture of compensation transparency
| among coworkers. I thought it was all quite toxic, leading to
| a lot of very well compensated people stressing out and
| complaining. At its worst, it lead to instances of passive
| aggression and depression across many teams.
|
| My current company encourages regular direct feedback, mostly
| lacks titles internally, and there's a culture of
| compensation opacity among coworkers. Folk don't talk about
| money outside topics of general interest, and managers and HR
| are responsible for periodically reviewing and adjusting
| compensation for fairness. I haven't had to worry about or
| discuss money professionally in years, other than to get
| called into a short meeting to be pleasantly surprised by an
| adjustment. There's no bonuses other than the occasional
| verbal praise I receive from appreciative coworkers and
| management, and I think that's worth more than incrementally
| more money.
|
| One time I did offer to pay out cash to any coworkers that
| reduced network traffic on a particularly over-utilized CAN
| bus, at a bounty of $0.10/Kbps. One sucker, er, respected
| coworker fell for it. Best $20 I ever spent!
| neworbit wrote:
| That's Mike Daisey, he did a tour called "Doing Time At
| Amazon.com"
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Thank you for scratching that mental itch. I see his book(s)
| are available... on Amazon.
| znpy wrote:
| > Anyway, the point is that he has a great job at a booming
|
| > company, with nothing but bright days ahead, and he can't
|
| > enjoy it because he knows other people are getting a lot
|
| > more.
|
| That's only partially true. You might have just realized that
| you're worth more, and that you could do about the same job at
| a different company and get better remuneration.
|
| I can offer an anecdotal example: back in my first job I had
| reached quite a happy point. I was able to do my job without
| much problems, I was competent for my tasks, and my
| compensation was okay-ish. Not great, but I could sustain
| myself and get me something nice every now and then.
|
| Then I started seeing people as competent as me leave and get
| waaaay better remuneration, doing jobs maybe different but
| still interesting/engaging, still rewarding.
|
| Anyway, I stayed there for about two more years, then I left.
| My next job was a ton of fun, got competent at it again after
| some initial ramp-up, and was making waaay more than my first
| job.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| My view is: everything is comparative but if you make
| everything a comparison, boy you are in for a world of hurt.
| Life is mostly unfair so better treat the good times like the
| bonus that they are.
| sofal wrote:
| And my view is: if you're not paying attention to what is
| going on around you, you will be taken advantage of.
|
| There is a balance here.
| twodave wrote:
| There's literally a biblical parable about this (though sort of
| in reverse). I'll paraphrase it (it's from Matthew Ch 20):
|
| A man goes out in the morning to find workers for his vineyard,
| promising them each denarius for the day. Around lunch he goes
| to find more workers. During the afternoon, he goes to find
| even more workers. At the end of the day the man pays everyone,
| starting with those who arrived during the afternoon. To these
| folks he gives a denarius. The workers who had arrived earlier
| see this and think they're about to get a bonus, only to then
| also receive a denarius apiece.
|
| The main purpose of the parable is to describe that everybody
| who makes it to Heaven is there on equal terms. But there's
| another truth to it that the article also describes--if you
| agreed to work for a wage and then receive that wage, can it
| really be called unfair?
| froh wrote:
| the parable leverages our feelings of injustice tickled by
| the very relatable narrative to carry one point home, the
| Heavens part.
|
| the other, secular reading, has a heavy taste of prosperity
| gospel, putting employers into God's boots to justify blatant
| injustice and better margins, fka profits. it is and remains
| unfair to offer different employees different wages for the
| same work.
|
| please don't use the gospel to justify injustice.
|
| btw,bI'm amazed there are employee owned companies.
|
| For example whenever there is another round of Huawei bashing
| I remind myself that Huawei is fully employee owned with no
| majority shareholders.
|
| https://www.huawei.com/en/facts/question-answer/who-owns-
| hua....
| ornornor wrote:
| That's very surprising, I didn't know that about Huawei and
| didn't expect it at all!
|
| 100% with you on the parable.
| strogonoff wrote:
| The exact situation is (intentionally or not) very obscure
| to outsiders. There's a research paper[0] dedicated to the
| question of who actually owns Huawei. Its authors found
| that:
|
| > The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding
| company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei
| founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a
| "trade union committee" for the holding company.
|
| > We know nothing about the internal governance procedures
| of the trade union committee. We do not know who the
| committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how
| they are selected.
|
| > Trade union members have no right to assets held by a
| trade union.
|
| > What have been called "employee shares" in "Huawei" are
| in fact at most contractual interests in a profit-sharing
| scheme.
|
| > Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the
| ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine,
| and if the trade union and its committee function as trade
| unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be
| deemed effectively state-owned.
|
| > Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and
| controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not.
|
| For what it's worth, Huawei's own legal chief described[1]
| it as a private company back in 2019.
|
| [0]
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-asks-court-to-rule-us-
| ban-u...
| twodave wrote:
| The idea that a software engineer being bitter about his
| still probably high compensation being an injustice is
| laughable bordering on insane.
|
| We live in an age where you don't even have to get out of
| your house in order to make a very good living and we have
| the audacity to call it an injustice when somebody else
| receives something that we didn't instead of just being
| happy for them. As if the key to modern happiness is found
| in personal financial gain.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > remind myself that Huawei is fully employee owned with no
| majority shareholders
|
| You know it's a Chinese company right? That employees have
| as much control over it as they do companies that are
| formally state owned enterprises, none? That it's run by
| the internal CCP committee?
| hellow0rldz wrote:
| > But there's another truth to it that the article also
| describes--if you agreed to work for a wage and then receive
| that wage, can it really be called unfair?
|
| You define what's fair based on what information you have. If
| new information reveals that trade was not only unfair but a
| blatant rip off you are within your rights to feel something
| about it.
|
| Still, I think one should accept the _past_ trade. But there
| 's no reason for that, combined to the new information to
| guarantee a continuous relation.
|
| In other words, renegotiation based on new information that
| substantially change the deal is moral.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| You have the right to feel anything about anything for any
| reason.
|
| Whether you can renegotiate or not is not based on your
| feelings or morals, but how good you are at power games.
| hellow0rldz wrote:
| This a very one linear way of looking at the world.
|
| Sure, it might be about "power games" but feelings do
| matter and morals too and how one feels about it does
| give you the extra energy and drive to succeed at a
| (re)negotiation. So... how can one ignore all that?
|
| The original debate was if it's unfair.
|
| I think taking advantage too much during an initial
| negotiation is unfair but since the other side did agree
| it is a "fair" trade for the other party (based on the
| partial info they had).
|
| Once extra information is revealed, the trade is not fair
| in retrospect. But new information should only apply to
| future trades: as such, negotiating or quitting is moral.
|
| You might be sub-estimating how good people are at power
| games. Quitting out of spite is know to happen so people
| are willing to take _a loss_ due to unfairness.
|
| Assuming rationality and ignore feelings and morals while
| focusing only on the technicality of "power games" is
| super simplistic.
| twodave wrote:
| This isn't really the situation GP was talking about. The
| company offered early employees stock. At some point
| obviously they have to draw the line and stop doing this.
| GP felt they were ripped off only after learning not that
| they missed the boat, but how close they were to being on
| it. The company wasn't unfair to them, especially since
| GP agreed to a certain wage and the company was willing
| to pay that wage.
| rsyring wrote:
| > The main purpose of the parable is to describe that
| everybody who makes it to Heaven is there on equal terms.
|
| I believe a closer reading of that passage suggests that the
| purpose of the parable is to show that Jesus is upending the
| social order that currently exists* to show favor to the
| those who are currently the downtrodden and outcast. See the
| end of chapter 19 where Jesus says the rich will not enter
| the kingdom of heaven and the first will be last.
|
| Then chapter 20, the parable in question, and the parable
| ends with:
|
| "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to
| me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be
| first, and the first last."
|
| Jesus would die for sinners, both Jews and gentiles. The
| gentiles would be grafted in, as Paul says in Romans 11. An
| incredibly offensive idea to the Jews of the day but
| demonstrative of a God who is rich in mercy.
|
| > But there's another truth to it that the article also
| describes--if you agreed to work for a wage and then receive
| that wage, can it really be called unfair?
|
| FWIW, I think you are exactly right on that part.
|
| * I don't think this meaning parallels or supports current
| cultural efforts to "upend social order." Completely
| different culture and circumstances being discussed and
| Jesus' desired outcome is very different IMO from what I see
| many in our current culture fighting for. He was concerned
| primarily for people's souls, not their economic or political
| standing. In fact, that was one of the reasons he died the
| death he did...to show that his kingdom was not of this
| world, his concerns were not primarily those of this world,
| and his disciples should do likewise.
| valuearb wrote:
| Mike Daisey, the guy who got caught lying about conditions at
| Apple factories, so not sure how much I believe the story about
| finding a vestment sheet.
| khendron wrote:
| Interesting write up. The whole article, with its stressed out
| overtime, inter-team fighting, and testing the computer using a
| game reminded me of "The Soul of a New Machine", which is a great
| read for anybody who hasn't read it.
| leke wrote:
| I would hold bonuses as a con, if comparing companies to work
| for. I might even use it as an excuse to leave a company for
| another one. Why do you want to work for ACME anymore? Because
| they offer bonuses and you don't :D
|
| I've gotten to the point in my life that I just require the
| salary to be enough to support me. There has been nothing but
| stress, centred around my previous jobs, where bonuses are
| involved. Mainly that pressure of, you better perform optimally
| else you will affect our bonuses --mentality.
|
| This creates a toxic work culture IMO. My job is stressful
| enough. I don't need it more so.
| atypmorn wrote:
| In my last job I worked at a company that paid slightly below the
| market rate, not including the bonus. At the time I got the job,
| I didn't realise that I was already being significantly
| underpaid. I thought it was a bit low but didn't realise the
| extent of it. So when I got the new job, I was blown over by the
| huge jump in salary and couldn't be happier. What was better? I
| was entitled to receive each year up to a 10% bonus for just
| doing my job, 15% if I went above and beyond, or 20% if I was a
| "role model".
|
| At the time, both the recruiter and my new manager explained to
| me that I should think of the 10% bonus as a baseline expected
| part of my salary "you will always get this unless you are doing
| something egregiously wrong". This was indeed what everyone was
| told, and what management was told to tell people. Of course,
| this made me recalculate what I thought I was worth and it did in
| actual fact bring my salary up to roughly market rate.
|
| What the recruiter and my manager said was right. Come bonus
| time, I and almost everyone else in the company got their bonuses
| (apart from the people that did egregiously bad, and they saw it
| coming). In the second year I even qualified for 15% and when I
| got paid out I really felt that I had actually gotten a bonus. I
| was banking on 10%, but not 15%! I treated myself to something
| I'd wanted for ages but could never justify.
|
| Then Covid hit, and suddenly upper upper upper management started
| signaling that bonuses might not be paid that year. Needless to
| say, absolutely everyone apart from the CFO was up in arms.
| Morale, which already wasn't amazing because of Covid, plunged
| even further and the number of "hallway conversations" increased
| significantly. People started to leave in larger numbers because
| the bonus was an expected part of their salary. Each year they
| waited expectantly to receive it, and if they weren't going to
| get it this year they would need to go and find a job that paid
| market rate as base salary. The thing that made this worse was
| that we were working at one of those few companies that actually
| did better during Covid. For better or worse, we sold a service
| that had an increased demand for Covid.
|
| By this time I was a manager, and we were told in a leadership
| meeting by our head of department where we were all vocally
| pissed, and were told that we had to pass the message on to the
| people we managed. Clearly, this is what had happened to him, and
| to his manager.
|
| The company didn't want to come out and say "you aren't getting
| bonuses even though we're projected to do better" presumably
| because it would provide a platform for people to ask why.
| Instead, they thought it would be better if it came from the
| direct line manager. Great idea except that we received the
| message from someone who at the same time said to us "I can't
| imagine how they'll get away without giving bonuses". It just
| served to add to the feeling of being cheated.
|
| Anyway, they ended up actually paying the bonuses because the
| annual revenue figures had increased so much that it was
| basically impossible for them not to pay them. When we got them,
| we didn't feel happy that we had received a bonus, we just felt
| bitter that the company put us through hell for seemingly no
| reason.
|
| I no longer work at that company.
| [deleted]
| teachingassist wrote:
| > both the recruiter and my new manager explained to me that I
| should think of the 10% bonus as a baseline expected part of my
| salary
|
| If a company does this in Europe [I think generally in the EU],
| I believe it would then be considered a contractual entitlement
| and part of your salary - so the company would legally have to
| pay it anyway.
| sneak wrote:
| This is what I think of when companies offer the passive-
| aggressive "unlimited vacation time" policy.
|
| It's not unlimited, and you shouldn't start off your employer-
| employee relationship with an obvious lie. Set a policy and
| make it clear that you are exchanging x dollars for y amount of
| work.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| At some companies they call it "discretionary time off" to
| make it clear it is between you and your manager but the
| concept is the same. What many companies fail to do is
| properly train their managers (1) how to manage this with
| their reports and (2) to consistently take time off as an
| example to the people that report to them and to set
| expectations. Without a program in place to encourage people
| to use it, people don't use as much as the company typically
| intends. Due to legal nuances, it is a bit tricky to
| officially track performance in this regard.
|
| Most companies that I've worked at which had this type of
| vacation policy had a directive for managers to ensure that
| every employee took _at least_ 3-5 weeks of vacation every
| year (the minimum varied with company). It wasn't always
| successful but that was the objective. More than that was
| fine too.
|
| One of the original motivations behind these policies was the
| burst-y nature of some types of engineering work. Companies
| wanted to allow engineers to take 2-3 months of paid vacation
| after a relatively intense 12-18 months with few breaks
| working to ship some product. Giving people multiple months
| of vacation is surprisingly difficult without also running
| afoul of other legal and accounting complexities around
| vacation time in various jurisdictions. The "unlimited /
| discretionary" policy is essentially a loophole in US law
| that originally allowed managers to reward people with large
| amounts of time off. It has been generalized, and has other
| accounting benefits, but this was the original use case.
| mofosyne wrote:
| Be interesting if there is a roll of a dice each day that
| increases if you have too many accumulated working days. If
| you get hit, you are forced to take that day off.
| Closi wrote:
| Or alternatively just accumulate holiday days the way it
| works in the rest of the western world!
|
| In the U.K. the rule is you accumulate holiday but all
| employees MUST take all their holiday before the end of
| the financial year. Employers must give at least 5.6
| weeks of holiday to each employee, however can give more
| (either as a fixed amount or unlimited amount). There are
| some rules that let you roll holiday over to the
| following year in some circumstances to allow a little
| flexibility, but in general the rule is you have to take
| them.
|
| Legally employers must ensure that all employees take all
| of their 5.6 weeks of holiday, so it's not a "use it or
| lose it" situation. Employers also cannot pay their staff
| more to have them work during their holiday, it's got to
| be time off (up to 5.6 weeks, any holiday over that point
| is discretionary).
|
| Because of this, all employers will pressure employees to
| take their holiday ASAP because if everyone postpones it
| you will have everyone off in the last few weeks of the
| financial year.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| As a small caveat, the 5.6 weeks (28 days) is allowed to
| include the eight statutory bank holidays, and almost
| always does (i.e. the worker can't insist that they not
| be paid for the bank holiday, and take the holiday day
| some other time). So the minimum amount of non-
| discretionary holiday that a worker can accrue is usually
| four weeks.
|
| In practice the actual baseline offered in many jobs
| seems to be five weeks, plus bank holidays.
| Closi wrote:
| As a further caveat, bank holidays are actually not
| different to the remaining holiday allowance in law.
|
| Employers can dictate exactly when you take all of your
| holiday allowance by law, it's just that this doesn't
| happen in reality. Similarly they can force you to work
| bank holidays.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I'm back at a more traditional company after being at a
| startup for two years and the unlimited PTO was amazing.
|
| It wasn't passive aggressive at all and now I sit here one my
| hands waiting to accumulate enough pto to take an extended
| break.
| crocsarecool wrote:
| I'm back to a traditional place after unlimited. It's
| annoying waiting to accumulate time, but I prefer the lines
| being clearer. The way my old company did unlimited felt
| like a cheat to not have to pay a vacation accumulation out
| if you didn't use it, but you also felt like you were put
| on the naughty list for taking too much vacation. If you
| took beyond a certain amount of leave, someone from higher
| and higher up the chain had to approve it. Well, you can't
| the time of day from the upper echelons of management, so
| getting your only exposure with them to get approved felt
| like getting a spotlight put on you for the wrong reasons.
| supernovae wrote:
| I take about 3-5 weeks of vacation a year + our 14
| company holidays.
|
| I typically do one big road trip for ~2 weeks and then a
| week randomly through the year plus random days fishing,
| doings tuff with kids or just taking a break from work.
|
| I could never do that having to accrue
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| You could if you lived in Europe, where you must get at
| least four weeks minimum vacation per year (plus public
| holidays).
| tjr225 wrote:
| I wasn't on a naughty list at my place place. I was
| encouraged to take time off and would regularly do so,
| even on short notice.
|
| Maybe somewhat of a hate the player situation. It can be
| done right and I've seen it- and I miss it.
| sneak wrote:
| It wasn't unlimited though. If startups will let you take 4
| weeks, or 8 weeks, or 12 weeks, or whatever - they should
| simply publish that up front.
|
| I am fairly certain that they would have had an issue with
| you taking 52 weeks of paid vacation time off per year. The
| actual policy number is somewhere between 2 and 52.
|
| I agree that 2 weeks of PTO for an employee per year is too
| little, but I think we are talking about different things.
| astrange wrote:
| If you give people defined vacation time, you have to pay
| it out when they leave in CA. If it's undefined it's
| worthless, which is good for the employer.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| This is exactly the issue. I left my last job with almost
| two months of vacation time. No startup wants to pay that
| out if they can help it.
| tjr225 wrote:
| Yeah I think it creates an insane inversion where the
| people there the longest can effectively have unlimited
| PTO and the people that are new are fucked. I was just
| talking about this with my wife.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| When employer says "unlimited" they actually mean "take
| as many as you like as long as your manager is happy with
| your work" so I doubt you can formalize that in the
| offer. It's good deal tho for people who can deliver the
| goods
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you do really good can you take a year off? If not,
| then it's still not unlimited. I'd like my salary and
| benefits be quantified in my contract rather than
| "manager discretion" which can go south in a hurry if you
| have a terrible manager.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| If you want to be real pedantic I can counter with the
| fact that at least in the US and with the "at-will"
| contract just because they promised you 25 days of
| vacation doesn't mean you can take it whenever you please
| or at all.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If you get fired befoee the PTO do you get the money they
| stocked for you?
| tjr225 wrote:
| In reality I saw employee #1 switch to a different
| project and take 3 months off. Seems reasonable.
|
| I was happy taking a Friday off here and there when I
| needed and taking weeks off when I moved. This was in
| addition to my regular vacations prior to the pandemic.
|
| Everyone anti-unlimited PTO seems to be completely
| missing the forest for the trees. It's nice to be
| respected and trusted to do your work. It's also nice to
| fuck off whenever you want.
|
| The argument here is that of course you can't take a year
| off and reasonably do your job. Well; we all knew that
| already.
|
| Genuine Unlimited time off creates an environment of
| respect between the employee and the employer. If I do my
| job; I can take some time off. You can't really do your
| job if you're never there, so I don't get your point.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > If I do my job; I can take some time off.
|
| What does it mean to "do your job"?
|
| At every place I've worked there was an infinite amount
| of job to be done. If I were to take 4 months off I would
| do less of it than if I've taken 1 month.
|
| So that just shifts the conversation from "how much
| vacation you have" to "what amount of work is considered
| enough". Which doesn't seem all that different to me, or
| at least it would not have been at any place I've worked
| at.
| leetcrew wrote:
| to be fair, "what amount of work is considered enough" is
| still an issue with the traditional PTO setup. following
| the HR manual to a T is not sufficient to keep a job if
| you never finish anything. I do prefer the traditional
| accrual system as I feel it makes expectations more
| clear, and it slightly reduces the impact of the "did I
| get a reasonable manager" die roll.
|
| also some people (like me) just don't take a ton of PTO.
| I look forward to cashing out the max accrual at my final
| salary whenever I end up switching jobs. unlimited PTO
| essentially penalizes people like this.
| larzang wrote:
| I think a fair few of us have been burned by companies
| where this level of respect absolutely did not and could
| not exist and engineers were treated equivalent to you,
| an amateur, calling a plumber to your house and then
| hovering over them telling them everything they're doing
| wrong. Informal PTO would have just made the situation
| even worse.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| If you can't do your job because it's unreasonable and or
| the organization is dysfunctional it's still nice to have
| time off to depend on.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Similar story from a friend. The privately held company paid
| record dividends in both 2020 and 2019, but used COVID as a
| cover to do without both bonuses and raises. The only way to
| see this money would be to become a stock holder in the
| company, which is only offered begrudgingly.
| irrational wrote:
| This past year we received our usual bonus (despite the fallout
| from COVID), but we did not get our annual 3% cost of living
| adjustment. Instead that money was used to keep people like
| janitors, fitness facility people, food people, etc. still
| receiving paychecks even though campus was (and still is) closed
| down for quarantine. Some people complained, but I thought it was
| a good way to take care of our fellow coworkers who couldn't work
| through no fault of their own.
| woutr_be wrote:
| My bonus this year was reduced, and also didn't receive any
| increase. While it sucks, all I can think about is how lucky I
| am to get a bonus and still have a job. Many others weren't so
| lucky.
| breeny592 wrote:
| It's actually become an interview question for me of "is there a
| bonus scheme" where I'm hoping the answer is actually no. I've
| yet to work in a company that has a structured bonus scheme that
| hasn't resulted in a worse culture for it.
|
| The worst was in a company where your max bonus was depending on
| getting a "5 out of 5" performance review - however the whole
| business unit needed to average out to a particular number (I'm
| fairly sure it needed to be down the middle at 3 out of 5). What
| this meant was for every exceptional employee, someone else had
| to be under-performing in the eyes of the company. The end result
| was two types of teams: no one would rock the boat or have any
| initiative so everyone was perfectly average, or completely cut
| throat attitudes leading to burn out and animosity.
|
| YMMV but to date I haven't had a good time in a company that has
| bonus schemes (even if I personally have financially benefited
| from it - the cost came at culture, stress and work life
| balances).
| mavelikara wrote:
| > however the whole business unit needed to average out to a
| particular number (I'm fairly sure it needed to be down the
| middle at 3 out of 5).
|
| This is bad budget allocation.
| geocrasher wrote:
| > We are lucky enough to have a regular bonus program even now at
| work, it's been going on for years. Every time it is handed out
| my boss will say something like, "so we had a good bonus this
| time, but don't count on it in the future."
|
| "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely
| kill you in the morning."
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm a simple man. I see Princess Bride reference, I upvote.
| geocrasher wrote:
| What can I say, it seemed perfectly cromulent.
| codeduck wrote:
| Inconceivable.
| wideareanetwork wrote:
| I worked at a company in finance markets in the mid 1990s that
| was paying the traders $2M bonuses.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think that's a bit irrelevant. Finance has had a culture of
| paying a lot and paying based on performance for quite a long
| time. It is also mostly easy to measure performance of a
| trader's accounts or of the firm as a whole. I think some just-
| so arguments for this structure are that the skills are
| transferable and the companies are all competing with one
| another, so someone can easily jump ship, and performance is
| easy to measure so people know what value they are creating.
|
| Two downsides of this are that it can be unfair to people who
| just get unlucky (eg working on a less-profitable desk), and
| that it encourages taking large risks for higher returns, which
| is especially bad if they are taking on long-term positions.
| One way to try to address the latter is with a partnership
| structure where partners are incentivised to rein in big risks,
| but having joint and several liability is unusual and scary.
| taeric wrote:
| This is literally a plot point in Christmas Vacation.
|
| Is also why I think it is silly for startups to provide too many
| perks. It sets obvious precedent and will upset more folks when
| you stop. Find ways to invest in the company so that success is
| it's own perk. If the company truly has more, work that into
| raises where you clearly tie the income to the success of the
| company.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848549 to make the
| thread less top-heavy.
| chii wrote:
| > success is it's own perk
|
| aka, equity compensation. Because i sure aint gonna consider it
| a perk if a CEO (or owners) to get richer, while i just get
| praise for making the success!
| thedrbrian wrote:
| > Peter Gibbons: You see, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's
| that I just don't even care.
|
| >Bob Porter: Don't- don't care?
|
| >Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now
| if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I
| don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
|
| Before I started working at MASSIVE CORP I thought Office
| Space was a comedy.....
| mattm wrote:
| I'd say the motivation is mainly intrinsic. I don't know
| about you, but I've generally just felt better when I've
| worked like I care. I've found there to be a correlation
| between my overall happiness and well-being and the effort
| that I put into work. This doesn't mean going overboard and
| working overtime, just to care about what I'm working on.
|
| I suppose the extrinsic motivation would not be noticeable
| immediately but should be noticeable over time (ie. taking
| a 10 year view) as you would (hopefully) earn more than
| peers who just do the minimum to avoid being fired. If you
| get laid off, I'd guess you'd also have an easier time
| finding a new job as well.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Preach on, brother.
|
| I saw it in the theater when it came out and thought it was
| funny but obvious over-the-too satire. I was at a small
| company at the time.
|
| About two months ago I decided to watch something and it
| popped up on the suggested items. I figured what the he'll
| and watched it for the second time ever.
|
| I work for a megacorp and have for most of the last decade.
|
| If anything, office space is too subtle. Instead, I realize
| now that my reality would be so insane as to be considered
| unrealistic and too exaggerated. Even "Disrupted" doesn't
| actually capture the insanity, dysfunction, etc.
|
| I have joked/threatened for a few years that I would write
| a book about this place but as I compile an outline I keep
| asking myself if anyone who hadn't already had the same
| experience would believe any of it. The mountain of
| mediocrity, sure, but the intrigues, scheming,
| backstabbing, insane and systemic incompetence in every
| domain? No way.
| serial_dev wrote:
| When I come to the "I just don't even care" state, I start
| looking for another job.
|
| I was at a startup company that in my opinion got a great
| idea and with enough focus, we could have been successful.
| I always tried to think about the product, the impact, the
| roadmap, the quality... And after some time I realized that
| I just annoy the founders and I care and worry more about
| things then they do. So I decided to care about half as
| much as they did and in the meantime look for another job.
|
| Today, I work at a big corporation, I was again motivated
| to be able to change things, improve things. The feature I
| recently worked on was just put on a roadmap with a
| ridiculous deadline, our work is blocked by like 5
| different backend teams around the country, and somehow I
| should bend over backwards to deliver on time?
|
| Keeping your motivation is hard when everything around you
| is trying squash it.
|
| And I am not even sure it's a problem. Of course I wouldn't
| say this at my next job interview, but in reality, if you
| are motivated, most often you will get disappointed really
| fast. On the other hand, when you just go in to work, do a
| reasonable amount of effort, then you can work better with
| others with less stress, and in the end, who cares about
| "those few extra units"?
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| > On the other hand, when you just go in to work, do a
| reasonable amount of effort, then you can work better
| with others with less stress, and in the end, who cares
| about "those few extra units"?
|
| That's exactly my MO. The extent to which many people
| start to overidentify with their job is almost comical.
| If they are lucky it may actually pay off at least. But
| more likely than not they are just deferring the
| inevitable conclusion that work is at the end of the day
| just a (hopefully enjoyable) waste of time so you can
| afford living.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yeah, of course it is. But you also spend a lot of time
| there, so I don't think it's unreasonable to try to find
| something you can be proud of delivering.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Sure. As long as you're able to deal with nobody else
| sharing that pride, expressing gratitude, offer a reward
| or even notice your feat. Then you're set. If not -
| you're up for a rude awakening many years later realizing
| that all those things you were proud of didn't make any
| actual difference - not even for yourself.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Hm. I'd say that wasn't my experience so far -- plenty of
| gratitude and recognition. But I kind of wish I would
| have focused more on things I was actually excited to
| work on instead of prioritizing stability above
| everything else.
| [deleted]
| mk89 wrote:
| I somehow understand you. However, I had some time to
| reflect on this (because I am similar to you, in a way)
| and the best I got to is: it's just business.
|
| You can be motivated as much as you want, but tomorrow
| you can be replaced. Your company gets acquired, and you
| happen to be in the "wrong" office. Bye bye. Or whatever
| other reason. Covid! Bye bye again.
|
| We are just minions with a good technical knowledge. And
| if you don't step up and get closer and closer to CTO
| level you'll be "just" working on features, sporadically
| "exceeding the goals set" and get rewarded for that. Yay.
| Get the most out of it and that's it. If that's enough
| for you, so be it.
|
| Learn, develop, make shit happen, iterate.
|
| Do you want to have a major impact? It takes hours and
| stress _from your own personal life_ (I couldn 't stress
| this out more), things don't come easily.
|
| If you want to have power you need to be your own boss.
| And even then I wonder how much power you truly have.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I have worked directly with several CTO/CIOs and one
| thing stood out. The y kissed my ass but no one kissed
| theirs. It is a very tenuous position that normally gets
| replaced when the weather changes. I was being groomed
| for the spot at a company, riding shotgun with the then-
| CIO. Weather changed, our CIO was out, I was retained
| (aggressively so) but my path to C-level was gone just
| the same.
|
| If it falls in your lap, take it. But don't count on it.
| Leverage the extra money under the assumption that you're
| out in three months. It's position formed of a certain
| mix of competence, pedigree, communication ability, and
| politics. Tenuous.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Man I hear you.
|
| That said, life is very short. Big companies are a great
| way to make pretty good comp in exchange for dealing with
| a ton of dysfunction. I know people who don't get
| bothered by it at all - they separate themselves and
| their 8-10 hours a day and compartmentalize.
|
| If you can't do that, though ...
|
| The only reason to work for mega corps once you've got
| enough in the way of assets that you are already dialed
| in for the normal retirement age is because you're
| vesting out a package.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Or the other joke:
|
| My Boss arrived at work in a brand new Ferrari.
|
| I told him: "Wow that's a nice car".
|
| He replied:
|
| "If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for
| excellence, I'll get another one next year"
| sharken wrote:
| Not sure if I should laugh or cry, but I'm quite sure
| this is the reality for the majority of Fortune 500
| companies.
| andrepd wrote:
| A co-operative model of ownership would solve that problem.
| Then if the company succeeds, the workers see the rewards.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Once the company is more than a handful of people that's
| all pretty theoretical.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| It doesn't have to be. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't doubt you can make a large co-op. What I do doubt
| is that working at a large co-op is much different from
| working at any other large employer (I guess unless
| you're on the executive team).
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| At Mondragon, employees can choose their managers by vote
| (the corporation is run like a democracy inside), perhaps
| that can make some difference. I have no experience,
| therefore no strong opinion on this; sounds good to me,
| but maybe it introduces its own problems that I wouldn't
| guess.
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's interesting. Maybe it's more different than I
| would have imagined. At least it would seem to give some
| recourse if the manager is a tyrant.
| [deleted]
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The John Lewis Partnership[0] in the UK (which owns a
| chain of department stores[1] and the supermarket chain
| Waitrose[2]) has more than 80,000 employees and operates
| like a cooperative.
|
| Technically it's a Public Limited Company (albeit one
| wholly owned by a trust for the benefit of its
| employees), but it does run an internal democratic
| system.
|
| Profits are distributed to employees as bonus, which is a
| uniform percentage of their salary. 2021 is the _first_
| year they won 't distribute a bonus (because of Covid),
| but historically it's been between 5% and 20%.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_%26_Partners
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's cool but isn't it similar to the incentive pay
| programs or RSUs/ESPPs offered by traditional employers?
| Not to mention that once the company is large, it's hard
| to feel you have that much control over the success of
| the entire company.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| are you, or anyone here, aware of a co-operative modeled
| SV style startup? I think 10yr (or 20 if that's possible)
| options is a good step towards that model so that you get
| back compensated for your contributions regardless of how
| long the investors resist IPO
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The typical startup problem like the above is a more extreme
| example of people mailing it in until bonuses are out: people
| mailing it in until the startup is acquired or goes public
| because the company is doing well and they lose their
| shares/options if they quit
| lumost wrote:
| It's a weird incentive model when you get down to it. It's
| rare for individuals who have been with a company for a long
| time to be fired. While RSUs/guaranteed equity incentivises
| individuals to leave when they get bored. Options provide an
| incentive for bored/uncommitted employees to hang on.
|
| I wonder if this is why mid-life startups that stop growing
| start to feel "stale". Too many people who just want their
| money and to get out of dodge.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Do yo mean expiring-at-separation options?
| lumost wrote:
| Yes, I noted guaranteed equity as a class as there are a
| multitude of instruments which can provide monetary
| benefit after separation.
|
| I once worked with a guy who had been with an 8 year old
| startup for around 7 years. The company had stopped
| growing at around the 200 million dollar run rate and
| he'd stopped really trying to do much other than get by.
| Someone once directly asked why he stayed and it turned
| out he had a million+ options. He was never bad, never
| good, and never took risks or did anything that would
| make him stick out.
|
| 6 years later the startup is still private and hasn't
| grown (it's probably smaller today than it was then).
| When I think back on the experience there were a number
| of people who felt strangely trapped into working there
| and didn't give a crap.
|
| I worked at one other company doing the options game and
| saw the same thing - anecdotally I never saw this at
| companies giving RSUs. As a manager, it would be tough to
| part ways with someone if you know your stripping them of
| a million dollars in equity.
| adamsvystun wrote:
| By "they lose their shares/options if they quit" do you mean
| vesting? Because if you do, then you are not losing shares
| that you have already earned. And founders also have vesting.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Don't EVER work for a company that will take your shares if
| you quit. It's a psychological trap and you are the prey. Any
| startup owner that strips your stake if you leave deserves to
| become the personal target of an obsessive and vindictive IRS
| auditor.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| So you think it is better to work for a startup that
| doesn't promise any shares to begin with?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Generally I think the trade is that you can keep the stock
| if you quit but you don't have stock. You have options that
| expire if you quit, so if you want the stock you must pay a
| lot of money to exercise the options, and you then pay tax
| based on gaining a high value of stock (potentially more
| tax than you could afford) even though its real is quite
| undetermined.
| skrebbel wrote:
| In other words, the company takes your shares if you
| quit.
|
| The solution is to put the option strike deadline at 10
| years in the future which is iirc what YC recommends.
| It's possible for these terms to be employee-friendly.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Most of the time it's not vindictive founders. It's that
| the options cost money to buy. And if the company is
| successful one might have to pay taxes on the stock options
| too.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You can pay for options with some of your options, at
| least in the UK.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Not in US usually.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Presumably they're doing that because they rarely have much to
| offer just in terms of comp and benefits.
| flimflamm wrote:
| " I think it is silly for startups to provide too many perks."
|
| Short term, if they need to attract talent or die they better
| attract talent. People getting pissed off when startup gets big
| is a "future problem".
| jedberg wrote:
| > This is literally a plot point in Christmas Vacation.
|
| Ha! You're totally right. I'd forgotten about that. He acts out
| what everyone wished they could do. :)
| Natsu wrote:
| But he did get a bonus! He got the jelly of the month club,
| the gift that keeps on giving :)
| m463 wrote:
| > Is also why I think it is silly for startups to provide too
| many perks
|
| Should the opposite be true as well? Startup employees going
| home at 5 and fighting unreasonable schedules?
| salamanderman wrote:
| Yes, most definitely
| suifbwish wrote:
| I'm not staying at a job past 5 unless I have a share of the
| company. Screw that. Every startup owner thinks they are
| unique and that's why 90% of them fail. If you are working at
| a new startup the stats says it's going to be time to look
| for a new job anyway in a year so why go any extra miles when
| you don't have stake? Silicon Valley isn't a charity
| kbenson wrote:
| > I'm not staying at a job past 5 unless I have a share of
| the company. Screw that. Every startup owner thinks they
| are unique and that's why 90% of them fail.
|
| Not all companies are the same, and not all companies are
| startups. I'm back working at the same company which was my
| first job in tech. Not for the second time, not the third
| either, but the fourth time now. I was first hired there
| over 22 years ago in tech support. It's always been a good
| place to work, that takes care of it's employees (even if
| it can't pay a huge amount for some positions, there's
| always a lot of recognition that everyone is needed to make
| it work, and everyone is appreciated), and I never left
| because I disliked the company or the work, but because I
| wanted to focus on school, or explore a new opportunity, or
| work with family, etc. Our customers love us, and my fellow
| employees generally like working here, to my knowledge.
|
| They don't expect me or my fellow employees to work past
| our normal hours (except when on call, or it it's a night-
| op for sysadmins, which you can generally just take chunks
| of time off the next day if you like). Yet people do work a
| little later to finish stuff, or check in to make sure
| something they did earlier in the week isn't causing
| problems over the weekend. Because they care about not
| making problems for their fellow employees, and not
| adversely affecting our customers, which have a high
| opinion of us.
|
| All that is a long way of saying that not every company is
| a startup or behaves as one. People in silicon valley are
| somewhat conditioned to look for the startups and make that
| gamble, but there are other choices, and they aren't always
| nearly as bad as people have been led to believe. Many jobs
| that are considered shit work can be rewarding if
| approached the right way. Even IT or programming at a bank
| can be rewarding if you're lucky enough to have management
| that mostly gets out of the way and if you cultivate a
| relationship with the people (the other employees in this
| case) that you're serving, and see how you make their life
| better an easier (and there are always opportunities for
| this, if you pay attention).
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| > even if it can't pay a huge amount for some positions,
| there's always a lot of recognition that everyone is
| needed to make it work, and everyone is appreciated
|
| I can't pay my rent in recognition or appreciation
| though.
| RobertKerans wrote:
| What point are you trying to make? Nowhere in the post
| does it say the job doesn't pay enough to cover rent. If
| you are spending a large amount of life employed, it's
| reasonable to trade off a percentage of the maximum
| possible renumeration you can achieve in exchange for
| making that time as pleasant as possible (eg if you luck
| out and end up working with a group of people you care
| about and who care about you). It's not as if any extra
| money you make can ever buy you that time back
|
| There's nothing wrong at all with just seeking maximum
| income at all times, but that's normally to some end
| (happiness, security etc): if what you're seeking is
| partially served by a given job, then you often aren't
| really gaining much by sacking that job off for one that
| pays more
| Sebb767 wrote:
| But using your money to buy happiness after your ten hour
| work Saturday is not going to be a big success, either.
|
| Yes, it does not replace money, but for some people it is
| worth more to feel happy at work than to receive a bit
| more money.
| aniforprez wrote:
| I mean "some people" is clearly not the person you're
| replying to and I agree with them. I'd much rather get
| paid for the work I do. Unless I have a stake in the
| company, the company is not my family and my work is a
| means to an end
| kbenson wrote:
| > the company is not my family and my work is a means to
| an end
|
| That's fine. I wasn't making some argument that you
| should work for someone that's like family, just that
| there's a whole spectrum between "caring about my company
| stops at shift end" and "my identity is bound up in this
| place I work".
|
| I think most people would agree that money isn't the
| _only_ thing most people care about when choosing a job.
| There 's plenty of people here that would balk at writing
| better missile targeting code, or exploits for a
| government, or spying software marketed to spouses, or
| even writing video games that trigger compulsive
| behavior. For some people, dislike of the work outweighs
| the fact that they can get paid very well doing it.
|
| FWIW, some of my time in the past was spent working for
| my brother at his IT company, which also employed our
| other brother. It's great working with family until it
| isn't, and when it isn't, it _really_ isn 't. I don't
| recommend working for family most the time, and I don't
| think people should treat their coworkers as family. I
| _do_ think people should try to find a job where they
| enjoy the people they are around and are proud of the
| work they do, if they can afford to choose a job like
| that. If you 're going to spend close to half your waking
| hours doing something, I think it's much more fulfilling
| and better for your mental health to care about more than
| the amount you're paid if you can afford to.
| aniforprez wrote:
| Fair enough yeah I do agree with the spectrum between
| "jaded employee" and "enthusiastic achiever"
| Aeolun wrote:
| Adequate money + fun > Lots of money + miserable
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That depends.
|
| If the extra money is enough you may have enough to
| become your own boss after some time spent being
| miserable.
|
| I've been quite miserable whenever I worked as an
| employee (I carefully picked the companies I worked for
| and I don't really have many complaints - I just can't
| stand company politics, power plays and stupid decisions
| from above) but I used my time as an employee to save
| some money and use paternity leave to build a family.
| Also, as a sleepless parent, my brain is not in top shape
| and I'm ok with doing what I need to do to collect a
| paycheck.
|
| Now, those 5 years being miserable will translate to
| buying a property in cash somewhere with nice weather,
| lowering our expenses tremendously (more than half is
| rent right now) and allowing us to live off some almost
| passive revenue stream (think, 1 man micro-saas). We're
| planning to use the free time to build more products and
| edge ourselves against the risk of not being able to
| afford our lifestyle and have to go the employee route
| again.
| [deleted]
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But using your money to buy happiness after your ten
| hour work Saturday is not going to be a big success,
| either.
|
| It depends. If working 10-hour Saturdays for a year
| results in me buying a yacht, you can be sure that actual
| real money bought the happiness that came with my yacht.
|
| It's all a tradeoff and for some things you are unlikely
| to get the big payoff without a risk involved.
| Determining where your personal boundaries are with the
| risk-taking is an individual decision.
|
| TLDR; you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a
| ticket.
| kergonath wrote:
| > It depends. If working 10-hour Saturdays for a year
| results in me buying a yacht, you can be sure that actual
| real money bought the happiness that came with my yacht.
|
| Great. Now you have to pay for maintenance, staff, and
| insurance. So you need to keep making that amount of
| money or you'll lose it. The added stress and expenses
| make it a bit of a poisoned gift.
|
| > TLDR; you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a
| ticket.
|
| Most people who play don't win, either.
| freeflight wrote:
| Then you will be stuck working 10-hour Saturdays to pay
| for the running costs and maintenance of said yacht,
| which still leaves you with barely any time to actually
| enjoy your yacht.
| mijamo wrote:
| If you have a reasonably high income, I think the tradeof
| is actually never worth it, because the marginal
| happiness from money gets so low. Sure I could buy a
| yacht but that's not going to make me much happier.
| Buying a mansion by the sea would not really make me much
| happier either. Sure I might do it if I had the money
| because why not but that would not accept to work on
| weekends for a few years to get it even if it was
| guaranteed.
| kergonath wrote:
| But it makes it easier to stay motivated to keep working.
| Of course, at the end of the day you still need enough to
| pay the bills. You still have a better, healthier, less
| stressful life than if you feel you are being exploited
| or not recognised.
| pc86 wrote:
| > But it makes it easier to stay motivated to keep
| working.
|
| To... keep working... at your underpaid job?
| kergonath wrote:
| There was no mention of the job being underpaid, was
| there?
|
| Then, if your definition of "underpaid" is "lower salary
| than one could get elsewhere", well, we are all
| underpaid. But it matters only if your salary is not
| enough to cover your lifestyle. Bearing that in mind, I'd
| rather be paid less to work in a nice working environment
| than better paid in a stressful professional nightmare.
| I've done my share of nightmares already.
| jachee wrote:
| Then just move somewhere you can afford without "a huge
| amount".
| kbenson wrote:
| That's not meant to imply they _don 't_ pay well. I
| included that as a nod to some people I've known in the
| past that thought they didn't pay well enough, but I also
| know they've been much more competitive for tech
| positions the last decade or so (you have to, being SF
| adjacent). As for tech support (where I think a majority
| of grumbling traditionally was), I'm not sure what that's
| like now. It's also a problem of supply and demand
| though, lots of people are qualified for that.
|
| It doesn't matter how much you like a specific company if
| they don't have a need for your skills or your skills
| don't provide enough to live off of. I'm not saying
| abandon your tech career to work as a janitor at your
| favorite company, just that there are lots of other
| choices for someone in tech other than working at a
| startup. Some pay okay, some pay quite well. Some may not
| pay well at all. What someone thinks is worth it is
| obviously up to them and their circumstances.
| eecc wrote:
| > They don't expect me or my fellow employees to work
| past our normal hours [...]. Yet people do work a little
| later to finish stuff, or check in to make sure something
| they did earlier in the week isn't causing problems over
| the weekend.
|
| You know, managment will become accustomed to that. My
| first scuffle with US "work ethics" came when I spent a
| year in a fairly well-known company and yeah, everyone
| was enthusiastic and passionate and... management
| expected no less than total dedication and zeal from
| their underlings.
|
| How does it go? "The beatings will continue until morale
| improves"
|
| After I left I heard of more grief and drama, burn outs
| and bitter separations.
| kbenson wrote:
| > You know, managment will become accustomed to that.
|
| Eh, I'm sure they can, but I think I wasn't communicating
| that it isn't all people and it isn't all the time. It's
| not the same people always staying late. It's sometimes
| that someone stays to finish that last bit or to stop at
| a good point, but people also take off early routinely to
| counter that, and feel free to run errands in the middle
| of the day as needed. It's less that management is
| getting extra time out of a lot of people than it is that
| people feel flexible with their time, and willing to give
| a little here and take a little there, to make sure other
| people aren't left in the lurch, and neither are they.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I am management and I work at a company that is similar
| to the post you are replying to and I would never get
| used to it. If someone does get used to it they have
| serious value issues (same as if employees take bonuses
| for granted).
| eecc wrote:
| Well, unfortunately it's something inevitable like
| entropic decay.
|
| The guy that hired me was someone like you, but was
| kicked out and replaced with a more ambitious gentleman
| who must have promised to squeeze us more efficiently.
|
| The problem is that if you look beyond the rhetoric and
| the propaganda, employee well-being are only second-order
| to measurable and targetable outputs. There always will
| be someone that promises to achieve objectives in some
| other manner, and given enough time they will get their
| chance and ruin everything
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I think it depends on the cultural understanding of the
| executive. If the values aren't strongly held at the very
| top then what you say is inevitable.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Having unreasonable schedules thrown on you is the sign of a
| bad startup. Working overtime means tomorrow will suffer. It
| might be worth it for that critical moment but tomorrow will
| come and the rest piper must be paid.
| hooande wrote:
| employees should negotiate whatever compensation they think
| is fair for the work they provide. bonuses and perks can be
| part of that, but it's probably better to just ask for a base
| salary that is fair
|
| salaried employees are generally not paid by the hour, and
| it's rare that 40 hours a week (or any maximum) is specified
| in a high compensation contract. if I know that a job won't
| be "9-5", I'll factor that into whatever base salary I ask
| for
| pinkybanana wrote:
| Bonuses are very rarely negotiated, but they are added by
| the management. It is very stupid to assume something about
| bonuses because I've seen it so many times that they can be
| unpredictable. Negotiate your salary and other perks, if
| you get bonuses on top of that be happy but don't except
| that you will get those bonuses in further negotiations.
| [deleted]
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| I don't see why a startup would even offer a bonus or perhaps
| why employees would expect one if they aren't already showing
| a profit..., but I've experienced the latter first hand.
| donw wrote:
| > Startup employees going home at 5 and fighting unreasonable
| schedules?
|
| Absolutely.
|
| First, overwork doesn't lead to more productivity for
| knowledge workers. You get to pay that piper one way or
| another in the end.
|
| Second, back in the day, if your company was acquired for
| multiple billions, you had a pretty good shot at a life-
| changing infusion of cash.
|
| Nowadays, stock options given to employees often end up being
| worth nothing, even on a successful exit.
|
| Why work hard for a slim chance at bupkis?
| zepto wrote:
| > Nowadays, stock options given to employees often end up
| being worth nothing, even on a successful exit.
|
| This seems unlikely.
|
| Exits and IPOs have much greater valuations now than they
| did 'back in the day' so far more early employees end up
| with a significant infusion of cash.
| icedchai wrote:
| You need to consider that a very, very small percentage
| of companies have IPOs.
|
| Many "successful" exits are actually acqui-hires, where a
| larger company acquires a dead or dying company for its
| talent. Often the product from that company is
| immediately shutdown, or at least shelved and no longer
| actively developed.
|
| Other "successful" exits pay some percentage back to the
| recent preferred shareholders. Earlier investors are not
| made whole. Common shareholders generally get nothing.
|
| Founders will still spin these "exits" a positive because
| they didn't have to shut down. The reality is the venture
| was a failure. Employees got jobs... that they could've
| had anyway.
| zepto wrote:
| Sure - I'm just suggesting that it wasn't better in some
| mythical past.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _far more early employees end up with a significant
| infusion of cash_
|
| One word: dilution
| zepto wrote:
| Dilution is not new.
| dhosek wrote:
| In my 30 year career, I have never had a stock option
| worth a single penny. When I have someone talk up options
| as part of a compensation package, I tell them that
| options are nice, but my experience is that they have had
| no value in my past and that's the value that I'll assign
| them in the present and the future.
| zepto wrote:
| I'm with you on this. I just don't think it was better in
| the past.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Companies are also taking FAR longer to exit/IPO than
| they did back in the day and most companies still have a
| 90 day limit on ISOs.
|
| How many super early employees are able to hang on for a
| decade until IPO, or have the cash to exercise their
| options before they leave?
| drfuchs wrote:
| Super-early employee here. Pay for your options your
| first day of employment. They should be inexpensive; and
| your employer should be willing to give you a signing
| bonus to cover it (after all, the money just goes right
| back to them). Then when you leave, you get to keep all
| vested shares with no tax consequence, no need to pony up
| any cash, and no need to sell right away. Worked out
| great for me.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Lots of places have cliffs now, how does that strategy
| account for not being allowed to buy them because you
| haven't worked there long enough?
| drfuchs wrote:
| You pay ahead, and if you don't make the cliff, or if you
| leave after the 1 year cliff but before the full 4 year
| vest, you get the shares you vested, and a refund of the
| cash that didn't end up buying the rest.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > They should be inexpensive; and your employer should be
| willing to give you a signing bonus to cover it (after
| all, the money just goes right back to them).
|
| The first part of this can be false. If you're 1/2 way to
| billions IPO then your options can easily be a year or
| more of salary to exercise.
|
| About the second part if the company gives you that as a
| signing bonus you're still on the hook to the IRS for the
| bonus so now you're 10s of 10000s deep on an illiquid
| position.
| drfuchs wrote:
| If the company is half way to a big IPO, then any new
| hire is no longer "super early," and the advice doesn't
| pertain.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| >Super-early employee here.
|
| The advice giver is super-early, not the target of said
| advice.
|
| But I agree that the advice is best suited for super-
| early people.
| drfuchs wrote:
| The target of the advice specifically asked about the
| super-early case: "How many _super early_ employees
| are... "
| dmarlow wrote:
| This is the way for companies to do right by the first
| few employees (and have a longer than 90 exercise window
| when leaving). I know a super early employee who left and
| had to take a loan to exercise and pay taxes. It's kind
| of sad to think about it.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I currently have a six figure tax bill because of exactly
| this issue. And I can't sell the shares to anyone because
| transfer is forbidden.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > And I can't sell the shares to anyone because transfer
| is forbidden.
|
| IMO this should be illegal. It's your property and they
| should not be allowed to bar it's sale.
| zepto wrote:
| Shares aren't really 'property'. They are a financial /
| legal instrument created by statutes and contracts.
| mattm wrote:
| How does this work when they haven't vested yet?
| alain94040 wrote:
| It's called election 83(b). For it to work, the company
| grants you restricted stock instead of options. The
| restriction is that the company can buy back the stock on
| a vesting schedule, so it's effectively equivalent to
| stock-options. The difference is that you can buy all of
| them on day 1 at fair market value and pay no tax.
|
| It's usually done for early employees who join before
| multiple rounds of funding occur.
| richardxia wrote:
| If your company allows for it, you can early exercise and
| file a 83(b) election so that even as your options vest
| over time, you only pay taxes for the spread between your
| strike price and the fair market value at the date of the
| early exercise, rather than the date of vesting. The
| taxes can be 0 if you early exercise when the fair market
| value _is_ the same as your strike price.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/earlyexercise.asp
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/83b-election.asp
| [deleted]
| papito wrote:
| Equity is just another way to not give you money in _most_
| cases. Unless you are at the founding level, wasting years
| of your life for just a few extra thousand dollars? Imagine
| if you were getting paid $150K instead of $100K + options.
| In three years, do you think your options would yield
| $150,000 in case of a liquidity event, in the BEST case
| scenario?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > First, overwork doesn't lead to more productivity for
| knowledge workers. You get to pay that piper one way or
| another in the end.
|
| I have never seen any research showing net negative
| productivity for any job for under 60 hours a week of work.
| Overwork sucks but if you have evidence that it's bad for
| productivity please cite it.
| mattm wrote:
| https://ericdodds.com/research-and-the-realities-of-time-
| wor...
|
| https://lostgarden.home.blog/2008/09/28/rules-of-
| productivit...
|
| Might be good to start here.
| justAnIdea wrote:
| Sleep. There you go. Nothing else needs to be mentioned.
| You can find dozens upon dozens of studies showing how
| badly the lack of sleep affects concentration,
| creativity, productivity. 50 hours is already insane,
| because it eats 2 hours a day from your free time...
| which has to be taken from somewhere and so you either
| have no social life (which is bad, can lead to divorces
| etc.) or you lack sleep. I can't imagine working 60 hour
| weeks and being productive, in an age when governments
| experiment with 4 day workweeks you can't possibly think
| that working 12 hours a day is even remotely OK, let
| alone productive.
| ipaddr wrote:
| If you typed those words into google instead of asking
| for research you would have found this and millions of
| other documents.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2015/01/26/
| wor...
| barry-cotter wrote:
| From the academic paper linked to in that news article
|
| > the hours at which output is a maximum is at 67 and at
| 64, respectively. In fact, there are a few cases in which
| actual observations on hours of work exceed 67 and 64
| meaning that, in these instances, average observed hours
| were at levels where the estimated marginal product of
| hours is negative!
|
| http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf
|
| The Productivity of Working Hours John Pencavel April
| 2014
|
| I believe this is in line with what I wrote
|
| > I have never seen any research showing net negative
| productivity for any job for under 60 hours a week of
| work.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| The original claim was about knowledge workers.
|
| In repetitive work of course more time is always gonna be
| more productive, with diminishing returns. Until the
| worker/slave mind or body breaks at least.
|
| Mind you, I'm not saying the same doesn't apply for
| knowledge workers. Just that this specific articles
| doesn't provide evidence for knowledge workers.
|
| I _imagine_ that there will be more science being done
| for productivity on knowledge workers once there 's some
| decent way of measuring productivity for knowledge
| workers.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| My original claim was that there's no research showing
| negative productivity for any job for less than 60 hours
| a week of work. If you have anything to the contrary
| please share.
|
| There is no reason to believe knowledge workers are any
| different than manual workers here. Your productivity
| turns negative when you make so many mistakes that you're
| destroying value, not creating it. The article may be
| only weak evidence for knowledge workers but it certainly
| isn't no evidence. Other forms of evidence while not
| rising to the standards of publication certainly don't
| point to 40 hours work a week being optimal for
| productivity of most knowledge workers. Physicians,
| professors at research institutions, top tier lawyers,
| all these people work insane hours.
|
| There is no evidence that working less than 60 hours a
| week is better for productivity, anywhere, just a bunch
| of people wishing really hard.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Your productivity turns negative when you make so many
| mistakes that you're destroying value, not creating it.
|
| One thing to consider about knowledge/skill workers vs
| unskilled labor is that most complex systems are house of
| cards style situations where a single mistake can both
| destroy a network effect of value, but also take several
| orders of magnitude of time and effort to detect and
| rectify the actual issue.
|
| Introducing a subtle, but value destroying, bug into a
| system can do value damage to the N systems it
| interconnects with, and can lead to a near total loss of
| the whole system (eg: drop table). Of course there are
| safeguards that can help avoid this like backups, but
| still the point is a carpenter wouldn't make the whole
| house worthless by a misplaced nail.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| That study is of manual labour. Why do you think it says
| anything about knowledge work?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Because manual workers and knowledge workers get mentally
| weary in the same way and make mistakes in the same way,
| using their brains. Your muscles are perfectly capable of
| going longer. Your attention span, working intelligence
| and executive function are going to get messed up whether
| you're putting 60 hours into putting the right amount of
| powder into every container or checking the Excel
| formulas are all correct.
|
| Manual laborers are people no less than accountants or
| mathematicians.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Ok, there's just so many facts contrary to all normal
| experiences, so I'd like to see some sources. For
| example, I can easily work twelve hours per day while
| painting the facades of my home, without being mentally
| fatigued, only bored. But my body is surely sore after
| climbing up and down stairs all day. On the other hand,
| I'm hardly capable of doing six hours of really focused
| mental work per day.
| dmarlow wrote:
| > Overwork sucks but if you have evidence that it's bad
| for productivity please cite it.
|
| Seriously? Of all things, something so obvious like this
| needs needs citation?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Feel free to name any category of professional where
| working over 40 hours a week isn't quite normal. Doctors,
| lawyers, engineers, professors. It sure looks like people
| who work more than 40 hours a week on average do better
| than those who don't. This is not a claim about what I
| wish was true, but about what actually seems to be true.
|
| The actual research on this is scarce to the point of
| non-existence. It may actually be non-existent for
| knowledge workers, at least published work.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Normal for whom?
|
| Specialist doctors are not staying late on a Friday or
| working the weekend. While a walkin clinic doctor might
| be pushing 60 hours.
|
| An average business owner might spend more than 40 hours
| a week. The most successful business owners hire people
| to work for them while they enjoy their lives.
|
| 8 hours of tired programming gets less done compared to a
| well rested 3 hour work session.
| objclxt wrote:
| > Specialist doctors are not staying late on a Friday or
| working the weekend
|
| This isn't true. Obstetricians work 24 hour shifts as
| standard. Babies don't get born 9-5.
|
| If you come into the ER on a Friday night with severe
| brain damage you're seeing the neurologist immediately.
| If you have a punctured lung you're not waiting for the
| pulmonologist to clock in at 9AM.
|
| Nearly all medical specialties work shift patterns or are
| required to be on call.
| jac241 wrote:
| Maybe plastic surgery, dermatology, rheumatology, and
| psychiatry don't, but other doctors are going to be
| splitting weekends and call among the members of their
| group. For specialties that have fewer doctors nationwide
| like vascular surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and
| neurosurgery you can expect to be on home-call every
| third night and covering the weekend every third weekend.
| You might have to come in to operate every other call,
| and on the weekend you'll have to round on all of your
| group's patients on Saturday and Sunday and operate if
| anything operative comes in.
| dhosek wrote:
| My sister-in-law is an Ob/Gyn. Yes, there's call, but
| that gets compensated for by fewer hours during the M-F
| week. There's a reason why doctors on the golf course on
| Wednesdays is a cliche.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| As best I can tell the specialty with the lowest annual
| hours worked is pediatric emergency medicine at around 52
| hours a week. Vascular surgery average 66 hours a week.
| If you want to check my calculations the below paper has
| annual work hours for different specialties.
|
| Annual Work Hours Across Physician Specialties
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/art
| icl...
|
| Pop article in magazine for physicians
|
| > 2018 Average Physician Hours Worked Per Week Physician
| Type Average Physician Workweek Age 45 years or less
| 54.73 hours Age 46 years or more 49.87 hours Male
| physicians 51.89 hours Female physicians 50.46 hours
| Practice owners 51.96 hours Employed physicians 53.73
| hours Primary care physicians 50.64 hours Physician
| specialists 51.76 hours
|
| https://www.locumleaders.com/physician-news/the-average-
| phys...
| rualca wrote:
| > Feel free to name any category of professional where
| working over 40 hours a week isn't quite normal.
|
| YMMV but the only time I ever experienced the myth that
| "working over 40 hours a week is the norm" was when I
| started working at a US-based company.
|
| And the only reason unpaid overtime was the norm was that
| managers, specially skip-level management, did a piss-
| poor job establishing sane goals based on realistic time-
| frames, and typically threatened to fire people pretty
| much each and every single week if they did not met those
| unrealistic goals.
|
| Strangely enough, everywhere else people managed to do
| their job within the 40hours work week.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Yes, many places are willing to have lower productivity
| in exchange for higher quality of life. The US has a
| different culture and has most economically dominant
| companies.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Don't know that you can really make a meaningful
| comparison given the political and military dominance of
| the United States.
| rualca wrote:
| > The US has a different culture and has most
| economically dominant companies.
|
| The US's post-WW2 dominance doesn't explain why layers of
| lower management from the US stationed abroad insist in
| scheduling 3 weeks worth of work into 1 week in spite of
| being fully aware of how long the task takes, and
| afterwards boast to their leadership that their non-US
| teams outperformed US-based teams by a long shot while
| leaving out that team some non-US developers had to pull
| consecutive all-nighters to pull it off.
| africanboy wrote:
| I think it's the opposite, productivity is the GDP output
| over worked hours, in USA they work a lot more than in
| Europe on average, so their productivity is actually
| similar, not higher.
|
| More hours = more productivity it's a myth
|
| https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > YMMV but the only time I ever experienced the myth that
| "working over 40 hours a week is the norm" was when I
| started working at a US-based company.
|
| Irish lawyers and doctors work well over 40 hours a week
| on average too. I feel pretty confident the same is true
| in finance. Tax professionals in Spain do too. That about
| exhausts my personal knowledge of working hours in Europe
| but I kind of doubt management work less than 40 hours a
| week anywhere, even the civil service.
|
| > and typically threatened to fire people pretty much
| each and every single week if they did not met those
| unrealistic goals.
|
| The secret to greater American productivity and hence
| wealth. People just work more hours.
| wott wrote:
| > YMMV but the only time I ever experienced the myth that
| "working over 40 hours a week is the norm" was when I
| started working at a US-based company.
|
| Even in France, where the base legal hours are only 35
| hours a week, intellectual/upper professions in a full-
| time position work an average of 43 hours a week.
|
| That's the average which includes women, who work 10%
| less (in terms of number of hours worked) than men. If
| you only consider men, you reach an average week of 45
| hours for those professions.
| africanboy wrote:
| that is hours clocked in I guess, there's a similar
| pattern in Italy but they are not working more they are
| staying at the office longer
|
| they chose to so that they can skip other obligations
| (family for example) and as you said it's mostly a men
| thing
|
| I'm in a professional full-time position and nominally I
| should work 40 hours but actually we work less especially
| now that we are working from home
|
| nobody will ask you to do something on a friday afternoon
| "I'll see you on monday"
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Working any number of hours isn't "normal", it's a trade
| off between free time and money (for example, colleagues
| who work part time in order to sleep late) and a
| consequence of social pressure (e.g. competitive
| attitude) and practical constraints (e.g. keeping a shop
| open at constant and useful hours).
|
| In some cases people _want_ to work, to some extent,
| because their job is more pleasant than their free time
| activities, but it cannot be considered "normal".
| emodendroket wrote:
| Medical error is apparently the third-leading cause of
| death in the United States (see
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-
| leading...). It certainly seems plausible that our
| culture of overworking doctors contributes to that
| significantly.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not just doctors. EMTs will regularly work, 24, 36, 48
| hours straight. I know EMTs whose timecards will
| regularly show 350 hours worked a month.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Sure, just playing along with the OP's parameters.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Feel free to name any category of professional where
| working over 40 hours a week isn't quite normal. _
|
| Just because something is considered "normal" does not
| mean that it's actually efficient, or "good".
|
| Certain job sectors, like social jobs, have been
| chronically overworked and underpaid for pretty much as
| long as they existed. Even during non-pandemic times
| burn-out, depression, and suicide rates of people working
| in healthcare have been way above those of the average
| population, particularly the people who actually do all
| the "grunt work" like nurses.
|
| A situation has become much worse during this pandemic,
| yet remains largely ignored.
|
| _> It sure looks like people who work more than 40 hours
| a week on average do better than those who don't._
|
| Tell that to people working in logistics, those people
| delivering you packages the next day. Ask them how many
| hours they work and how "well off" they are financially
| in exchange for giving up large parts of their private
| life.
|
| As a matter of fact, only two out of the 4 professions
| you listed are actually considered overworked to a degree
| of burnout: Physicians and attorneys [0].
|
| The vast majority of the rest of the list is populated by
| professions that are generally not considered well-
| earning even when working massive hours: Nurses, social
| workers, teachers, school principals, police officers,
| public accounting, fast food or retail.
|
| Most of these professions would have a very lasting and
| visible impact if they were gone, it would make society
| overall objectively worse to be missing them, yet somehow
| society at large still refuses to properly recognize that
| trough proper financial compensation even with many hours
| worked at very important tasks.
|
| [0] https://stress.lovetoknow.com/Which_Professionals_are
| _Prone_...
| dhosek wrote:
| Absolutely.
| ant6n wrote:
| > Is also why I think it is silly for startups to provide too
| many perks.
|
| Bonuses are a form of variable compensation, not a perk.
| kbenson wrote:
| > It sets obvious precedent and will upset more folks when you
| stop.
|
| Isn't another solution to make perks not variable, and clearly
| outlined in the contract as part of the employment package? You
| only have to worry about what your employees will do if you
| take away a perk when it's actually something you can consider
| taking away. If you treat it as part of the guaranteed
| compensation, you'll budget for it accordingly just like your
| employees do.
|
| If you want to give bonuses, like the parent said make it a
| flat guaranteed amount, or tie it to a number based on company
| performance that people can see and make plans for (profit
| sharing with published numbers at regular intervals, preferably
| more often than it's paid out).
| taeric wrote:
| This is what I meant by working it into raises. Investing in
| workers is investing in the company.
| Proven wrote:
| they can leave. it's a risky investment
| jachee wrote:
| > make it a flat guaranteed amount
|
| Isn't this functionally equivalent to "pay better base
| salaries"?
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Indeed, but in many countries this is done via a 13th
| payment.
|
| To be honest I've never seen 13th payments offered in dev
| careers, so when I hear some of my Scrum friends demanding
| it I'm quite surprised since I know they make comparable
| amounts to me.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| "13th payment" is the same as getting paid every two
| weeks (quite common), but concentrated onto one moment
| instead of evenly paced.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Is it? I've exclusively seen it refer to the extra
| monthly salary at some point during the year (typically
| around December). I guess it depends on the country.
| selectodude wrote:
| 12*2 is only twenty four checks. The "13th" month brings
| you to twenty six checks, which is the actual number of 2
| week periods in a year.
| thequux wrote:
| I'm a dev in Belgium, and I get both my "13th month" in
| December and double holiday pay in June. In fact, I've
| never seen anybody here who was traditionally employed
| (i.e., not contracting through a zelfstandig) who _didn
| 't_ get those perks.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Op got robbed. Not only did he work way more hours to meet a
| milestone but in the end he got the bonus because it was
| structured in such a way that he did not have sufficient control
| of the outcome. It always surprises me how genius level folks
| can't do simple math to realize that salaried employees get
| compensated on the compensation/hours worked formula and if
| compensation is fixed and hours increase you are getting a
| screwed.
|
| The manufacturing folks got the better deal because they worked
| at fixed hourly rate and got and equally sad bonus
| tveita wrote:
| Right, as I read it they worked themselves to exhaustion and
| relations between teams were breaking down. It sounds
| miserable, and even if the full bonus had been actually
| achievable it wouldn't have worth the risk of burnout.
|
| And presumably this was the intention, tricking people into
| working unreasonably hard for an uncertain reward. I was
| surprised the ending was a note about gratitude and not about
| leaving the company and its abusive management.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah I didn't expect that either. I expected the author to
| realize he got cheated and leave for a better spot. It
| surprised me that he wrote that whole thing and never
| realized how badly he got cheated
| JohnBooty wrote:
| structured in such a way that he did not have
| sufficient control of the outcome
|
| Yeah, I worked at a job once that tried an incentive program
| that failed miserably for this reason.
|
| We were supposed to hit X number of billable hours per month.
| For the first few months I worked my ass off and achieved this.
|
| However I wound up with almost zero bonus. It turned out that
| the actual bonus was based on what the clients actually paid,
| and _when_ they paid it.
|
| We had clients fail to pay, or they paid late, or had been
| given discounts. So most of my hours didn't count, or were
| shifted to subsequent months... which also happened to be
| months were sales wasn't able to provide enough billable hours
| to us for us to reach our bonus.
|
| Total BS.
|
| As you say... and similar to the linked article... I worked my
| butt off for the bonuses, and fulfilled _my_ part of the
| bargain. But was then denied, for reasons 100% out of my
| control.
|
| I quit. Even as a 23 year old that was obviously crap.
| m12k wrote:
| This felt like a bonus episode of Halt and Catch Fire. If you
| haven't seen it, it's the story of a fictional Texan calculator
| company entering the frenzied IBM PC clone market. Period piece,
| skunk works, early hacker culture and surprisingly good character
| development - highly recommended.
| frereubu wrote:
| Dopamine reward signals in the brain are coded by how expected a
| reward is. Why? Because it's a learning signal. You've done
| something that you don't expect a reward for, but get one anyway?
| Hey, dopamine rush, I need to notice that positive outcome and
| learn what happened because it might work again. Conversely, if
| you do something that you're used to eliciting an expected reward
| and nothing happens, negative outcome, dopamine crash - I need to
| learn about this disappointment.
|
| This post is a classic example (although there are other factors,
| such as the slowness of other teams who didn't know about the
| programme) - the people who weren't expecting a bonus were _much_
| happier with a much lower bonus. Add in the crappy way they hid
| the programme, so others didn 't realise what was at stake and it
| was a recipe for disaster.
|
| If a bonus is expected it's not a "bonus", and only sets up
| expectations that lead to huge disappointment when it eventually
| doesn't happen.
| projectileboy wrote:
| The asymmetry between how employees agonize over their behavior
| towards their employers vs how employers think of their employees
| never ceases to amaze me. Never forget that your employer will
| gleefully lay off their most loyal employees if doing so is
| somehow in alignment with some executive's comp. I'm not saying
| you should ever behave unethically, I'm just saying that if
| you're on the field, you should be aware of what game you're
| playing.
| techrat wrote:
| > Never forget that your employer will gleefully lay off their
| most loyal employees if doing so is somehow in alignment with
| some executive's comp.
|
| I'm old enough to remember that people retired from the jobs
| they spent their whole lives working at... and wondered why
| those barely older than me were already struggling to find
| meaningful futures within their careers, nevermind within their
| company.
|
| Reaganomics and the new business method of short term gains at
| all costs destroyed company loyalty and loyalty of the
| employee.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| > Never forget that your employer will gleefully lay off their
| most loyal employees if doing so is somehow in alignment with
| some executive's comp.
|
| I work at a global mega corp run by private equity guy. This is
| definitely not the way our management works. From my manager up
| through our BU head, people are valued as a long term
| investment and are not casually discarded. Yes, if you are not
| productive, you can be dismissed. But valuable people are not
| taken for granted at any level of seniority in my experience.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Sure, but the existence of good management in one company run
| be a PE guy does not necessitate that this will always
| happen.
|
| Additionally, management is an _incredibly_ hard job to do
| well, and most people suck at it, so most management chains
| do incredibly short-sighted things.
| danieltillett wrote:
| Many employers agonise over laying off employees, I would go so
| far as to say the vast majority do. Many employers try to keep
| on employees in situations where they really should be laid
| off, putting their own jobs at risk.
|
| Don't get into the the mindset that employers are all
| psychopaths - not only is it not true, but it will damage your
| career thinking this way.
| gorbachev wrote:
| The company still does it.
|
| This is how employees should treat their relationships with
| their employers as well. Do what's right for you and your
| family, and don't act on some misguided sense of loyalty to
| your employer.
| danieltillett wrote:
| Sometimes the company has no choice as the alternative is
| everyone loses their job.
|
| I don't think employees should think of the company as
| their family, but don't get into the mindset that all
| employers treat their employees as disposable cogs.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. It's frustrating to see all the
| hate against employers. It really depends on the company and
| people you work with, and that can be said for both the
| employee and employer.
| kolbusa wrote:
| I've been on the 'lucky' side of many layoffs. It is always
| good to remember that the responsibility of a corporation is
| to shareholders, not employees.
| danieltillett wrote:
| Yes, but it is not quite so clean. Employers are humans and
| in my experience they care far more about the people they
| know (employees) than abstract people (shareholders).
| kolbusa wrote:
| (This is just my opinion; and I have never been
| personally laid off -- the quotes in my first message are
| more about the fact that I actually might have been
| better off if I was...)
|
| Your manager is likely to care (not always in my
| observations), but there can be various reasons for that
| (affected deliverables (compensation); bad experience of
| delivering the news, etc.). His manager may care. Next
| level manager is much less likely to care, and so on. And
| the decisions are usually made on the level where I doubt
| people care much. People on that level may not like that
| they have to lay off people and have some sympathy for
| those affected, but they will lay them off as soon as
| they think it is necessary for one reason or another.
| It's their job to keep _the company_ going, not to keep
| _you_ employed.
| trias wrote:
| I've made the opposite experience (in germany). No company will
| ever fire anyone. If they really need to, they give you a
| generous leaving package. The only exception is if the company
| going bankrupt, in which case the state might help (Kurzarbeit
| or bail out).
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Yes I'm in total agreement with this. I see many people here
| who get absurdly passionate about programming that they forget
| a lot that management is not as much. The business world is
| brutal so you gotta hedge the odds in your favor. Busting my
| ass for the potential to make a significant bonus isnt worth
| it. As is going above and beyond. Just game the system and wait
| for management to figure it out. And if your managers don't
| monitor you, exploit the hell out of that. This is why I
| consider the Gervais Principal one of the greatest reads of
| this modern world for office laborers.
| projectileboy wrote:
| The Gervais Principle changed my life. Not all for good, but
| it did open my eyes wider, and it also helped explain some
| things that I couldn't understand beforehand. (For example: I
| never understood why I found LinkedIn to be so depressing,
| until I saw that it was dominated by what Rao calls "the
| clueless" engaging in what he terms "posturetalk". Many, many
| useful mental models in that book.)
| tim333 wrote:
| I reminds me of the Frans de Waal monkey experiment where they
| rewarded them unequally and the under rewarded monkey gets
| annoyed. I actually did an edit of the video as I thought it was
| funny / interesting https://youtu.be/-dMoK48QGL8 44 seconds to
| get to the funny bit
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I have literally never received a bonus that was present on an
| offer. Not that I'm a terrible employee they have invariably been
| cancelled or otherwise unreachably cancelled before I received a
| penny. Sometimes it was a full cancellation, sometimes it was a
| change in the language that would tie bonuses to unreachable
| revenue goals (very difficult needle to move as an engineer, at
| least in the 1yr time scale).
|
| I have basically come to see any kind of potential money as never
| going to see it money.
| throwbigdata wrote:
| Wow. I've seen almost the exact opposite. In my 30 year career
| almost all bonuses were met or exceeded and paid.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I knew a guy who put his two weeks notice in just before the
| annual Christmas bonus came out. So they stiffed him on the
| bonus.
|
| They ended up paying for that in spades.
|
| This was in the planning field and he was moving from a private
| consulting firm to a government job. Government is where the real
| power is for this industry.
|
| If they were one minute late "Sorry, we are closed/you missed the
| deadline." If they had any errors in their paperwork "Sorry,
| reapply after you fix this."
|
| Etc. Ad nauseam.
|
| By. The. Book. Every step of the way. Zero wiggle room.
|
| It had to have cost them more than the bonus they denied him.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is a moral conflict if I ever saw one. Assuming that the
| guy was a pedant only against his former company and not
| everyone around.
|
| On one hand, a sleazy company gets karma-whipped.
|
| On the other hand, the overall harm from a public authority
| enforcing the law unevenly because of a personal grudge is not
| negligible either. Junior people working with him will
| normalize this behavior and repeat it.
|
| Neutral public institutions are a great achievement that helps
| the entire society grow.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Me going on at length about this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850935
|
| I find it tiresome that so many people think they can know
| for certain what was going on based on a third-hand retelling
| after the fact and are so certain he was up to no good.
|
| I am reminded of the importance of the "innocent until proven
| guilty" standard. Once people get it in their head that,
| clearly, he's guilty of something, all rational assessment
| seems to be readily abandoned in the name of a zeal for
| supposed righteousness and justice.
|
| The term _witch hunt_ comes to mind.
| pm90 wrote:
| Public institutions will never be neutral as long as we have
| people staffing them and interacting with other people. It's
| inevitable that these power dynamics would form: it's
| heartening though that it can only be at the edges. That's a
| very good sign.
| radiator wrote:
| Cool story and I see absolutely no problem with his behaviour.
| lixtra wrote:
| > They ended up paying for that in spades.
|
| Assuming that guy behaved differently with other companies,
| shouldn't we call it corruption?
|
| Edit:
|
| > This was in the planning field and he was moving from a
| private consulting firm to a _government job_.
|
| Some downvoters want explain? Seriously HN, you want this kind
| of government workers?
|
| < I'm not condoning what he did.
|
| I didn't assume so. It was an interesting story to share.
| shard972 wrote:
| Maybe we need more of this kind of corruption then
| windthrown wrote:
| Abusing the power of their job to retaliate against specific
| parties? Yes it sounds like pretty clear-cut corruption.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| He may have only been engaging in petty schadenfreude.
| Given that they stiffed him, they may have been chronically
| _a day late and a dollar short_ and counting on people to
| make an exception "just this once" (every single time)
| because of some sob story or other.
|
| Telling them "no" instead of falling for their con job
| wouldn't be corruption.
|
| I'm not condoning corruption. But I do certainly find the
| story funny.
| watwut wrote:
| Being strict and enforcing rules with one company while
| being tolerant and forgiving with others is how real
| world corruption often works. And for that matter, how
| bias in general works. Or nepotism.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Absolutely. Please lead me not into temptation with
| regards to giving me yet one more reason to bitch about
| how much it sucks to be me with regards to sexism on HN.
|
| But in this case real corruption would be a former
| employee of theirs regularly bending the rules for them.
| If no one else was chronically _a day late and dollar
| short_ and expecting accommodation and understanding for
| it, telling them "no" and expecting them to actually
| comply with the rules is called _professional ethics_ not
| _corruption._
|
| Lots of shitty people get away with their shit by
| counting on other people being "nice" and _honorable_ no
| matter how badly they themselves behave. That 's actual
| corruption and such people often want to argue that not
| going along with their garbage is somehow you doing
| something wrong when, in fact, going along with their
| expectation of special dispensation in the name of
| "niceness" is the bad thing.
|
| Giggling at their crap biting them in the ass because
| someone is actually enforcing the rules for once instead
| of rewarding their manipulative BS is not corruption.
| It's schadenfreude.
|
| People who are used to doing the right thing even when it
| pains them very much are not bad people for getting a
| small thrill out of karma being a bitch to chronic
| assholes who think the rules don't apply to them.
|
| I don't know if this was an instance of corruption or
| not. Neither do you. The devil is in the details and
| neither of us knows all of the details.
|
| But, no, "clearly and obviously corruption" is not true.
| There are other possible explanations.
|
| Having dealt with asshole customers who wanted the moon
| when the rules explicitly forbade that, I can well
| imagine this was only schadenfreude and he didn't know
| how to clearly explain that when he told the anecdote
| years after the fact to a group of friends.
|
| Do you really think "good government" means someone
| staying late and doing work off the clock because their
| jackass former employer is showing up _again_ just as the
| place is being locked up? If they weren 't routinely a
| minute too late, this wouldn't have cost them anything on
| the order of the amount of money they screwed him out of.
|
| I don't think such accommodation would constitute good
| government. The fact that being held to the rules was a
| constant source of friction that cost them royally
| implicitly suggests they didn't play by the rules. It
| implicitly suggests they routinely and regularly were
| late and their paperwork was botched and they expected to
| simply get away with it.
|
| Being screwed by them wrt the bonus money may have
| protected him from stupidly "being nice" to them and
| thereby ending up on legal charges for corruption. That
| is often a slippery slope where "just this once because
| we are friends" becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound"
| and you don't know how to back out of it without being
| burned.
| marktangotango wrote:
| I'm surprised at the pollyanna-ish dismay on display here
| that this type of behavior is NOT common place. It's
| literally the way the world works, and has worked
| forever. Every middling manager, bureaucrat, or
| supervisor over anyone has always lorded it over others
| and used their influence to build little fiefdoms. Hell I
| deal with three of them in my job everyday. I personally
| think the reaction here, to your story, is a
| manifestation of techs exaltation of "meritocracy" and a
| rejection of the notion that, their ability, skills,
| technical knowledge maybe don't really matter that much
| in the end. Horrifying thought to many technologist. Just
| my opinion.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _I personally think the reaction here, to your story, is
| a manifestation of techs exaltation of "meritocracy" and
| a rejection of the notion that, their ability, skills,
| technical knowledge maybe don't really matter that much
| in the end. Horrifying thought to many technologist._
|
| I can imagine that being a factor in some of the
| reactions here. It would fit with things I've read wrt
| sometimes very competent people have trouble keeping a
| job because they are basically assholes and no one wants
| to work with them and no one can seem to get them the
| memo.
|
| Some people want to believe that like _House_ , as long
| as they are simply brilliant, people will put up with
| their crap.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| It is corruption.
| abel_ wrote:
| While I see the value in gratitude as described by the author,
| the lesson learned still rings with a certain amount of
| complacence with the situation at hand. Had there been more
| transparency in the bonus program, there's a chance it would have
| been reformulated as to not fuel internal wars and allow for the
| long term success of the company. While it's important to always
| exercise gratitude, it's also important to demand good incentive
| structures.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| All this bonus talk. Some you wanna try working for an NGO...
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The guilt I felt after that, and shame even for my behavior,
| well it was real."
|
| Why? If they knew about the program and potential, then they
| might have felt the same way. They games management plays are the
| real issue.
|
| Edit: Why downvote? The article even says the way the program
| worked caused issues.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Guilt for not feeling gratitude but instead feeling entitled.
|
| Feelings of entitlement often lead to anger and sadness.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I get that in other contexts. In this case I would feel bad
| for the person with the lower bonus because they were never
| made aware of the program. If management let them know, then
| they might have sped up and earned more. Isn't that the point
| of the bonus program - to reward performance so that it will
| provide an incentive for it?
|
| I've seen the opposite too. Managers have violated policies
| to my detriment, sometimes benefiting other team members. I
| don't resent the other team members - in the cases I've
| experienced, they deserved the highest rating/bonus. I have
| also recieved that level of rating/bonus from those same
| managers. I don't feel guilty about it as I had no power over
| the decision. I might feel pissed off about it, similar to
| when it has happened to me. I don't respect those managers
| though, and I think it will end up causing issues in my
| performance and the company as a whole.
| davidgl wrote:
| It's not just humans - https://youtu.be/n_9RjDqJ7Zs
| [deleted]
| neilv wrote:
| The Alpha boxes were nice.
|
| A grad school officemate had previously worked at Thinking
| Machines, but, to do the number-crunching for his doctoral
| dissertation, he instead had a slightly-old Alpha
| workstation/server under his desk.
|
| He was big on efficiency (e.g., out of the lab by 5pm, but
| intensely focused while there), and I'm sure that him coding his
| models in C for a 64-bit dedicated Alpha box was more productive
| than getting supercomputer time.
| [deleted]
| nomy99 wrote:
| As notorious B.I.G put it, Mo Money Mo Problems
| xenihn wrote:
| I enjoyed reading that far more than I expected to. Thanks to the
| author!
|
| I'm now realizing that, yes, I do feel completely entitled to my
| FAANG bonus. But...the recruiters for all of the companies (FAANG
| and non-FAANG) involved in my last interview loop all factored
| target bonuses into total compensation during negotiations. This
| was 2 months into the pandemic, too, when things were somewhat
| gloomy. So how am I not supposed to feel entitled to it?
|
| I don't see it any differently from my salary or RSUs in terms of
| deserving it. The only thing I see different is the potential to
| _exceed_ the target, and get more than 100% of the original
| target %.
| ianai wrote:
| These seem to be mostly accounts of bonuses for software
| developers or other, typically salary positions.
|
| (As an aside - I wonder whether this more correctly reflects
| companies making people "salary" as a means to pay them less
| overall for working long hours. I've seen "salary" be given to
| people making less than 33k usd/year, pre-minimum wage increases.
| Might be a rarity on HN.)
|
| My takeaway has been that these incentive schedules aren't
| properly implemented. Also, people get very toxic if they see
| others making more or less pay than themselves. Yearly bonuses
| based on global factors are nice, but probably are too far from
| what an individual adds to the business to properly impact their
| work effort. You want the worker doing marginal thinking with
| marginal incentives - i.e. the classic paying car salespeople a
| commission on each sale. This is clearly a more difficult
| calculation for the IT field.
|
| One idea - pay the bonus per pay period. This addresses people
| sticking around for a once per year bonus and then quitting. It
| could be based on the last year's (or quarter's - depending on
| the business) figures, for instance. Maybe have it be known the
| full, remaining bonus will be paid out if the person leaves on
| _great_ terms during the year. i.e. Absolutely no one in your
| department - not even the custodian staff - has a negative thing
| to say about your performance.
|
| Another - rethink paying people salary. Salaried employees can be
| pushed to work OT. But if people can make 1.5x pay for doing
| demonstrably important work (say, presenting it during the next
| team meeting) then they'll naturally work those additional hours.
| It's up to the business to figure out the hourly pay rate
| correctly, of course. Also, pushing people to work OT as a
| standard practice generates lots of toxic behavior - another
| reason to not use that as a standard practice.
|
| Another - pick a metric that definitively impacts your business
| and is easily measured and high visibility. Use that to determine
| the next pay period's bonus. i.e. "Everyone in the IT department
| gets a $300 bonus if system uptime is greater than 98% for the
| previous two weeks. The bonus decreases by 1% for every percent
| decrease in uptime from 98% over the preceding two weeks. i.e.
| you're getting (100%-18%) of the 300$ if the uptime was more like
| 80% the last two weeks.
| sneak wrote:
| This is really making me want to buy an Alpha on ebay.
|
| Is there an OS that has ever had a better name than "Digital
| Unix"?
| the_only_law wrote:
| The minicomputers can get pretty expensive iirc. I haven't
| looked in a while, but you may be paying a couple grand for
| one. For some reason, AS/400s are the same.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| Probably won't be as exciting as you remember.
|
| We maintained some Wildfire systems on Tru64, which somehow
| took all the possible coolness of the "Digital Unix" name and
| inverted it into bizarro horror, into the late 00s, and it was
| mostly just depressing seeing what happened versus what could
| have been. Icing on the foot-gun cake was the IA-64 replacement
| ended up being EOLed before it was even delivered. That one
| came in on HPUX, which seemed to have been more often
| pronounced PHUX.
| macksd wrote:
| I thought Inferno sounded pretty cool. I do love a good pun,
| and it invokes memories of the original Doom.
| spullara wrote:
| We got early access to them at WPI back in '91 or so. They were
| amazing for the time.
| icedchai wrote:
| I bought a low end Alpha (DS10L) off of ebay about 2 years ago.
| I turn it on to play around with VMS occasionally. Alphas (and
| DEC, in general) were amazing.
| heuroci wrote:
| I bought some 10+ years ago, and they are in storage, and I am
| also feeling that urge to go dust them off and power them up.
| If memory serves, I think I ran netbsd on them.
| dleslie wrote:
| OS/2 Warp
|
| Amiga Workbench
|
| NeXTStep
|
| Plan9
| jedberg wrote:
| OS/2 Warp is my favorite OS name, and when it came out, was
| pretty mind blowing in how it worked compared to everything
| else.
| ccortes wrote:
| Oh man I hate bonuses so much. At my last job we had a monthly
| bonus that made up to 33% of our total income. These were based
| on certain KPIs we had to achieve. The thing is, everyone can
| cheat the KPIs. Even more so if such a big part of your income
| relies on it.
|
| I also felt they killed creativity and intellectual freedom
| completely. You were not able anymore to work on something else
| that you'd consider more important because the targets for the
| bonus were set. I found some fraudulent users who were using our
| product but instead of doing something about it I decided to just
| keep in line with what was expected from me after talking about
| it and having discussions about it with my manager.
|
| So instead of acting on the values and mission of the company,
| the culture was to chase the money, and you could see it and feel
| it everywhere.
|
| Worth noticing, at the beginning there were no bonuses but
| management wanted us to have some 'skin on the game'. I think
| they blew it by making it such a big percentage.
| beardbandit wrote:
| I've had my variable annual bonus converted into a permanent
| salary increase.
|
| I will say I like this a lot more.
| pmkiwi wrote:
| I went through the same thing in my previous work (consulting
| firm). Management set up monthly targets related to billing
| enough hours to the clients (something like 85% in average in
| our team of 5).
|
| Most of the time we met the criteria even if not everyone was
| making the target. Usually, 4 were 100% billable while 1 was
| the anchor :).
|
| One month, I spent a fair amount of time of documenting
| something because it was the 3rd time that the same errors were
| showing up so I told to my manager to decrease the target for
| that month. It was agreed and understood by everyone that the
| target could be lowered when required (leave, training, etc
| ...). Except that my manager refused to lower the target so I
| spent 3 months talking to CEO/CFO to get this bonus paid (more
| for my colleagues than for me) but I never managed to convince
| them. So the same feeling as you described kicked in in the
| team. People started to work only billable hours, neglecting
| everything else to make sure we met the target all the time.
|
| I obviously left this company after a serious discussion with
| my manager. I still remember sending an ultimate email asking
| for the bonus on my last Friday at 4pm.
|
| So yes, give a decent comp and say that bonuses might be paid
| if the company is performing well. If they are ever paid, I
| will take my family for a nice dinner and buy some books with
| them. Else than fine, my mortgage is not in danger!
| foobazzy wrote:
| At a certain multinational company that Anon(a close friend) is
| currently employed at had this way of distributing bonuses when
| the pandemic hit.
|
| Context: the company is chasing a $100mn y-o-y growth at this
| point.
|
| - All employees in the US offices get a hefty bonus for the
| profits they contributed to
|
| - All employees in the India office were to not receive
| bonuses/increments because we wanted to cut costs (not to forget,
| Indian salaries are 20% of their US counterparts)
|
| - All employees in the US were to get reimbursements for
| stylish/modern/gaming chair while working from home($300 a piece)
|
| - All employees in India had to get their $40 chair approved from
| the manager (request denied in most cases, "unnecessarily too
| costly", he said)
|
| - No more bonuses for India offices for the next year or so
| because we spent all the money on the US employees and the
| managers bonuses
|
| - Indian new hires are getting offered the salary that someone
| with 5 years exp is already working at in the company
|
| <puts on tin-foil hat>: distribution of bonus/increments seem to
| have an upper limit. the less you distribute as a manager = the
| more you have for yourself and your favorite juniors
|
| <anecdote>: ^^ one of the favorites from above actually quit the
| next day after getting the bonus. it's common to put in your
| papers right after the increment letter.
|
| edit: formatting
| chakerb wrote:
| I can relate to each one of those points. It's awful to feel
| treated unequally even though you're doing the same work.
| Before this trend of remote work, usually the solution was to
| just migrate to a developed country.
| EdwinLarkin wrote:
| That's completely normal and does not only apply to India but
| all other offshore centers like Eastern Europe or the
| Philippines.
|
| You guys are a cost centre.
| dang wrote:
| > You guys are a cost centre
|
| In most contexts this would be more open to interpretation,
| but since (a) I just asked you to stop posting nationalistic
| putdowns (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26803989,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26809750), and (b)
| you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and
| egregiously, I've banned this account. Please don't create
| accounts to break HN's rules with.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| jrockway wrote:
| > I remember being in shouting matches with our signal integrity
| team about among other things, how many capacitors we needed.
|
| I think the place where big companies go wrong is by having teams
| that are too specialized. If you're the Signal Integrity team,
| the only thing you care about is signal integrity. You should
| just say no to anything but the most conservative arrangement
| possible; you're responsible for Signal Integrity, not profit or
| time to market! Block the project until the signal integrity is
| as good as it can be, that's your one and only job.
|
| The even bigger problem is that the existence of the signal
| integrity team means that signal integrity experts aren't
| embedded on the product team. The product team can happily say
| "they're handling that", and cut whatever corners are necessary
| to get their $25,000 bonus, not caring at all about the tickets
| the Customer Service Team will have to handle as a result of poor
| signal integrity, the weird bugs the Software Engineering Team
| will have to work around, and the terrible reviews caused by a
| computer that randomly flips bits in memory.
|
| Engineering is a discipline about balance, and I think the
| balance has to be done inside the team. You need to make a
| conscious decision to trade off a lower BOM cost for more
| customer service tickets, and the team needs to own that decision
| and plan for the future under the constraints of that decision.
| (Instead of sending out an order for capacitors, send out a req
| for more customer service.) If there is someone in the "out
| group" that you can pass your concerns off to (i.e. that makes
| the cost of your balance decision cost 0 for you), then you'll
| never make the right balance for the product and company as a
| whole. You'll just maximize for your own gain. From there, you
| ship your org chart, the company becomes entirely about politics,
| and you're out of business... just like DEC apparently.
|
| (I guess I also want to comment on the article as a whole --
| being bitter about too small a bonus. Something similar happened
| to me and I sure was bitter about it. I actually quit over it. It
| all sounds very rational to me, knowing how humans work, and I
| can't believe management would do something so stupid. It's the
| kind of thing that kills your company, and yup! it killed them!
| If there is one constant in the field of engineering, it's that
| we forget the mistakes of the past much too quickly. Except
| Therac-25, everyone remembers that one, but integer overflows are
| still killing people to this day. Sigh!)
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| That's true but what can you do about it? It's a direct
| consequence of building large/complex products. To me it seems
| that you're just advocating for only building small/simple
| products.
|
| Typically you have a chief engineering team that is in charge
| to strike that balance, and drive the compromises with all the
| specialists.
| musingsole wrote:
| Have Special Teams & Product Teams.
|
| Special Teams don't get ownership of anything, can't veto
| anything. They're there to answer any and all questions from
| the product team and to set the stage for how the product
| team may solve a challenge (i.e. present a menu of relevant
| approaches with expert commentary on the applicability to the
| problem, but implementation is the product team's job).
|
| This limbo position helps tamp down on the prestige of a
| Special Team relative to Product while still attempting to
| harness expert value.
| gedy wrote:
| Issue with this approach at some companies though is when
| Special X Team is measured by the quality of X, but has
| little authority over Product teams, who have no incentive
| to do X well.
| musingsole wrote:
| > Special X Team is measured by the quality of X
|
| So don't measure the special X team by the quality of X,
| but the quality of service they provide to the product
| team in pursuit of X.
| marcinzm wrote:
| So how do you measure the value and contribution of the
| product and special teams including compared to each other.
| Somehow promotions, head count, budget and so on needs to
| allocated. Without ownership or the ability to veto it's
| not fair to measure the Special Teams on any product
| related metrics. But if you can't measure them on product
| related metrics then what do you measure them on? Feedback
| by other teams which will result in endless games of
| politics?
| musingsole wrote:
| The existential political threat has to be reined in as
| the check on the Special Team. No one wants to be under
| Damocles' sword, but if you want power, it's the way it
| has to be.
|
| Give them a veto if you want, but it paints a target on
| their back. No veto and only able to use soft influence
| is probably a mercy to the position.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Maybe hire more generalists, make it easier for people to
| move around the company, have a 2D team structure (i.e. maybe
| you have a signal integrity team and a PCB layout team or
| whatever, but then you would also have a subset of each
| working together on the CPU Card team). There's probably a
| name for that.
| tomrod wrote:
| Matrix organization.
|
| Great in theory, extra hours if you're a wrench turner.
| vehementi wrote:
| You could have replaced SI with Security and described my
| current situation perfectly
| kvz wrote:
| Couldn't you make the objective of the team: highest
| reliability for lowest cost?
| erikprotagonist wrote:
| Around the same timeframe as the Op (late 1990s) I worked for a
| no longer existing IT company where management some time before I
| started had the brilliant idea to pay sales bonuses based on
| forecasted sales. If you didn't make the sales you had to pay
| back the bonus on your next monthly pay.
|
| Needless to say this really put the pressure on sales to get the
| contract signed - feasibility or profit margin be damned.
| Turnover in sales was really big as well, but then the company
| went from more than 300 staff to about 60 in the 2.5 years I
| worked there.
|
| The company also had a matrix organization, where everyone in
| middle management had two bosses, one national, and one
| international. At one point my then boss got a new title and
| responsibilities on a Monday, for it to be changed to something
| else on the following Wednesday.
|
| At least working there was quite educational.
| gnzoidberg wrote:
| That was fun. Write more, Mad Ned!
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Call me a cynic, but annual expected-not-guaranteed bonuses are
| mostly just retention tools right? You get paid a bonus and
| suddenly you're much happier and less inclined to change jobs. If
| that inclination comes back later then you have to weigh the loss
| of the proportion of your bonus earned so far in the downsides of
| leaving, since the bonus is never paid in part if you leave
| during the year.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| That's how I see them as well. It makes people who are unhappy
| with jobs "just stay until the next bonus". They might quit
| just after getting it, but if they hesitate and don't do it on
| the spot, soon they'll be already in another bonus cycle, and
| again it makes more sense to wait till they get it etc. The
| effect is strongest of course if the bonus is substantial.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I've been in software since the 90s. I feel as bad about things
| as I've ever felt, by a wide margin.
| supernovae wrote:
| I guess I have no problems with the bonus structure where I work.
| The base salary is so strong, that equity and bonus is exactly
| that - ownership and reward for strong quarters.
|
| With that said, I have been under valued and depended on bonuses
| before, but i guess i don't let that shape my current positive
| experience. I make sure I _only_ budget for my salary and nothing
| else.
|
| As others have said, the extras are funny money until they're
| cash and never forget, taxes on bonuses SUCK
| xref wrote:
| Everyone is focusing on the bonus part of the story but man, I
| really enjoyed the computing history about working inside DEC in
| those days.
|
| Anyone got other good computing history books/stories to
| recommend? I really enjoyed Masters of Doom and Hard Drive (about
| old-testament Gates, not new-dove Gates)
| e-_pusher wrote:
| The Soul of a New Machine is awesome.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Folklore.org, filfre.net
| otachack wrote:
| On The Metal podcast is amazing as well!
| mattm wrote:
| I just recently finished "The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider
| and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal" It was really
| well researched and written.
| bbarn wrote:
| I really don't think the message of this article matches the
| state of the industry today. Annual bonuses in many companies -
| especially in the tech industry - are practically considered part
| of your compensation, and often times base salaries are adjusted
| to account for them (I've seen as much as 25% of comp laid out in
| "bonus").
|
| It's a flat out awful structure, as people will legitimately wait
| until they get that annual bonus to quit, which can mean unhappy
| people staying in a job they don't want, making others around
| them unhappy as well.
| ianai wrote:
| The answer there is to pay out per pay period or something more
| frequent but sensible for the business case.
| e-_pusher wrote:
| This is what Amazon does. The bonus is distributed over every
| paycheck.
| temporallobe wrote:
| I will always take a high salary over any kind of bonus
| structure/program. I worked for a big aerospace company and
| earned what I considered to be a pretty mediocre salary but we
| had a profit sharing program that was about 4% of your annual
| salary, plus we frequently received spot awards and a decent
| holiday bonus (one year I got a bonus that was worth
| approximately 2 paychecks). It was nice but it always felt
| inconsistent and unpredictable, and then one year they basically
| stopped all of these programs and also restructured our benefits
| programs such that they were contributing far less to our health
| insurance premiums AND they stopped paying into our pension fund
| (yes, we had a pension!). At that point I calculated my total
| compensation was actually significantly less than it had been in
| years past and there was no reason for me to stay. I found
| another job with a 50% bump in pay and since then I have only
| accepted positions where I could count on a consistently high
| salary or rate (if I do a 1099 kind of project).
| elric wrote:
| The general sentiment in this thread seems to be that bonuses are
| bad for morale in the long term, because people start to feel
| entitled to them. It's interesting to look at this from the side
| of the employer for a second.
|
| You want to do right by your people (you know, if you're not a
| complete arsehole). Hopefully you pay them well. But revenue
| isn't always easy to predict, and once you give someone a raise,
| you can't take it away again (at least not easily). So you can't
| pay people excessive amounts all of the time, because the money
| might not be there all of the time. Of course the effect of a
| single large bonus (annually or one-off) is much greater than
| 1/12th of that same amount tacked on every month. On top of that,
| some bonus plans can have tax benefits (though I suspect this
| widely differs between countries etc). Bonuses seem like a pretty
| good way of paying people what you'd like to pay them, but
| without the risk of it bankrupting you.
|
| I'm a little bit torn when it comes to bonus amounts, however.
| Some companies give everyone the same bonus. Or perhaps everyone
| within the same department or job category. This is nice from a
| "we're all in the same boat"-perspective. But it ignores the
| reality that some employees do much more valuable work than
| others (I'm sure there's a fancy pareto-like name for that, but I
| don't remember it). On the other hand, it might encourage some
| employees to "go above and beyond" in a way that's unhealthy.
| grumple wrote:
| There's a real mischaracterization / straw man mentioned in some
| of the comments here about set bonuses, which is different from
| the special bonus structure in the OP.
|
| A set bonus is part of your employment compensation. It's not a
| "nice to have". If the company hits its goals and you perform
| well, you are supposed to get it. When this is broken, that's a
| problem, and it indicates a deception by the company.
|
| Yes, if you want you could just increase all salaries by that
| much and not worry about the bonuses. The reason they come in a
| bonus structure is two-fold: so the company can not pay it out if
| they don't hit goals; because management has the idea that it
| will make people work harder. Both of these reasons serve the
| company alone, don't act like this is a case of employees feeling
| entitled.
| whack wrote:
| I see a lot of comments bemoaning performance-based bonuses, but
| consider the following:
|
| > _I remember being in shouting matches with our signal integrity
| team about among other things, how many capacitors we needed.
| These tiny devices evened out the power of the system, but they
| wanted far too many to be added to allow the design cheap and
| easy to build_
|
| > _Meanwhile I was waking up at 4AM on most days, in full-stress-
| insomnia. Sometimes I would just give up on sleep and go into
| work at that early hour, and while there, sometimes run into
| other stressed-out engineers who also could not sleep. I had
| shaved as much time as I could possibly get off the schedule, and
| a little cost. A $25K bonus was out of the question at this
| point, but $10K or more, still in the running._
|
| > _Because manufacturing, as discussed, was not on the secret
| bonus program, did not even know it existed, and had very little
| incentive to speed up the rework. As far as they were concerned
| the project was slightly ahead of schedule, so why rush the job
| and make another mistake? More time ticked by. They actually did
| make another mistake anyway, and mounted incorrect rams a second
| time, which I remember being really mad about._
|
| > _Meanwhile, our sister project had managed to minimize their
| cost target and beat the target schedule of their project, such
| that each member of that team received the full $25,000._
|
| Sounds to me like the bonus program was working exactly as
| intended. OP got into shouting matches with other stakeholders to
| trim overly cautious expenses. He and his teammates voluntarily
| worked far outside regular working hours. Both him and his sister
| team succeeded in delivering a successful project ahead of time,
| with lower costs, and were ultimately tripped up only by the
| incompetence of other teams that had minimal bonus incentives.
|
| I've noticed a huge difference between orgs where people have
| skin in the game, and orgs where people don't. People with skin
| in the game, have a real fire under their ass. It's inspiring to
| see how much they are able to get done, and how quickly. At orgs
| where people don't have skin in the game, I spend half my time
| sitting in meetings, discussing what doc we should write next,
| what format we should use for the doc, and when to schedule the
| next meeting to review that doc. It's as though people are more
| interesting in impressing one another and putting in facetime,
| rather than actually getting stuff done. In fact, I've noticed
| that people often add a net-negative value to many projects -
| their urge to add their 2 cents and make their impact felt,
| results in goalposts getting constantly shifted and launches
| getting continually delayed.
|
| Is it possible for a badly designed bonus program to produce
| disastrously bad results? Definitely. But there has to be a
| better way to give people more skin in the game, when it comes to
| doing their job as effectively as possible.
| jmchuster wrote:
| I don't know if I would describe the solution as just skin in
| the game. I don't dispute that it might lead to results (though
| some studies might argue otherwise
| https://novarete.com/motivate-employees-monetary-
| incentives-...). At least anecdotally, the companies I worked
| that most closely tied comp to bonuses or had the most stock,
| were not the ones that had the hardest-working individuals. I
| tend to believe that it's more the culture of the company, and
| also how closely your results tie to direct impact to the
| company. So, small companies, here often being startups, end up
| being ones where you see such impact, and also happen to be
| ones where you get stock and ownership.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Your "skin in the game" should not be arbitrarily tied to a
| metric/achievement that is not under your control or else
| working to the same objectives. If manufacturing have no
| motivation to go faster, I have no control over their speed,
| and I know they'll just take as long as the schedule allows?
| then screw it, getting it to them early won't help me get my
| bonus. Now, if manufacturing was also getting a bonus dependent
| on an early shop date, you're in it together. Or if
| manufacturing reports to me, I can tell them what to
| prioritize.
| heyoni wrote:
| It sucks but you can't just get bonuses for trying hard,
| especially when your company is on the verge of collapse or
| getting bought up for scraps. It's not always fair but in
| this case, the OP was still getting a good salary. They
| decided to take a risk together with their employer and it
| didn't pan out as well as they'd have liked.
|
| Happens all the time.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| If the goal is to increase the productivity of the
| employees, then what you want is for the employees to be
| trying harder. To do that you'll want to incentive trying
| hard, e.g. through bonuses. The main reason bonuses are
| awarded for achieving good outcomes instead of for trying
| hard is because the former is easier to measure.
| Intentionally rewarding the achievement of good outcomes
| (which is a matter of chance) instead of good efforts will
| lead to strife, as those who put in just as much work but
| weren't as lucky will feel cheated.
| habitue wrote:
| This is just highly dependent on the structure of the company
| and the ability to objectively determine an individual's input
| into the final profit of the company. Small companies, sales
| orgs, hedge funds have an advantage here. If you're not so
| lucky, your industry / company size may result in bonuses
| getting handed out completely based on who your boss likes, and
| no one can argue because it's subjective.
|
| Spend months sorting out a rat's nest of code that your
| predecessors created? Over the long term, this is value
| creating behavior for the company. Is a portion of the bottom
| line measurably attributable to it in a particular year? Maybe,
| maybe not.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think you're drawing conclusions on a very biased sample.
| It's easy for me to write examples of bonuses causing all the
| wrong problems:
|
| 1. Introduce a huge amount of technical debt to get it under
| schedule.
|
| 2. Working really hard to get the bonus and either not getting
| it or getting much less than you expected/deserved. This is
| probably 5-10x more common than your scenario - you can even
| find comments on this submission with examples. Working 60-80
| hour weeks to get a tiny bonus is very effective in inducing
| poor morale.
|
| > In fact, I've noticed that people often add a net-negative
| value to many projects - their urge to add their 2 cents and
| make their impact felt, results in goalposts getting constantly
| shifted and launches getting continually delayed.
|
| It's amusing you write this as an example of not having skin in
| the game, given that I often see this behavior from people who
| want to appear as if they have skin in the game, so they can
| claim a portion of the bonus. Almost every major initiative
| that is introduced in the company ends up with this.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Sounds like you read Skin in the game :P
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075HYVP7C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I consider shouting matches an unalloyed bad thing in a
| workplace. I won't take part in one and I won't work somewhere
| they're considered an acceptable form of communication.
| Incentives which promote shouting seem like bad things to me.
|
| Others, I'm sure, disagree, and I wish them luck.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The author would have you believe that it's an issue of personal
| morals, outlook and psychology.
|
| I would say that these kinds of programs are manipulate and
| exploitative (beyond how salaried work is exploitative
| fundamentally). In the author's situation I would probably say
| I'm giving up on the bonus from the get-go; would not sacrifice
| any hours of sleep; and would just try to do a good job.
|
| ... or rather, I'd probably redouble my efforts to get people to
| unionize.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Nice post. 366 MHz office hardware in 1996...yeah that would have
| been pretty awesome.
|
| The story also made me wonder about bonuses in European countries
| where private employee salary numbers are publicly available (or
| so I've heard). Is the same true for bonuses, if they are
| offered?
| splittingTimes wrote:
| In Germany you have laws to ensure equal treatment in the
| workplace. So you are allowed to go to your HR and ask what up
| to i think 6 other people in a similar position & experience
| level as you are in earn. HR will of course not disclose the
| names.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Couldn't they just pick the lowest 6?
| nateburke wrote:
| This was a joy to read. My aunt, Carli, worked at DEC for a
| number of years and I recall fondly how proud she was to have a
| job there. Thank you for sharing this small bit of New England
| high technology history.
| xtracto wrote:
| A lot of people forget that Altavista (one of the first web
| search engines) was created there, and that at some point in
| the time of the internet, a lot of people mistakenly went to
| visit http://altavista.com instead of
| http://altavista.digital.com looking for the search engine.
| barryscary wrote:
| The bonus system in sales seems to work pretty well. Maybe what's
| measured and the individual's ability to move that needle is more
| the question than a variable comp plan
| [deleted]
| marvel_boy wrote:
| What is the today equivalent of $25,000 of 1996?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| We had 8 DEC alphas at the university and I wrote a distributed
| "realtime" ray tracer with those 8 machines, they were amazing
| for the time.
|
| Also loved the versioning file systems on Digitals VMS.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Excellent read, but not only for the bonus part. If anyone else
| enjoyed it for the EE / computer engineering part, I recomment
| The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder.
|
| He followed, in a sort of embedded way, a team of Data General
| computer engineers in the late 70's, as they went through a death
| march to produce a 32-bit micro. Sort of like this blog post, but
| the book got a pullitzer.
|
| http://www.ancientgeek.org.uk/ed/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine.p...
| adamcharnock wrote:
| This reminds me of my first job as a developer, age 21. I haven't
| shared it before, so here goes...
|
| There was a 'crunch' coming up at work (i.e. IMHO, bad planning)
| and so the boss offered everyone a bonus if they performed well.
|
| However, the older employees warned me that the criteria for such
| bonuses were often ill-defined. I therefore pushed for clear
| achievable objectives. These pre-agreed objectives were promised,
| but never provided.
|
| Anyway, we all work hard, some more than others, but we met all
| the deadlines.
|
| Then comes bonus time, and they propose that I be given 30% of
| the maximum bonus. I explained that I felt this was entirely
| unreasonable, as I met all my deadlines. No other objectives were
| set, and therefore I felt I deserved the full bonus.
|
| They didn't agree, and we went three rounds of meetings with more
| and more people in the meeting. Each time they tried to convince
| me what I was asking for was unreasonable.
|
| At this point I should add that I had seen this boss (CEO, small
| company) be what I would now call abusive. Verbally abusive to
| junior staff members, and insulting members of staff behind their
| backs. So my loyalty was, well, absent.
|
| So on the third round of weirdly manipulative meetings, we come
| to an impasse. So I explained that I still stand by my request,
| and I pulled out my letter of resignation.
|
| At which point there is a long silence. My boss puts his head in
| his, and the other two people in the meeting (another boss, and
| my coworker) looked surprised, to put it mildly.
|
| After collecting his thoughts, my boss asks: what is to stop me
| threatening to resign every time I don't get my way? To which I
| calmly explain that he didn't have to pay (Ie. I could just
| quit).
|
| After a bit more stunned silence, the boss relents, and agrees to
| give me the full bonus.
|
| I wait until the bonus is in my account then I hand in my notice
| anyway. Abusive bosses don't get loyalty.
|
| The best part is, the coworker in the meeting also didn't get the
| full bonus, despite working much harder than me. He'd only asked
| her into the meeting to try to guilt/manipulate me. So not only
| did the boss have to give me the full bonus, he had to do the
| same for her too.
|
| After that I went freelance. And 15 years later I can say it was
| the best decision ever.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| After you pulling a resignation notice as an argument, an
| experienced boss would instantly know you would not be an asset
| he could rely on even mid-term, so his best option from a
| business perspective would be giving you no bonus at all (or
| the original one), and immediately starting to look for a
| replacement (and probably firing you).
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Yeah... I'm rather perplexed why the boss didn't just fire
| him on the spot. A new grad is likely not valuable enough to
| be worth fighting for.
| DistressedDrone wrote:
| Depends how long it takes to train a replacement, how short
| on staff you are, and how many people would apply for the
| job on short notice.
|
| But I tend to agree with the comment suggesting it was
| probably to avoid legal action.
| teachingassist wrote:
| This is an employer-employee power relationship. In general
| the employer has the power, but it cuts both ways, to some
| extent.
|
| Pulling a resignation notice shows that relationship to have
| broken down, probably irrevocably, I agree. But, the employer
| initially broke the relationship, by not keeping their
| promise regarding the bonus.
|
| The employer (perhaps here the boss's boss) knows they have
| treated the employee unfairly to an extent that _could_
| become legal, which would have an associated cost, and also
| could impact upon the other employees ' motivation (and how
| employees evaluate the promise of future bonuses).
|
| If the employee is essential and their replacement cost is
| high, then there's an significant additional cost to firing
| them fast.
|
| The employer might have to weigh up the costs, and could
| reason that it's cheaper or otherwise better for the business
| to pay the bonus.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > But, the employer initially broke the relationship, by
| not keeping their promise regarding the bonus.
|
| Or maybe the employee misunderstood the conditions of
| receiving the bonus. We can't really judge the situation
| after hearing just one side.
| PKop wrote:
| I think we can judge that since he got away with it, the
| boss felt that losing him was worse than conceding to his
| demands.
| ectopod wrote:
| > However, the older employees warned me that the
| criteria for such bonuses were often ill-defined. I
| therefore pushed for clear achievable objectives. These
| pre-agreed objectives were promised, but never provided.
|
| He asked for clear conditions and management agreed to
| provide them, but never did. They were playing him. The
| comments from the older employees suggest this wasn't the
| first time they used this tactic.
| PKop wrote:
| This all depends on the value of the employee and the
| opportunity cost of firing them and finding a replacement.
|
| It is certainly not true that it is never viable to pull the
| resignation notice as an ultimatum. Simply depends on who has
| the leverage.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Given that fraud was attempted - in some cases the lying boss
| would be fired.
| ycombinete wrote:
| It reminds me of relationships where one partner uses the
| threat of divorce/breaking-up to win arguments.
|
| It's definitely a nuclear option, which most often should be
| responded to with, "okay, do what you have to do".
| edoceo wrote:
| Well done!
| ben0x539 wrote:
| > my boss asks: what is to stop me threatening to resign every
| time I don't get my way?
|
| Nothing. That's how negotiating an employment relationship
| works. Holy shit.
| forgingahead wrote:
| It's not. That is an independent contractor relationship.
| Employment means you play ball for the stability of the
| paycheck. If you want to throw a tantrum every time you feel
| slighted, you shouldn't commit to a full-time permanent job.
|
| Employees are not the top of the totem pole, there are always
| other factors that people making these decisions have to
| consider. They don't always have to share that with you. It's
| a nice idealistic view to think otherwise, and I truly hope
| you always find work in places like that. But this is not the
| lived reality for the majority of people, and it's actually
| not a bad thing.
| anticristi wrote:
| I allow my boss to be very demanding. Want me to take an
| important customer call during holidays? Sure, I can
| convince my wife to allow that. Want me to work a week in a
| different timezone? Let me check first, but should be
| doable.
|
| But. Do. Not. Ever. Touch. My. Compensation!
|
| Being promised 100% but arbitrarily receiving 30% would be
| a no-go for me.
| duckfang wrote:
| > I allow my boss to be very demanding. Want me to take
| an important customer call during holidays? Sure, I can
| convince my wife to allow that. Want me to work a week in
| a different timezone? Let me check first, but should be
| doable.
|
| That's a really hot take. That shows that the company is
| very fickle and very bad about planning.
|
| And frankly, I'm not going to shed a tear if they badly
| planned a business meeting on my vacation and then expect
| me to attend.
|
| Now, given my position, I specialize in "accidents" or
| the recovery of. I get paid well for that. And I can
| decide when and what my schedule looks like. Outside of
| that and the appropriate pay for that skill, I expect my
| hours to be stable and consistent. In exchange, I will
| deliver consistently and stably and get money for that.
|
| Tl;dr. Touching my hours (aside real unplanned disasters)
| IS touching my compensation, and you will not do this
| without appropriate offsets.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > They don't always have to share that with you
|
| How that is related to fact that employee can resign from
| work if they want?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Boss-employee relationship goes both ways.
|
| They pay me because of my work/because I am valuable. From
| the story, the poster was valuable (otherwise the boss
| would not have paid him/her out).
|
| > Employees are not the top of the totem pole, there are
| always other factors that people making these decisions
| have to consider
|
| And that is entirely his/her thing. If I was promised this
| and that for a given task, I should be getting it, even at
| the detriment of the company, his her own paycheck,
| whatever. I am not responsible for the well-being of a
| company, it's not your "family".
|
| Of course, during unexpected events (like COVID), things
| like an OPTIONAL temporary pay reduction for every employee
| (very much including the bosses themselves) is acceptable,
| and I think any employee planning to stay there will gladly
| accept such if the leadership is otherwise not
| exploitive/fair.
| forgingahead wrote:
| "Value" does not just comprise of "coding ability".
| "Attitude" is a key part of it, and I guarantee you the
| vast majority of all hiring managers everywhere would
| eliminate a candidate if they demonstrated high
| entitlement during the interview process.
|
| If they somehow get hired because that quality was hidden
| somehow during the interview process, the moment it
| surfaced, there would be behind-the-scenes discussions on
| how to cut that person from the team or company, because
| they are destroying morale with the rest of the team.
|
| I am intrigued by the downvotes, because I am not saying
| anything controversial or disconnected from reality.
| People may not like it, but if they're so sure of their
| position, I do encourage them to put an equivalent line
| of the counter-argument on their resume when they're
| applying for their next job.
|
| One more point: I make my comments having done all sides:
| Employee, independent contractor, employer. You are never
| prevented from leaving to start your own thing, as the
| original commenter indicated. But harbour no illusions
| that working full time for someone in an employment
| agreement allows you to act like you're an independent
| contractor that can randomly walk away. You can certainly
| give your two weeks notice and do so, but after the 2nd
| time, you'll be radioactive in the job market.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Negotiating is expensive, and constant renegotiation is
| bad for morale. Employers wishing to avoid that should
| not change the terms of the agreement by eg requiring or
| expecting crunch time. Such a change is an act of
| renegotiation, and employees will leave (BATNA) or
| negotiate for more compensation. If employers do not wish
| to add additional compensation to match their changed
| expectation, well, OP had his resignation in hand.
| inimino wrote:
| > I guarantee you the vast majority of all hiring
| managers everywhere
|
| You're qualified to speak for a majority of hiring
| managers everywhere?
|
| Maybe you meant in a relatively small geographic area, in
| a relatively small number of companies? Maybe some of the
| same ones that colluded to keep salaries low by making
| illegal agreements amongst themselves?
|
| The problem with most discussions on this topic is that
| everyone thinks their own experience is universal.
|
| Incidentally, what you're assuming is that your
| internalized reality (of being allowed to resign at most
| twice per career) is real for everyone. It absolutely is
| not, which is why you're getting downvoted.
| forgingahead wrote:
| _You 're qualified to speak for a majority of hiring
| managers everywhere?_
|
| As I stated, feel free to place your counter-point in
| your resume next time you're looking at next steps. We
| are unlikely to cross paths in the professional world,
| but I would be happy to hear about your positive success
| in the job market with these statements prominently
| displayed.
|
| _your internalized reality (of being allowed to resign
| at most twice per career) is real for everyone_
|
| That is not what I stated so please don't misrepresent
| it. The discussion is about resigning or threatening to
| resign whenever you don't get your way in a company. The
| original comment stated:
|
| Boss: _What 's stopping you from doing this every time
| you don't get your way?_
|
| Commenter: _Nothing. That 's how negotiating an
| employment relationship works. Holy shit._
|
| Again for context, the original story stated that the
| bonus was brought up but the criteria for receiving it
| was never officially documented or agreed upon. The
| bosses decided on 30%, and the poster felt entitled for
| more. He's certainly entitled to feel that, and he's
| certainly entitled to make his case for it. He's also
| certainly entitled to resign if he didn't get his way.
|
| But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then
| resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form. Like
| I said, he can do it, he did do it, the company can't and
| didn't claw it back after he resigned, it's now 15 years
| later, _but this story does not portray the protagonist
| in a positive light for hiring again in the future_.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| > As I stated, feel free to place your counter-point in
| your resume next time you're looking at next steps. We
| are unlikely to cross paths in the professional world,
| but I would be happy to hear about your positive success
| in the job market with these statements prominently
| displayed.
|
| Which statements ? like saying on your resume "I quit my
| job because i didnt get the bonus i felt entitled to" ?
|
| This is hardly a good metric. Most people when reading a
| piece of information would have the tendency to assign
| blame to the party they do not identify with. The way to
| look at it, if you were to ask the employer to add to the
| job description "The last guy who this job quit he didn't
| get the bonus he felt entitled to" would equally deter
| job applicants.
|
| And second , some people can absolutely pool this off,
| depending on how valuable they are to the company.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > "Attitude" is a key part of it, and I guarantee you the
| vast majority of all hiring managers everywhere would
| eliminate a candidate if they demonstrated high
| entitlement during the interview process.
|
| I do agree with you that not only technical abilities are
| considered, for good reason. But not standing up for
| ourselves and letting us being bullied and exploited by
| higher ups is not an attitude in my book. We may have
| read the story very differently, and of course we only
| got one viewpoint on what happened. But I think you would
| agree that there are exploitive bosses (just as there are
| many great leaders), and there are many who simply can't
| stand up for themselves in a corporate environment.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Certainly, there are plenty of exploitative bosses and we
| should definitely encourage people to stand up for
| themselves. I provide new hires with several books, one
| of which is a book on personal finances that includes a
| chapter on negotiating a higher salary. It's important to
| me that people are empowered in their work and their
| lives.
|
| But this is not the story of the comment I was engaging
| with. The original comment stated:
|
| Boss: _What 's stopping you from doing this every time
| you don't get your way?_
|
| Commenter: _Nothing. That 's how negotiating an
| employment relationship works. Holy shit._
|
| Again for context, the original story stated that the
| bonus was brought up but the criteria for receiving it
| was never officially documented or agreed upon. The
| bosses decided on 30%, and the poster felt entitled for
| more. He's certainly entitled to feel that, and he's
| certainly entitled to make his case for it. He's also
| certainly entitled to resign if he didn't get his way.
|
| But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then
| resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form. Like
| I said, he can do it, he did do it, the company can't and
| didn't claw it back after he resigned, it's now 15 years
| later, _but this story does not portray the protagonist
| in a positive light for hiring again in the future_.
|
| That should not be a controversial statement. You should
| always know your value and worth, and this goes BOTH
| ways. I would say the same about any role, whether it's
| sales, marketing, HR, ops, customer service, or whatever
| else. One can't be unreliable in a company, and expect
| that not to be a problem for future job opportunities.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I do respect your opinion on the topic and you seem to
| just look at the story from the employer's point of view,
| as opposed to perhaps the majority of people here, who
| rather "root" for the underdog.
|
| But I still don't disagree entirely with the quoted part.
|
| > Boss: What's stopping you from doing this every time
| you don't get your way?
|
| Downscaling the dramatic effect of the exact text a bit,
| I think the response is fair, if we mean under "don't get
| your way" something significant. Like how about a
| transfer to a different building? A good boss should ask
| a given employee beforehand, whether it is feasible for
| him/her, but if it was already decided and the employee
| can't have a say, pretty much resignation is the only
| "tool" he/she can leverage. Even at pay negotiation,
| while seldom brought up explicitly, resigning is there
| implicitly.
|
| All in all, I think talking about the exact incident is
| fruitless, because we only got an anecdotal story without
| both sides, so I think you and I "drew" the rest of the
| story differently.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| You seems to have a very 'personal' view of the
| employee/employer relationships. But i think the core of
| the issue is that for the last 40 years, corporation in
| general, have work very hard to "depersonalize" this
| relationship to the point where most employee have lost
| any sense of loyalty. So the way to see this is as a
| legal business relationship where every party maximize
| they own interest and they is nothing wrong about that.
| An employer should'nt takes is personally. I see this
| weird dichotomy every time on asker news or in corporate
| america : Companies treat employee like a resources and
| try to extract maximum value out of them (like promising
| a vague bonus and giving only 30% of the target without
| clear explanation) and get confused when employee do the
| same.
|
| > But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then
| resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form
|
| No the bonus was paid for service rendered. After that
| his continue employment was subject to renegotiation.
| Let's not forget that the employment term were probably
| "at will" on the demand of the employer. OP felt that his
| employer broke his trust ? Would you work with someone
| you don't trust ?
|
| > That should not be a controversial statement.
|
| I honestly think it is. And i think your statement are
| really pro employer and doesn't reflect the current state
| of the average modern employer/employee relationship.
|
| > One can't be unreliable in a company, and expect that
| not to be a problem for future job opportunities.
|
| That OP did meet his requirements meant he is not
| unreliable. If OP wasn't providing value at the company ,
| he would have been fired a while ago.
|
| Reliability, as everything has a cost, in this case it
| was paying the full amount of the bonus...
| dboreham wrote:
| Many psychopath in business settings.
| m463 wrote:
| > After that I went freelance. And 15 years later I can say it
| was the best decision ever.
|
| Every time I've left a job, I've been uncertain and conflicted.
| Every. Time. Then, a week or two into the new job... Every.
| Time. ...I thought, "Wow! I should have done this sooner!"
| laurent92 wrote:
| I've worked for a startup who was giving 866 stock options
| per month. Had I known they are valued $125 today, I would
| have:
|
| - Shut up a few more times because I'd trust more the
| managers, and just followed the stream,
|
| - Accepted to be patient about being a developer on a boring
| project, because what stressed me was "I don't know enough to
| reach the career level that can allow me to ever buy a
| house."
|
| - Made 4 millions instead of 1.
|
| I regret leaving and aggressively seeking for a better
| career, but at the time, things snowballed negatively because
| I wasn't getting enough emotional attention. Of course it was
| a rational choice on both sides, but it was a mistake
| overall.
|
| On my leaving card, _all_ my colleagues wrote variations of
| "To the most motivated guy every" - proof that I was putting
| in decent work, albeit not working cleverly enough.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| You really shouldn't feel bad, because what happened has a
| low probability.
|
| It's like saying I should've invested in X which got
| quadrupled in price last year.
|
| Most stocks (even very promising ones) didn't achieve
| anywhere near that growth.
|
| So you choosing the right one among the many to "shut up
| and stick to it just a little bit longer" has a low chance
| of exceptional returns on your investment.
|
| You cannot see the future, even the most sophisticated
| analysis can be wrong, and even the best companies can
| stagnate for a loong time before getting lucky.
| onemiketwelve wrote:
| Exactly. This is like being dealt a horrible set of cards
| in poker and kicking yourself for folding. Let's say you
| got 2,7 and then found out the cards on the table turned
| out to be the rest of the 2s. Folding was still the right
| move
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| You're right as an analogy, but don't take this as exact
| poker advice.
|
| Poker isn't just about the cards you're dealt, but also
| the the players you play (with). I wonder if there is a
| similar idea/point about startups?
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| I wonder how widely the concept of expected value is
| discussed outside of poker or statistics. Simple concept,
| but it can really help with all kinds of decisions in
| life.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Hi all 3 parents, I agree!
|
| 1. It's incredibly good that the startup founders were
| actually honest (no last-moment dilution),
|
| 2. Stock valuation is poker, although a bit more when you
| know the company from inside,
|
| 3. I'm incredibly thankful towards the owners (Although
| I'll hide their name because I don't have perfect
| reputation),
|
| 4. I'm incredibly thankful towards the economic system
| which allows us to get at least that.
|
| I just wanted to give an example where leaving early
| wasn't the perfect choice. But it was as optimized as
| could be.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| The problem is that people make lots of claims towards
| the direction of "stock options are always worthless"
| when they should say more like "stock options are often
| worthless but sometimes can be ridiculously valuable".
| Startup game just provides high returns to small
| minority, and some people after couple of negative
| experience seem to decide that everything must suck then
| and spread it around in here and other forums.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Regrets are pointless. Had I known what I know now I'd have
| put my (unused) beer budget into crypto this time last year
| and be looking at retirement now.
|
| Ignore the money, divorce your happiness from money, and do
| what makes you feel happy. Sometimes you're ahead,
| sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end,
| it's only with yourself. Your choices are half chance, so
| are everybody else's.
| serial_dev wrote:
| The mindset you should have (I know it's easy for me to
| say) is that you made the best decision with the data
| available at the time.
|
| For every success story, there are many more failures,
| where after years of hard work, the company still doesn't
| succeed, where the managers that look like idiots are
| really idiots, and the stock options end up being totally
| worthless.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Me too, every time. I've felt guilty even, but never for
| long.
| um_ya wrote:
| Employees forget that they sell their labor. Sell your labor
| to the highest bidder.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| The problem is evaluating the size of the bid. Salary is
| only one part of the equation and people rarely get wealthy
| on salary alone. There are multitude factors when
| evaluating the "bid" of the company and to actually
| understand what is valuable and what is not is the
| difficult part.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Why? My job is extremely easy with a great team and
| manager. I could get more, but I'd have to work in a high
| stress environment, and life is too short for that shit.
| PKop wrote:
| >My job is extremely easy with a great team and manager
|
| Value comes in many forms. OP message shouldn't imply
| that money alone is the only variable in the equation of
| "am I compensated fairly".
| thih9 wrote:
| I think the grandparent was implying all other things
| being equal. If the highest bidder requires that you work
| in significally different and more difficult conditions,
| then it's not really comparable.
| whatever_dude wrote:
| Counterpoint: they sell ~8 hours of their day. Selling that
| to the highest bidder ignores that there's different
| environments that might be better or worse for everyone's
| general sense of fulfilment. IMO, chasing highest pay only
| is a recipe for an unhappy life that only pays off on the
| short term.
|
| No one should sell themselves short, but choosing, say, a
| 100% worse environment or a dead-end technology stack for a
| 5% higher pay (or whatever) is not wise.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| and choose the best, risk adjusted, choice over the long
| run. Subtract the costs (time, stress, health) and add
| the revenues (skills, $, network)
| [deleted]
| angarg12 wrote:
| Not sure if intentional, but this is exactly the opposite of
| the message of the article.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I actually think bonuses and equity grants are terrible for
| comapany morale. I've seen it many times, and heard many more
| stories.
|
| On top of the issue in this story, there are others too.
|
| For example, if someone wants to leave, but the bonus or vesting
| is coming up, they will stay, and you don't want people on a
| project who don't want to be there.
|
| As another example I know people who work at companies that are
| going to IPO, and nobody at the company is working at all. They
| just spend all day thinking about the IPO, and afterwards,
| checking the stock price.
|
| I don't expect this to be a popular opinion here, but anything
| outside of a salary for compensation is just a bad idea.
| gscott wrote:
| Bankers and Salespeople have a different structure they get a
| minimum salary too low to live on and then get bonuses based
| upon performance.
|
| My son was an O'Reilly Auto Parts store manager, turned out he
| didn't realize his salary was $500 a month until he was in an
| accident and was out for a six weeks... he was stuck, he had to
| go back to work even tough his femur was just broken in half.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you pay a high salary, you create an incentive to just mark
| time and maximize the number of paychecks collected as well.
|
| If you pay in part in equity (or performance-based bonuses),
| you can balance that somewhat.
|
| No pay structure is a substitute for strong leadership, but
| each system provides pulls in certain directions.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > No pay structure is a substitute for strong leadership
|
| Can't emphasize this point enough. Frog$kins are necessary,
| but not sufficient, for retention. Especially when the talent
| has enough resources to decide that it isn't tolerating a
| manager or customer with the personality of a dented
| wastebasket.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| On the other hand a poorly designed or executed comp system
| will cause unhappiness and distraction even when everyone
| is paid well. It's an unforced error of the business world.
| greedo wrote:
| We stack rank where I work. My mgmt can't imagine any
| other way to evaluate employee performance. And the
| manager I report to isn't very technical, so he can't
| evaluate actual performance. So he goes by tickets
| closed, word of mouth from his peers, and how gung ho you
| are. Since he's not technical, he can't set realistic
| goals for his staff. So promotions, raises and bonuses
| are all political.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think the equity thing might be real in a very small
| company, but I don't think it works the same at a mega-corp
| where your contribution is generally a drop in the ocean. For
| example, I currently work for a Fortune 500 financial company
| and the default company match option is in company stock. I
| don't think I've ever heard of anyone talk about doing their
| job better in the context of the stock price.
| znpy wrote:
| > If you pay in part in equity (or performance-based
| bonuses), you can balance that somewhat.
|
| that reminds me of a post i read some time ago...
|
| Basically anon was in the middle of a job interview with this
| startup. the founder/ceo was willing to pay an important part
| of the salary in stocks, arguing that the stocks grantet for
| first year alone would have meant anon would get at least one
| million dollar.
|
| Anon asks if the boss/ceo would be willing to pay no stock
| but sign an agreement to just pay out one million dollar in
| one year. After all, it should be the same amout of money, if
| not less, since the ceo was talking about "at least one
| million".
|
| Needless to say, the CEO did not agree.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Incentives happen because they are empirically effective. I
| would contend that the issue is less the content of the
| incentives but rather the perception of fairness.
|
| If everyone is aware how the bonuses work and feels their
| 'fair' share is obtained, then it just becomes another part of
| the calculus.
|
| I speculate as a non-manager that bonuses are a good way (in
| the federal contracting realm, from the company perspective) to
| incentivize employees without inflating their base salary to
| the point that the company isn't competitive for new work.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Honestly I feel like you have a lot more faith in businesses
| behaving efficiently[1] than I do. I think the normal reason
| for a firm to do things is random chance/business
| school/copying competitors. See also: "algorithms" style
| interview questions, brain teaser style interview questions,
| and using complicated distributed tools like Hadoop.
|
| [1] by _efficiency_ , I mean settling on doing the most
| effective things and dropping ineffective things.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Maybe it's a function of scale. My remark was founded upon
| my recollection of being enlisted in the Navy at the end of
| the Cold War.
|
| Want a fat bonus? Go nuclear.
|
| Everyone knows where the money is, how much, when the
| figures are reviewed, etc.
| void_mint wrote:
| > If everyone is aware how the bonuses work and feels their
| 'fair' share is obtained, then it just becomes another part
| of the calculus.
|
| If everyone is not aware of how a bonus works, lots of people
| assume it's just smoke and mirrors and disregard (the correct
| strategy). You're not incentivized to care about your
| "incentives", so you don't.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Or if they don't follow their own rules
| enkid wrote:
| From what I have read, monetary incentives are only effective
| in specific circumstances. If used the wrong, it can even
| decrease performance.
| avisser wrote:
| Full-throated agreement. I'm actively interviewing
| elsewhere.
|
| The $600 I got in my employers recent "equity event" felt
| like a slap in the face for 4 years of service.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| > just becomes another part of the calculus.
|
| This is exactly what happens. So then why not just include it
| in the salary at that point? All you are doing with bonuses
| is just causing an opportunity for issues.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think changing a bonus is a lot easier than changing a
| salary, especially if the bonus can be tied to the
| performance of the firm and therefore go down--salaries
| tend to be very sticky (ie hard to decrease)
| greedo wrote:
| I think it's a wash. If your company is performing poorly
| and needs to cut costs, eliminating a bonus will cost you
| staff. Lowering salary will also cost you staff.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Incentives happen because they are empirically effective."
|
| Only for the people who haven't been screwed by the system.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Mostly agree.
|
| Bonuses should be a surprise to employees. Anything else just
| becomes an expected part of comp bundle.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Couldn't disagree more. Want to see employees work hard and be
| motivated? Give them equity that is a meaningful amount. I know
| it works for me... I work 10x harder for my current job where I
| have equity and stock bonuses than at previous jobs that were
| all salary.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Why would you prefer equity/stock over cash? I would take
| cold hard cash over the same amount in stock any day of the
| week.
| mavelikara wrote:
| Keywords here are "same amount".
|
| You are right - there is no reason to prefer equity over
| cash. Cash is better, if the company could afford it. But
| many employers cannot afford it now, and they offer equity
| instead.
| bananaface wrote:
| Do you work at a large company?
| Igelau wrote:
| The bonus is a double-edged sword. There's nothing more
| demotivating than getting a bullshit explanation for why your
| bonus is reduced/non-existent.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >For example, if someone wants to leave, but the bonus or
| vesting is coming up, they will stay, and you don't want people
| on a project who don't want to be there.
|
| People shouldn't stay at a company based on money? Isn't money
| one of the main factors causing people to stay at a company?
|
| Or are you more saying they're staying only for a few months
| then quitting? Yeah, I see that. But maybe the answer isn't to
| get rid of bonuses and equity, but rather to spread them out
| over a long time. Don't have yearly stock vests, instead have
| monthly ones spread out over a year or more.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| > but anything outside of a salary for compensation is just a
| bad idea.
|
| In the hedge fund industry, you can't be a successful firm
| without a bonus compensation model.
|
| - The profit is usual attributable exactly to specific people.
| If they don't get paid their share of what they brought in,
| they'll quit and go elsewhere where they can be paid their
| share, and you'll be left with all the worst people.
|
| - Some years are successful, and others aren't, meaning you
| can't have a stable high salary, since that will risk
| bankruptcy in unsuccessful years. You could adjust salary up
| and down each year, but that's no different to having a bonus.
|
| In a "normal" company where revenue is stable over time and
| each person's contribution isn't so easily quantifiable, I can
| see your point.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > If they don't get paid their share of what they brought in,
| they'll quit and go elsewhere where they can be paid their
| share, and you'll be left with all the worst people.
|
| You are selecting for lucky people that way not competent.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| To a large extent I agree. It'll come down to the type of
| strat they're running. If it's a very short holding period,
| performance is more correlated with skill, and the bonus
| should therefore be more correlated with individual
| performance.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Startup I work for was acquired within the past year; came
| through as a "key employee". Don't like the new environment.
| Huge management hierarchy and management culture,
| command/control, siloed decision making, and etc.
|
| Unfortunately my reward, as such, is tied up in retention based
| compensation. Not phoning it in yet, but struggling to reach
| the 1 year cliff. Honestly coming around to the idea..
| chris11 wrote:
| I've heard some places can make out of band offers to match
| unvested equity if they really want you.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Thanks, I suspected as much up to a point.
|
| I'm likely headed back to a more "lifestyle" business
| working directly for the founders though. Lifestyle in the
| sense that the company is aggressively focused on the work
| culture and including the engineering staff in the entire
| process of building the product/business. Worked at a place
| like that once and didn't appreciate it enough at the time.
| That's not the typical definition of a lifestyle biz..
|
| Making it through the year is going to provide a
| significant boost to my retirement savings/investments and
| put compensation cut on the table so I can focus more
| heavily on work environment. Why am I saying all this? I
| guess I need to get it out and maybe it gives some further
| insight into how retention based compensation incentivizes
| people, and how acquisitions can cause a lot of stress to
| those who aren't getting the life altering payouts.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > I actually think bonuses and equity grants are terrible for
| comapany morale.
|
| Not just morale, even when things go well it can be a disaster.
| My wife's company just paid out a massive bonus and 5 people,
| nearly all of the people in this one small department, quit.
| [deleted]
| woeirua wrote:
| Bonuses should be: infrequent, irregular, unannounced, and large.
|
| Otherwise you end up in this trap where people expect the bonus
| and worse yet, count on it to pay their bills.
|
| It's stupid to make it a part of your overall compensation
| package because if you do, then the bonus is always weighted
| based on overall company performance. So if the company has a bad
| year no one gets bonuses even if individual teams crushed it.
| Conversely at most companies, everyone gets a bonus in good years
| even if you have underperforming teams. Add on top of that these
| stupid requirements that bonuses be paid out on exactly day X,
| and you end up with lots of people who do nothing until they
| collect that fat bonus check and then give their notice the next
| day.
|
| The bonus system as it stands at most companies incentivizes
| completely the wrong behavior.
| jmchuster wrote:
| I think it helps employees if they understand that bonuses are
| not rewards, or for incentivizing behavior, though they might
| incidentally do that. They are built-in pay cuts that companies
| can use when their financials don't end up matching what they
| plan for.
|
| I've only ever been at one company that went out of their way
| to regularly present and show company financials in a
| digestible way, that when the year ended, it was clear to me at
| least why we got bonuses one year and why we didn't the other.
| pnathan wrote:
| I would concur. The bonus system at prior fine employers
| usually looks like Company_perf_scaling * Bonus_pool *
| Group_political_pie_slice * Personal_perf; I usually assess it
| as "magic money".
|
| Yearly bonuses IMO should be rolled into base salary raises.
| Bonuses otherwise should be project based IMO. "Good job on the
| big projects, have xyz $/stock".
|
| Bonus structures for ordinary engineering / programming where a
| bonus might be >20% of total salary seems to be out of line
| with our normal work output.
| kccqzy wrote:
| At Google there are bonuses known as peer bonuses and spot
| bonuses. They are indeed infrequent, irregular, and
| unannounced, though not large at all. People feel way happier
| receiving these sub-$1000 (or slightly above $1000) bonuses
| than the rather more predictable but large annual bonuses.
| jrockway wrote:
| I thought the peer bonuses were like $175?
|
| I have a story. The first year I was at Google, I was working
| on payments. I remember checking the internal version of the
| documentation for our to-be-announced-at-Google-IO product,
| and noticed that it has accidentally been made available
| publicly, spoiling the surprise of the launch. Our director
| was visiting and was roaming around the office, so I flagged
| him down and let him know. (Actually, I spent quite a while
| convincing him that it wasn't some quirk that allowed guest
| WiFi addresses to also view secret documentation.) The end
| result was that he said "I'd give you a peer bonus, but I've
| already given my quota of peer bonuses this quarter." It was
| so awkward. I didn't even want or expect a bonus. I just
| wanted the problem to get fixed. (I also found it weird that
| directors / VPs are running around giving out peer bonuses.
| Pretty sure they had other ways to reward direct reports.)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| > _Otherwise you end up in this trap where people expect the
| bonus and worse yet, count on it to pay their bills._
|
| Kind of like tipping in the USA. It has nothing to do with
| service, is a standard percentage of the total bill (cork a
| $200 bottle of wine versus $20?). And the managers pay the wait
| staff _less_ with the assumption they'll make it up with tips.
| mjevans wrote:
| I currently tip well. I would RATHER the costs be upfront and
| the complete wage and quality of service be covered by the
| company.
|
| I would, correspondingly, love to see both a national minimum
| wage increase AND a ban on including tips in someone's
| expected wage as a single update to the laws.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Many years ago I managed a small company that gave out bonuses.
| It was miserable for the most part. People did come to rely on
| those bonuses as if they were actual pay.
|
| I worked with the owner to develop a system where if the
| quarterly bonus was over a specific amount 6 quarters in a row we
| translated that into a pay raise for everyone and that would
| effectively remove/lower the bonus but give the employees more
| stability. It has been a lot of years since I have been there,
| but the last I heard the bonuses were very small but the avg. pay
| was nearly 2x over any other company in the same industry.
| Turnover is near zero and the number of people waiting to get a
| job there was significant.
| dewitt wrote:
| > "$25,000 was not enough money to retire on for sure, even in
| 1996."
|
| $25,000 in 1996 is $42,000 in 2021.
|
| Seems like a modest incentive for top tech talent, even back
| then.
|
| * To respond to the comment below, the author had been working as
| a hardware systems engineer at headquarters for 10 years by 1996.
| jakemal wrote:
| I wonder how it compares to the average salary for an
| experienced hardware engineer. It may be a ~50% pay bump in
| 1996 vs a 10-25% bump today.
| jedberg wrote:
| In 1996 college grads were pretty excited about $50K-$60K
| paychecks. So I can't imagine a senior engineer getting more
| than $120K or so, but they definitely were not only getting
| $50K.
| MarblePillar wrote:
| The incentive is in the mind of the beholder. $42,000 captured
| the mind of the author; for its promise, he worked extremely
| hard and long, mustering a productivity far and above what he
| normally would have achieved. Then, when he in fact received
| not $42,000 but $3,666, less than one-tenth what he expected,
| he convinced himself that this was not a loss but a win because
| $3,666 is $3,666 more than $0.
|
| What is your lesson here? My lesson is to become the house,
| because the house always wins.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| The house can go bankrupt aswell.
| MarblePillars wrote:
| The incentive is in the mind of the beholder. $42,000 captured
| the mind of the author; for its promise, he worked extremely
| hard and long, mustering a productivity far and above what he
| normally would have achieved. Then, when he in fact received
| not $42,000 but $3,666, less than one-tenth what he expected,
| he convinced himself that this was not a loss but a win because
| $3,666 is $3,666 more than $0.
|
| What is your lesson here? My lesson is to become the house,
| because the house always wins.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Top tech talent, even in software, weren't making the kind of
| money they are today. Top new grads going to the hottest
| employers could hope to make $50,000 all in (not counting stock
| options paying off down the road). $100,000 in guaranteed comp
| was all but unheard of for ICs. Programming was not yet at the
| doctor/lawyer level, much less the banker one.
|
| That started to change in the dotcom frenzy but that was still
| a couple of years away at that point.
| dougabug wrote:
| I wonder to what extent the private "no poaching agreements"
| between major tech companies held down SW Engineer
| compensation.
| dboreham wrote:
| It started to change when the salary cartel was busted.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yep, my first year out of college (1998) I was making 50K at
| a local public tech company. Anyone in tech would laugh at
| that nowadays, but that was considered a "good" starting
| salary.
| throwaway123467 wrote:
| > Anyone in tech would laugh at that nowadays
|
| There was a reset between then and now: The Great Recession
| around 2008. Starting salaries were below 50K, and I was
| really surprised when a few years later I got an offer at
| that amount (also right out of college) - I remember
| looking around for what to expect, and it was more like
| 35K.
| harryh wrote:
| When I started at Microsoft in 2000 I believe my initial
| salary was 62k just as another reference plus some stock
| options (honestly I can't remember the details of that
| part). This was a very good comp package for a new college
| grad.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I happened to have this floating around from when I was digging
| into tech salaries over time.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010203125200/http://www.techwe...
|
| Those are for the Bay Area, not New England (probably
| important) and for software (less important). He said he'd been
| at Digital for 10+ years by then, so for a Bay Area salary, I'd
| guess he made $100k. In New England, I wouldn't be shocked if
| it was more like $60-$80, so the bonus was up to a third of his
| salary.
| boulos wrote:
| Dewitt (hi!), this isn't about an annual cash bonus though.
| This is for a "hit this target and we'll do award X".
|
| Given that a number of "achievement" awards are in the < 5k
| realm today at major tech companies, I think this should be
| compared to those, not annual bonuses. So in Google terms this
| is like an outsized spot bonus opportunity with clear (flawed)
| rules.
| heuroci wrote:
| Thank you for writing this. you brought back some good young
| adulthood memories of VMS, OSF/1 and Tru64. All seemed like alien
| technologies at the time :). Thank you for your service and hard
| work
| shubik22 wrote:
| This reminds me of the holiday gifts at Google. By the time I
| joined, Google had already switched from physical gifts (e.g. a
| new Pixel) to allowing each employee to choose a charity to which
| Google.org would donate $1,000.
|
| Even years later, there was still bitterness among the employee
| base about the holiday gift. It was a bit mystifying to me (as I
| never had the expectation of a $400 electronic for a holiday gift
| from my employer), but really shows the power of anchoring. Once
| people have an expectation for some reward or benefit, any
| downward deviation from that expectation is met with great
| distress.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Hm, but it was the way they managed the transition. When I
| joined (actually I believe I joined literally the day before
| the cut-off for the holiday gift so got it even tho I started
| in December 2011)... it was "free Nexus" (and so on, choose
| from a list, etc) and then it was "very cheap hardware devices
| we have excess inventory of" and then it was "donation to a
| charity we chose" and people got miffed because it just smelled
| like a big tax write-off.
|
| They would have been much better off just eliminating the
| holiday gift with a heartfelt letter from Larry explaining that
| he didn't want a creeping culture of entitlement and we were
| all aware we were compensated handsomely anyways so happy
| holidays, you'll get your annual bonus soon anyways. Pretending
| the charity thing was a gift was a bit weird. At that point I
| was giving 5-10x that amount in my own cash to charities
| anyways.
|
| It's handled a bit better now, because you get to choose the
| charity, and it's accompanied by a good matching charity drive
| program etc.
| hrocha1 wrote:
| Step 1. create a charity that would "adopt" Google employees
| and give them Pixel phones
|
| Step 2. choose that charity and pick yourself for an adoption
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Step 0: remember that people have been creating scam
| charities for a long time, so the IRS looks for it, knows
| more than you do about it, and does not like it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Create a church instead..
| hrocha1 wrote:
| It was just a joke. I'm not from US and have no idea how
| any of this work :)
|
| To me the whole idea of a gift where the employer donates
| money to charities in a name of a employee seems like "The
| Human Fund" sketch from Seinfeld rather than anything that
| would actually exist in a real world.
| jefftk wrote:
| That's not going to qualify for 501(c)(3) status:
| https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-
| organiz...
| Oneiros512 wrote:
| There was a story I read a while back about Veterans being
| unhappy with the red cross for not offering free donuts because
| they had back during WW2.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's all about the psychology of expectations.
|
| Those with high expectations that can never be satisfied are not
| happy people.
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