Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

madned.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 684 posts

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#301

Post by kqr »

chithanh wrote: post #130
heymijo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#302

Post by [deleted] »

hooande wrote: post #256
m463 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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 whatev…

[deleted]

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#303

Post by jboy55 »

jedberg wrote: post #17

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 scream…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#304

Post by Lammy »

jedberg wrote: post #17

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 scream…

I appreciate your use of "stated" here (serious)

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#305

Post by ipaddr »

barry-cotter wrote: post #287
dmarlow wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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 actuall…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#306

Post by jmchuster »

whack wrote: post #94

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-…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#307

Post by e-_pusher »

xref wrote: post #223

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)

The Soul of a New Machine is awesome.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#308

Post by raverbashing »

> 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?

Post reply on HN