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Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

madned.substack.com

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Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#341

Post by pinkybanana »

suifbwish wrote: post #140
dan-robertson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

So you think it is better to work for a startup that doesn't promise any shares to begin with?

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#342

Post by leke »

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#343

Post by Closi »

mofosyne wrote: post #281
jandrewrogers wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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.

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#344

Post by ganafagol »

jboy55 wrote: post #303
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 ye…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#345

Post by neworbit »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #128

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…

That's Mike Daisey, he did a tour called "Doing Time At Amazon.com"

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#346

Post by mst »

greggman3 wrote: post #147
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…

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…

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)

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#347

Post by m12k »

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#348

Post by kbenson »

eecc wrote: post #333
kbenson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

> 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 enthusiasti…

> 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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#349

Post by praptak »

im3w1l wrote: post #98
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…

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.

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#350

Post by robertlagrant »

jdavis703 wrote: post #141
suifbwish wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

You can pay for options with some of your options, at least in the UK.
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