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Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

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Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#541

Post by foogazi »

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…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#542

Post by jonny_eh »

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…

Bonuses also mess up tax withholdings.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#543

Post by karaterobot »

Thorrez wrote: post #275
ryandrake wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what universe are managers averaging less base salary than individual contributors? Aside from a few outlier engineers you see from time to time...

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg each have a $1 salary. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032315/why-did-larr...

In addition to being edge cases, the people you listed are not managers.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#545

Post by soulbadguy »

forgingahead wrote: post #517
inimino wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thi…

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 tw…

> 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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#546

Post by alasdair_ »

dmarlow wrote: post #264
drfuchs wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#547

Post by whatever_dude »

um_ya wrote: post #101
m463 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!"

Employees forget that they sell their labor. Sell your labor to the highest bidder.

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#548

Post by radiator »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #209

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…

Cool story and I see absolutely no problem with his behaviour.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#549

Post by castlecrasher2 »

Cogito wrote: post #525
ganafagol wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 payrol…

To be frank, it doesn't matter how much sense it makes in theory when in practice it has obvious downsides.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#550

Post by alain94040 »

mattm wrote: post #511
drfuchs wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does this work when they haven't vested yet?

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.

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