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Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

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Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#571

Post by maerF0x0 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #440
dudeman13 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 productiv…

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…

> 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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#572

Post by lumost »

alisonkisk wrote: post #383
lumost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do yo mean expiring-at-separation options?

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#573

Post by khendron »

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#574

Post by NegativeLatency »

drfuchs wrote: post #246
alasdair_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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?

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#575

Post by Cogito »

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #549
Cogito wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#576

Post by sofal »

noisy_boy wrote: post #186
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…

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.

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#577

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #90
adamcharnock wrote: post #57

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 promise…

> 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!"

[deleted]

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#578

Post by emodendroket »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #559
emodendroket wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the company is more than a handful of people that's all pretty theoretical.

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 percent…

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#579

Post by drfuchs »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #574
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.

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?

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.

Re: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

#580

Post by HelloNurse »

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…

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".

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