11–20 of 194 posts
If they allowed the best people to get promoted to their level, it would adversely impact their own bonuses and career. So instead they fight to get incompetent people promoted to their level so they have no competition.
Ive never really understood bonuses for engineers, just provide more base pay
Even most people that are doing nothing can probably do nothing somewhere else for 100% or their salary.
If you do nothing at the company, they can pay you $0 bonus and hope you get mad and quit and go do nothing somewhere else instead.
Ive never really understood bonuses for engineers, just provide more base pay
Bad years, you have a trivial pay cut (no to low bonus), good years people get money. If you have very high base pay, bad years you lose money.
If you're young, volatility is ok. If you're getting older and have kids, then you value certainty a bit more and want higher base pay, but you might make less money overall (say 2 dollars bonus is equal to 1 guaranteed dollar, but this is obviously highly dependent on the company/sector)
The smartest piece of advice I ever got on bonuses: they are part of your salary that your employer reserves the right to discretionarily not pay you. I consider bonuses of absolutely no account in a comp package. If they are given, I happily accept. If not, I have no disappointment. I give the company my diligent efforts because I care about my responsibilities and my colleagues regardless. A carrot on a treadmill i…
If you replace the word "bonus" with "promo", then you unfortunately get an eerily-accurate reflection of the state of FAANG companies.
Thankfully, at a large company with plenty of hard problems to solve (and smart folks to work with), you can grow quite a lot whether or not the company chooses to recognize said growth.
I don't get why you need to sabotage others? Does your bonus size shrink if others get a bonus or something?
6-7 figure bonuses for mid-20's, or the story of how we got a global financial crisis in '08. Seems to work wonders in tech too.
Another thing that happens that I didn’t see mentioned is that people at higher levels will only allow incompetent people to be promoted to their level. If they allowed the best people to get promoted to their level, it would adversely impact their own bonuses and career. So instead they fight to get incompetent people promoted to their level so they have no competition.