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At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

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Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#41

Post by mabbo »

Mr_P wrote: post #5

If you replace the word "bonus" with "promo", then you unfortunately get an eerily-accurate reflection of the state of FAANG companies.

Good God yes.

Once my team owned a service that did X. Among it's functionality, it had an API that, as a side effect, stored some data that could be retrieved. Sadly, this service had no validation that the data being input made any sense in the context of what this service did.

A developer on a neighboring team had a big promo project on the go. As a simple hack, and as a way to save time, his project used our service as a basic key value store database. They already called this service for the correct functionality, so they had access keys. The stuff he was storing could be argued to kind of make sense, but as the owners of this service we said "no fucking way, we aren't your database". He escalated to management who knew he was going to quit if he didn't get his promo. They overruled and last I heard that service was still being used as that asshole's database. He did promise to fix it right after the project launched, but the second he had his promo he changed orgs.

For some reason, Amazon is full of this sort of terrible tech debt and they can't figure out why everyone has to be on terrible on call rotations.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#42

Post by coliveira »

lr4444lr wrote: post #21
t_mann wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that now, but once you actually are in such a position and you realize that you could pay off your college debt plus your mortgage in 2-3 years, things might change in your mind.

At the companies where the bonuses could reasonably be that high, I'd probably rather have stock options - because those are contractually mine.

No company will give you options from day one. They will give them over several years if you meet their expectations, which is essentially the same as a bonus.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#43

Post by zuhayeer »

This reminds me of the structure used at many high frequency trading firms today. The nature of the work in quant work is different and likely much easier to tie to financial output. But the bonuses can sometimes even go up to 5x the base: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Hudson-River-Trading/salaries...

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#44

Post by ipaddr »

t_mann wrote: post #16
lr4444lr wrote: post #7

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…

You say that now, but once you actually are in such a position and you realize that you could pay off your college debt plus your mortgage in 2-3 years, things might change in your mind.

When you count on that bonus that came last year it could mean that mortgage goes under.

Making a lot of money is great until it doesn't come for whatever reason.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#45

Post by nindalf »

daenz wrote: post #38
exdsq wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just coming to say that - he's not the best at keeping things secret lol.

There's a difference between keeping a secret, and avoiding legal trouble by not specifically naming an employer.

Is Valve really going to file a lawsuit against him and argue in court whether this actually happened or not? They're not. Do they even have grounds to file a lawsuit? Likely not, American courts aren't that sympathetic to libel claims.

But let's assume for a minute that what you're saying has some merit. Maybe Valve does have grounds to sue. And maybe they're interested in suing. In that case, is this lousy attempt at being coy helpful? It's clear from his bio that he's only worked at one such company. So it's abundantly clear to everyone who he's working for.

In reality, this pattern ("worked for a large software-advertising company with a double O in it's name") is fucking annoying. It's designed to make the reader curious and more likely to read the rest of what's written. It's similar to clickbait in that sense. And I wish to God it would stop. I'd request people to please just name names, or keep it yourself.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#46

Post by phillipcarter »

Mr_P wrote: post #5

If you replace the word "bonus" with "promo", then you unfortunately get an eerily-accurate reflection of the state of FAANG companies.

Money is clearly a factor, but I think a lot of it comes down to culture in the working group. Promotions mean status upgrades, and in a lot of these companies, status is actually important.

At least at Microsoft, there's a culture of where your title determines if you're a part of the "in group" or not. Not at least Senior? Forget about anyone outside your immediate working group taking you seriously, let alone deferring to your judgement on things. Not at least Principal? Put your ambitions aside, because you won't be allowed to make decisions that are actually important. There's exceptions to this, like if you're in charge of something nobody else thinks they understand.

As a result, this means that there's a lot of squabbling and weirdness around September. Especially in the Senior -> Principal jump, since that is also influenced a lot by department budget. There's also not any official acknowledgement of a good terminal level. Implicitly, that's the Senior band (and really the 2nd level within the band), because beyond that you're usually expected to do more than just be a wildly productive individual contributor. But everyone who's Senior eventually feels the pressure to somehow level up to Principal, because they have the expertise to make important decisions but their organization often won't allow them to be in the room where those decisions are made. Thus the backstabbing, jealousy, weirdness, and more.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#47

Post by devwastaken »

nindalf wrote: post #45
daenz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between keeping a secret, and avoiding legal trouble by not specifically naming an employer.

Is Valve really going to file a lawsuit against him and argue in court whether this actually happened or not? They're not. Do they even have grounds to file a lawsuit? Likely not, American courts aren't that sympathetic to libel claims. But let's assume for a minute that what you're saying has some merit. Maybe Valve does have grounds to sue. And maybe they're interested in suing. In that case, is this lousy attempt…

American civil system is not based on merit or reason. Anyone can file for any reason, any decent lawyer can make some claims that will require you to argue against, else they be automatically defaulted to true and you lose. It doesn't matter if the big corp wins or not, the toll it takes on you is threat enough.

This isn't about civil disputes anyways. No employer wants to see a prospective new hire trash talking their previous company. Doesn't matter if it's deserved or not, it's seen as a liability.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#48

Post by jameshart »

t_mann wrote: post #40
krallja wrote: post #35

The only bonus I have ever received which didn’t make me feel scummy was profit-sharing. Most companies don’t do it because profit is for the owners. Everything else just feels like a way to decide whether or not to pay me what I’m worth after I’ve already done the work

How is that different? Somehow we have to measure what your individual contribution to the company's profits was, which, unless you work in sales maybe, is going to involve a lot of judgment.

At Wrox Press during the dotcom era editorial staff were comped with direct sales-derived royalties. Was the most connected I have ever been to a metric that clearly mattered to the business.

There were some perverse incentives - people wanted to work on bestsellers, there was jockeying for credit for carryover work from previous editions, but in general it promoted a creative energy around trying to publish hit books, editors had a good deal of direct ownership that could actually impact the product they were shipping, and the scheme even helped align you on the same team as authors, whose compensation is also royalty driven - where for many other publishers author royalties are almost in conflict with what the publisher wants from the deal.

Such a direct unit sales driven profit share is hard to imagine engineering into many other businesses but it’s always stood out to me as a remarkably powerful model.

Re: At one company I worked at only one thing mattered: the yearly bonus

#49

Post by Jasper_ »

Mr_P wrote: post #5

If you replace the word "bonus" with "promo", then you unfortunately get an eerily-accurate reflection of the state of FAANG companies.

A lot of companies boot you out if you don't get a promo. The idea is that you take the "worst" 10% of your workforce (where "worst" means not getting promos), and fire them, every year. Even if you have no desire in chasing the promo train for more money, you sort of need to play along, just to have a job in a year or two.
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