Ask HN: Insultingly Bad Bonus, Bay Area, Cause for Concern?

Talk to your manager. Ask him or her if there's a message here. If there is, then there's no reason for your boss to beat around the bush.

A likely explanation is that they had some sort of cut-off where employees who joined after a certain date get a pro-forma minimum amount.

I would echo this. Talk to your manager and find out how bonuses are calculated and distributed. I would also voice your concern.

Yup. Silence gives consent. Don't be a quiet slave.

Indeed you should be polite and direct in discussing this surprise with your manager. However, it's a common (and bad) sign of poor management when a company doesn't communicate proper expectations with it's employees. In your field, and your city, and given the rest of the details you've explained, it does sound like an explanation is in order.

Whoa. I can't believe how many people are saying just talk to your manager. I am a manager and I really disagree with that advice. Talking to your manager may need to happen at some point but it should certainly not be the first step.

Unfortunately, in the real world, even a completely rational fair question asked to a manager can have negative results for the employee. The risks compound when a new employee might not fully realize they asked a question that the manager thought was stupid or inappropriate and now thinks differently/worse of them.

...To answer your question. Yes of course it's cause for concern

A $100 bonus like is most likely one of 3 things:

1. It's a fuck you level intentionally bad bad bonus as you suggested.

2. It was a mistake by HR and there should be two more zeros (at least) that are missing.

3. There's no mistake by HR or bad intention by your boss, the $100 check is correct, but it fails the "people I work for need to have enough common sense that I don't despise them and think they are clueless" test.

As for how I might play it. Is there a coworker not your manager who you are friendly enough with and trust to just bring this up casually? You don't have to talk numbers or express disappointment just get a better understanding of what other bonuses looked like.

Even if you and your manager are bros and you think you can chat off the record, I still wouldn't do it. Find someone else. If you can't find a coworker to chat with casually then speak to HR, maybe bring it up in a nice way: "Hi HR, just wanted to ask about how our bonuses should be reported for tax purposes, I heard it might be a different tax rate, by the way just a random q too, are $100 dogshit bonuses like this normal"?

Either way start networking. Never hurts to start building that network even if this works out ok and you stay a while.

Good luck, mate.

P.S. If they really did make you stand and queue up, I would quit for that alone.

I'm also a manager, and I think asking your manager is the obvious thing to do ... BUT it is a good idea to ask a team-mate first. The C-levels' speech might just be hot air, and everyone could have got similar

FWIW I brought up a shitty bonus directly with our CTO after 2 months with the company I still work for 6 years later. He didn't change it, but judging by how he's behaved towards me since I think he admired my balls

>> P.S. If they really did make you stand and queue up, I would quit for that alone.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

I've never worked for a big company, so this kind of thinking, while not really a surprise, is still kind of shocking. It's unfortunate to be in a situation where you can't be candid and straight-forward with your manager. I think I'd last 2 seconds in a job like that.

Well, just for comparison's sake, employees at Google are able to give each other bonuses that are worth more than that. They're subject to manager approval of course, but they can be given for things as simple as "this person was my go-to help for understanding this new platform I haven't worked on before". So take that for what it's worth.

That's pretty awesome - like a real tip-jar. I wonder how much it gets abused...

There are some reasonable limits. Like, if A gave a peer bonus to B, then B can't give a peer bonus to A for some time. Also, some limits on the sending and receiving sides, but I have not heard of hitting them except one case, when an engineer fixed a nasty bug affected thousands of engineers. He got many tens of peer bonuses the same day, but only had first N of them approved (which makes perfect sense)

We use something similar at our company, we use the http://www.achievers.com/ platform for this.

We get new credit every month, which we can give to anyone in that month, but if you do not give them away they expire.

We do not talk about big bonuses (as I am aware the credits value is different by location, at mine it is much less then 100 USD for a month), but yeah, it is abused.. Some colleagues just exchange it on the end of the month.

A significant portion of compensation at Valve is determined in a similar way. It's detailed somewhere in their employee handbook IIRC: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

Once upon a time, I singlehandedly retooled my company's flagship app for an entirely new software platform in less than three weeks, in order to ensure we were available on the new platform when it launched. I worked days, nights, weekends, and even dreamed about the damned thing as I was porting it over.

Six months later: review time. My boss tells me that he was monumentally impressed with the dedication, perseverance, and capability I demonstrated throughout the year, especially on the aforementioned product. And, as a result, he was very proud to give me...a 3% raise. I was deeply offended, and that was the beginning of the end for me there. I quit a few months later. I hear that layoffs have been rampant since I departed, which makes me feel a little better.

Anyway, long story short: fuck those guys. Polish your resume and tell them you're doing it.

Yup. Money can make anyone into a sociopath.

I'm not sure whether you're talking about the parent poster, or their boss, or both. I kind of agree with 'both'. But isn't that how it's meant to work? Business is business and personal is personal and you keep them separate?

Agreed. Thinking about it any other way is what I would consider insane. Only thinking the "business" is allowed to be a greedy bastard is what leads to income inequality. If the employee doesn't assert their own worth, no one else will. You can't be "business" on one end and "personal/loyal" on the other. You'll get used, abused and see no rewards.

I dunno somewhere out there is a healthy business social structure where employees are serving companies and companies are looking out for them as well, and maybe companies like Google have it. But we are far away in our business landscape from those waters in the majority of companies. It's an assumption from both sides that everyone is out to get the other. And therefore everyone acts as if that's the only way things can be. Though it's not the case. But the problem is that people are trained in this sort of environment so that's all that they know.

In spirit I completely agree with you, but I disagree about your notion that your version can exist. Maybe you, me and a bunch of other people could do it this way, but it only takes a few to break that system, which is how it is now.

Yeah I agree, that's why idealism fails a lot more often than rationalism and that rationalists have been much more successful than idealists in running the world and getting to actually produce.

Nothing spells "hubris" like a little success with a swollen ego.

xoxo

Missing is Aaron's base salary in this reply. 3% at different annual salaries can mean an awful lot to a lot of people.

As a manager, and also as someone who has done similar herculean efforts, it can be 'dangerous' to reward such efforts because it becomes the norm, you are expected to put in this kind of effort on a regular basis.

My take: if this guy was expected to spend three weeks completely rebuilding the architecture of a core system, then (a) his management layer sucks and he should have quit for that reason alone and I imagine that had more to do with the resulting layoffs later on, (b) retooling a system in three weeks of non-stop effort, even with minimal sleep is about 300-350 hours of work -- even spread out that's about 8-10 weeks of "regular" effort, which as a 20yr vet in the industry, doesn't sound like that complex of a system.

Some years, the US cost of living increases more than 3%.

The Social Security Administration publishes numbers[1], although they are arguably somewhat lower than the actual COLA changes.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html

My random advice from the internet is collect more information from a neutral source: Payroll. Contact Payroll not HR and simply ask "How was my bonus calculated?"

1. Negative information: Don't react toward Payroll.

2. No information: Ask who to ask.

3. Mistake by Payroll, thank them for correcting it.

Then consider your options.

Good luck.

That's exactly the bonus amount that prompted me to quit a health tech startup that had just been sold to a larger company. I wasn't the only one that left either.

Funny, because they really needed us to stay on because the acquisition meant a fair amount of tech work to integrate the product with the parent company's tech. My manager actually started crying when I quit...I think I was the 3rd or 4th to quit that day.

To me, $100 is worse than 0, especially when (as in your case, and mine), it's clear that the company had a great year. In my case, we also knew that the management had helped themselves to very substantial payouts.

I wasn't expecting to get rich, but I was at least expecting something that was, say 5-20%+ of my yearly salary. We had worked our asses off for 2 years, I was employee #13.

Edit: We all, of course, talked among ourselves. Everyone other than the equity holding employees got $100. So, it wasn't an intentional "fuck you" bonus...just an incredibly stupid miscalculation that we wouldn't interpret it that way.

It has occurred to me that bonuses don't suit me well. As a software engineer my ability to work rests upon many different layers of knowledge (my trade), assumptions (there will be electricity at my client's office when I arrive), beliefs (I will get paid).

I work hard to make sure each of these elements are in place, so that I can free my mind of them, and focus on my work.

Well a bonus turns one of my most important factors for employment into a variable, based on my performance. This is a cognitive load that I refuse to bear while carrying out my trade.

If you read up on research regarding bonuses they also seem to lead to worse performance when it comes to cognitive tasks, and I'm unwilling to work with a company that doesn't use data, facts and reason as some of their driving factors.

Doesn't that exclude you from all major tech companies? Also, I'd be interested in reading this research if you have a link to it?

time.com/3342841/bonus-bad-news/

Yes it does, but I pretty much regard work as I do dating. In this respect being selective usually pays.

What about year end hikes ? Aren't they variable too.

I'm a contractor.

At the end of every year I'll be bemused when my employer gives me a chunk of free money for essentially doing the job I'm paid to do. I'll say a slightly awkward "Thank you, you really didn't have to..." and wander away from the meeting.

I don't understand bonuses really, I've come to simply accept they're a thing that happens and I'll cross that bridge when I come to it each year.

They exist to reward when times are good, but to not require pay cuts when times are lean.

Having worked at a couple of places that did bonuses I've come regard them as a bad thing. Even when the formula for calculating bonuses is completely open and data driven it still feels unfair and quite arbitrary since on an individual level there is little you can do to control for most of the factors. There are few things that can create in-company animosity more than feeling you didn't get your bonus because some other team slacked off or not getting a bonus while another group does despite feeling you worked at least as hard as they did.

"Record profits" by how much? I get the impression that the management were exaggerating. It would also be useful to know how much more senior staff got and especially the top managers. If your company is public, jump onto the SEC database and check the numbers for yourself.

You might have to also consider whether you were paid a generous bump up in salary and relocation expenses. Your manager, might have had to take your hiring costs into consideration when calculating your bonus.

Six months is kinda too short to expect a huge bonus. $100 is pretty paltry, but I'd talk to your manager about it.

If you feel like your manager is bull-shitting you, then yes you need to leave. I regret not leaving my job earlier when I was in a similar position.

Don't do anything rash, like others are suggesting. If your boss has told you that he's pleased he hired you, that you're making good contributions and you like the company, then there is no reason you shouldn't be compensated accordingly.

Pull your boss aside for a serious conversation and discuss it; even though you haven't been on the books long, $100 is indeed pathetic.

There's too many good high paying jobs in the Bay area to waste your time and effort at a place that doesn't see that.

Talk to your boss. That amount so low that there's no question of overreacting: you basically didn't get a bonus. Having worked before in larger tech companies, I would entertain the idea that the amount is a fluke of accounting rules--you said you only started six months ago: maybe there is some kind of vesting rule. It's very likely it's nothing personal. If the company is indeed doing as well as you say, they would either give you no bonus or something real. If it's the former, they'd probably be talking to you about leaving. It's unlikely that this is some kind of passive-aggressive gesture because they secretly want you gone. Unlikely, but not impossible: bad management definitely exists, so anything is possible. If this was an intentional act then definitely leave at your earliest convenience. But I bet it wasn't.

$100 bonus is insulting for self driven creativity work. It shows management has no clue on how to motivate people and reward people. That might demoralize not just you but the rest of the company. It might be a cause of concern.

You should start looking immediately.

Not a totally apples-to-apples comparison, but I used to work for a large law firm on the East Coast. I started in July, and for my first year's bonus, received a crisp $100. Seemed low, but it was the same for my entire cohort. Probably just company policy. They liked our work, the company was doing well, and bonuses were fine the next year.

My guess is that those with less than 12 months are normally given nothing and everyone who normally receives nothing like new people, interns and cafe workers only got $100. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time but giving someone who would have received a fat bonus and has put in 6 months $100 is kind of insulting. If true they should use the same calculation they use for other developers, divide the total by 12 and then multiply it by the number of months the employee has been there.

If you messed up this bad your employer would fire you. Fire your employer. Don't make a stink. Get an offer and give notice. Discussions with management aren't going to do anything but leave a bad taste in their mouth. Never ever bad mouth previous employers and teams no matter how bad they are. It won't help you and it could hurt you.

Now... I wouldn't actually quit immediately. Do your job well and get to the two year mark. You want everyone sad to see you go. Employment is a means to end and keeping your resume well groomed is critical. Your current job is the last step to your next job.

I doubled my compensation (110k to 240k, remote work from NE Coast city) in 4 years and every manager I left wished I hadn't, but they simply couldn't swallow the trajectory I could get by leaving. Each job has been better than the last and each job has been a step towards my next one. I believe I have 30% more to go and then I will be done. All this to goad companies into paying the amount they are actually willing to pay, but simply refuse to due policies that prioritize cost management of visible costs over retention. Go figure.

I know people at past jobs who are getting absolutely demolished on comp for doing the same work I do. One guy making < 100k. You don't necessarily need to leave if you are willing to take on more leadership roles and title changes and can wrangle that, but I don't want that. I want to simply get paid the max for what I do at any given time. My time is valuable to me and it is not a renewable resource.

Employee retention is their job not yours. You are a fungible cog to them and you should behave likewise. Employers are only as good to their employees as they have to be and you should act in kind. You are literally punished for staying with your current employer and rewarded for changing employers. You didn't create this incentive structure you just have to work with it. You shouldn't feel guilty. They are adults running a business and could be competitive if they chose to.

Employers behave this way because as a group employees tolerate ridiculous behavior ranging from constant nickel and diming on compensation to outright nonsense like this. They set progress for existing hires based on churn and churn is usually not high enough to drive change. They also base progress on trailing indicators (churn) at which point the best have already left. You can't fix it.

I have come up with a very loose calculation for how long I stay at a company. It starts at 4 years. HR is bad? -3 months. Weak comp improvement (<5%) at the end of year 1 or year 2? -6 months per year. Lied about something in the offer letter? -6 months. Amazing team members and work? +1 year. External offers > 30% more for same or better quality work? -1 year. Bad manager? -1 year. If it gets down below two years I will stay for two years unless I can't possibly stand it which has never happened.

Obviously I won't change jobs if I don't stand to gain something substantial to justify the transaction costs and risks.

I am not sure the company that justifies staying longer than two years when you have room to move up exists. My current employer is in what people might think of as a different class so I don't know how it's going to turn out. I didn't create the incentive structure I just work with it and I refuse to apologize. This is business and they are not entitled to more than two years.

Employers don't cry because you confuse brinksmanship for negotiation. Learn what a BATNA is and get with the program. You don't choose how much your employees are paid. You only choose whether you get to be the one paying them.

Not sure how big your company is, but my guess is you've only been there for part ofThe year, so you are considered very junior. Many companies don't give bonuses so I personally wouldn't sweat it.

Some companies will not give out full bonuses for new hires if there was a signing bonus. It should be specified in your employment contract.

Plenty of advice here. I would like to know how this turns out though.

Wow, that's ridiculous

Companies in developing countries give better bonuses

when negotiating your contract, a discretionary bonus not written into your contract has expected value 0.

It shows that your boss basically thinks you're an idiot. Management types often think that engineers have some sort of autism and so are easy to fool; the reality is that most of us know exactly when we're being fooled - We just go along with it usually because we are too nice (and care too much about other people).

I would quit on the spot if I were you. This guy is making tons of money on top of your superior brain and then he has the audacity to treat you like some idiot.

You have to be aggressive. Find other key engineers who also feel mistreated and threaten to quit together if you don't get what you deserve.

OP - if you followed this joker's advice and took instant offense at something that could have been a mistake or company policy, then as your manager I'd be delighted if you quit. I don't people like this on my team

I agree making waves that could follow you around is a bad idea. Let other employees mind their own compensation issues.

I'm not against collective bargaining as a concept it just needs to be handled correctly.

Welcome to corporation ladder. Game of thrones in real life.