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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

> After review by a team of volunteer engineers, the recipients receive our heartfelt thanks and a small token of our appreciation.

I hadn't heard about this, good for Google. Just how small is the token?

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From http://blog.bonus.ly/a-look-at-googles-peer-to-peer-bonus-sy...:

> A typical example would be one employee giving $175 to a peer that “coded an SQL query for me and saved me a lot of time.” ... the sums involved might be considered “insulting”.

It makes me a little sad that 175 bucks for a relatively minor task is considered an insult. Maybe it's not enough to drive the behaviour the company is looking for, and sure it's not a huge amount in the scheme of an top quality software dev's paycheck, but it's still a couple of days' pay for a lot of the US.

That's the internal peer bonus. Once you factor in taxes (bonuses incur a higher rate), depending on your base salary, you are left with about $100. It's definitely more valuable than a thank you card, but the main point is about acknowledging someone that went beyond duty. It's not for e.g. substantial projects -- that's what spot bonuses and yearly performance bonuses are for. Your snide remark borders more on "insulting".

As for open source contributors, there's definitely schwag involved. I'm not sure if any sums are involved, since there might be legal and financial implications for both sides.

No need to bite at the person you're responding to. That's a direct quote from the article.

> A typical example would be one employee giving $175 to a peer

Don Knuth only gives $2.56 for his bugs! I guess bug hunting for google is more lucrative than bug hunting for Knuth.

They'd probably be better suited to giving nothing except thanks. Once you put a dollar figure on it, people naturally compare it to how much profit their time would get in other places.

Might be something nice to put on your CV or resume. I would not consider doing this sort of thing for free a habit though.

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