Christmas Bonus 1

[casseopeia]

I haven't seen a Christmas bonus since maybe 2007, until this year. My boss left this on my desk.

Just curious if anyone is seeing Christmas bonuses. Don't say how much, especially if it was a good one. Just an informal survey…


"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[KENAT]

We've been given jackets/sweatshirts for the last 3 years.

(We also get profit sharing but that's quarterly 6-8 weeks in arrears so we got our last one for Q3 at the very end of November.)

Given the shenanigans with your employer I'm surprised it wasn't a Christmas pink slip as used to be tradition around here under previous ownership/management.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[MiketheEngineer]

We get ours in April - if available. Helps out with tax day!!

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Not so much a Xmas bonus as profit sharing... decided in October, given in January. It's a percent of your salary here... most other places I've worked for gave me a shirt, a Jacob's ladder, similar trinkets. I think the largest non-bonus I've received was a $100 gift card to the local grocery store.

Considering the arseholes you work for, cass, I'm surprised it's not a box of laxatives.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[cranky108]

Did someone say profit shareing? Would be nice, except I work for a non-profit.

The best we get is our picture next to Santa's lap.

 

[KENAT]

cranky, profit sharing sucked when we were making a loss;-).

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[SteveMartin]

I think I got my most recent Christmas bonus at about the same time as Cass.

 

[TED7]

We were blessed with a red, white and rose bottle of Germany's finest grape flavored anti-freeze.

How does profit sharing work when you make a loss? Pay your employer back some wages?

Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

 

[cvg]

maybe there is something more to this...

whammy  [hwam-ee, wam-ee]
noun, plural -mies.
1. the evil eye; jinx.
2. bad luck or misfortune.
3. a devastating blow, setback, or catastrophe
4. put the whammy on,
a. to give the evil eye to; jinx.
b. to destroy, end, or eradicate

Origin:
1935–40; whammy, one of the methods of putting a whammy on someone being to strike the fist into the palm

often double whammy, "hex, evil eye," 1932, of unknown origin, popularized 1941 in Al Capp's comic strip "Li'l Abner."

 

[casseopeia]

Well that explains a lot cvg!

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[greenone]

We get the profit sharing in January, and a choice of cash, or apply to 401k. Not really a bonus, as I am eligible for profit sharing of a certain percent each year.

Usually we get a small gift card ($25) to local store.

 

[KENAT]

Actually, under normal conditions, if we make a loss [or very small profit] it just means no payout from the profit sharing scheme.

However, when things were really bad, (asides from the 50% reduction in staff over several years) they actually cancelled profit sharing and implemented a pay cut for a few months - though they did pay back some of the loss retroactively.

I thought a better idea would have been to increase theoretical profit sharing during the cut so that in the unlikely event we made profit we would have got some money to make up for lost wages. I would have thought this would at least provide a little motivation to make up for the pay cut. However greater minds than min disagreed.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Not to totally sidetrack things, but profit sharing really only works well if the employees have a certain amount of control on how the company performs. Despite my contribution to the technology (and therefore product line) of the company, since I'm drone #x out of several 100k drones my performance isn't even a little wiggle in the bottom line. Essentially, the company performance bonus is a complete crapshoot that I have zero control over. This is vastly different in companies where you are 10% of the entire workforce.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[moltenmetal]

We get a Christmas advance on the profit sharing every year, with the balance coming about six months later. We refer to this as the "bonus induced lobotomy": we slave away, building resentment toward the demands of customers and of the business, the stress etc. Then every half year they hand you an envelope. When you open it, a scalpel leaps out and cuts away the resentful part of your brain...

We get the pay cut every month in the form of a below-median salary- or at least that's how it's supposed to work in theory. The bonus tops us up to above median if we meet the company's expectations for profit. There's a stick as well as a carrot that way- our fixed costs are kept low and we only pay ourselves better if we deserve and can afford it by making more money for the company. If we exceed that target, which is based on an industry norm, an increasing fraction of the unanticipated profit ends up in the bonus pool. Beyond a certain level, the employees get ALL of it.

For all but one of the years I've been with my company, we've done somewhere between well and ridiculously well. During that slow year, when the tumbleweeds were blowing through our producton floor, there was no bonus and only cheese and crackers in the lunchroom instead of a Christmas party- but we kept everybody. Given that the year AFTER that one was one of our best years on record, hindsight shows that it was a brilliant business decision to keep people through the loss- but at the time, most of us expected that the layoffs would come any day. The loyalty shown by the business doesn't go unnoticed by the employees, and shows up in staff retention.

The employee's share of the bonus is based on how the business does, not how your project does. Sometimes your job is to make vinegar from the sour grapes you're handed, and you don't get punished for that. There's discretion in there for management to recognize good or bad performance, but they can't choose to take it all themselves. Employees here have ownership and get the financials, so we're a little harder to rip off than might be true in a larger business.

As MacGyver says, it only works if the employees can see how their efforts affect the bottom line. It works brilliantly in our business- on average. It motivates the high performers to a large extent. It doesn't work with everyone. Some quickly see it as an entitlement. Others value their own time and effort too highly, choosing to take the easy route in their work rather than innovating or putting in the extra effort to improve our bottom line. Unfortunately the proportion of people with those defects grows as the business does, which dilutes the effect for everyone.

 

[hydrac]

We were just given Starbucks gift cards the other day from the head of engineering in our department. I don't know whether it was expensed or straight out of pocket from him though.

 

[frv]

We used to have quarterly bonuses, not Christmas bonuses.

Obviously, there were no bonuses of any kind from mid 2009 to last year.

We received a modest Christmas bonus last year, and I'm expecting something similar this year.

 

[HDS]

I think we got a gift certificate for a ham. It has been on and off over the years but never anything great.

I have a friend that was working at Motorola paging when things were really good in the previous century. Her quarterly bonus was 25% of her salary! Letter on Motorola decided it was better to give bonuses in stock instead of cash.

 

[eyec]

i got the day off!

 

[TED7]

I discovered today I get a Christmas attendance bonus on top of my wine. 50% of it is based on my attendance. 100% as it happens, so I got that entire 50%. The remaining 50% is based on my department's attendance. I got 25% of that. There are 3 of us, I couldn't work out which of the other two had racked up the lates to do me out of the rest. There will be words when I find out.



Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

 

[TheTick]

Boss man once again showed that he likes to treat his employees well.