Do You Get Bonuses At Work?

In My Humble Opinion
1

And if so, what are they for?

I work in a doctor’s office for four physicians, privately owned amongst them. They do have a bonus program, but it is very hush-hush and nebulous. I heard a rumor once that someone has to nominate you for the bonus, but we’re not supposed to talk about it or tell anyone if we get one. They are, as far as I know, usually in the $200-300 range and most of us get one randomly every couple of years or so.

I’ve been there four years and have gotten two, one for general performance, and one for working at an annex office twice a week for a few months instead of the usual once a week. I expect to be getting another one any time now based on the previous timings.

What about you? I’m not asking how much you get, although you can provide that if you want. That would be nosy.

2

At my (law) office, there isn’t a set bonus program, and there is a lot of grumbling among the associates about it.

However, they did offer 2 random bonuses last year; the first, which I was not eligible for (both bonuses were only available to someone who had been there for 6 months, and I hadn’t yet reached that benchmark), was a couple grand (gross; they deducted taxes). The second, which I did get, was a grand, IIRC.

I believe the paralegals get a year end bonus. I’m not sure how much it is.

3

Nothing for me, working at a hospital. We’re lucky if we get a cost-of-living-raise!

4

I give my maggots-ahem, my valued employees all the animal crackers and goldfish that they can eat.

5

I typically get a couple a year. Various reasons. A complex project handled well. Above-and-beyond the normal workload. Special projects. Stuff like that. Adds up to maybe $1500 - $2500 per year, before taxes.

6

No. I work for a startup. There are no raises and no bonuses, so far (four years into the existence of the company). Last summer we didn’t even have a company party.

Employees are leaving like rats off a sinking ship.

7

Production manager – I get 10-15K each year. We’re are supposed to keep our mouths shut about how much we get, because not everyone gets the same. Last year, I know two people who do the same job. One got 3K, the other 5K.

8

My current bonus is about 7K a year and it is standard within the department. The sweetest bonus I ever had was in my first job and the company got sold. I was made a part owner 1 day before the deal went through and that was for about 20K. A few days later I got a retention bonus to follow through with the transition and that was for about 15K. Even sweeter than that was that I had to do very little for 4 months and didn’t even have to go to work and hardly anyone ever needed anything. I just checked my voice-mail twice a day from home. I pine for the late 1990’s I tell you. The IT market was sweet.

9

Where I work there is a set bonus program that is payed out every month. When we are busy our monthly bonus can equal or exceed our salary. There’s an additional retention bonus that is paid out quarterly.

10

At the last place I worked, I was given one “Employee of the Month” type bonus. There was no publicity and I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I got it. It was $500.

Funny story. The company always insisted that nobody in management got bonuses – never, the company couldn’t afford it. One of the managers (or his wife) had a garage sale. One item sold was a jacket belonging to the manager. The jacket was bought by a union member. In the pocket of the jacket was a paystub showing a bonus payment of several thousand dollars. This was during contract negotiations where management was talking about how bad things were financially. A photo of the checkstub was on the front page of the next union newsletter. :smiley:

11

We get a pretty generous year-end bonus; roughly just over one month’s pay.

12

I sort of get bonuses, I have a nice salary anyway but also have a great comp plan on top of that. (the comp plan currently caps at 35K or so, I’m trying to get that changed) We also get various bonuses during the year, usually contests and extra targets and the like. That usually comes to another few thousand a year.

My SO is in collections and nearly doubles his salary with his comp for how much he collects. They do little bonus things during the year, normally about $50-100 worth or so.

13

The PTO at my school collects donations from parents for the “Gift of Gratitude” at Christmas and at the end of the school year. The cash get pooled and divided among all of the staff members. Full time staff get $X and part time staff get about $X/2. The priests (we’re a Catholic school associated with a parish that has two priests) get some of the money too, I’d guess double what full time staff get. I’m part time and I think I got $100 around Christmas and then $75 last week, The idea is that parents can donate money and the don’t have to worry about buying teacher presents that teachers can’t actually use.

I’m not sure if that counts as a bonus, but it sure is a nice surprise to come back to my classroom and have a small, decorative basket with cash inside of it.

14

I don’t work, but my sister got a really thoughtful Christmas bonus last year. Her boss spent roughly the same on everyone ($200ish), but tailored their gifts, so she got a tab at her favourite bar, her champagne-loving colleague got some Bollinger, etc.

It’s a bit more standard at my fiance’s work. Their bonus is based on 1/3 individual performance, 1/3 department performance, and 1/3 company performance. Although the bonus is supposed to be at the company’s discretion it’s pretty well established as part of the salary package and anyone who didn’t get the usual 10-15% would be looking for another job.

15

I’m a teacher at a charter school, and I get a yearly bonus. I didn’t get one last year, as it was my first year with the company. It will be $2000 this year, and we get the check in late October.

We all know what our bonus will be at the end of the previous year; it’s included in our contract. We’re all given a contract with a letter that says, “Your raise will be $X, and your bonus will be $Y. Your salary for next year will be $XX, and your bonus of $Y will bring your total monetary compensation to $Z.”

16

My last job was with a consulting firm. We would pay a “utilization bonus” for each hour you billed about your target. Kind of like overtime. There’s also a discretionary bonus based on…well…I guess whatever the fuck they feel like.

Last year I rang up $15k for overtime but $0 discretionary. The year before that was about $7k discresionary and a couple thousand OT.

Of course my friends who are I-bankers and traders get bonuses that are many many times that.

17

Let’s see, I got about $100 Christmas bonus, and $25 in “safety” money, for my department not having any on the job accidents for the year. And fed lunch on the company about 10 times.

18

I’ve essentially had 3 major jobs, and some smaller ones.

At my first major job, the company had a very generous profit-sharing bonus structure, and the company had record setting profits that year. So, I ended up getting about a 48% bonus, meaning that I made 30k that year in salary, and about $14.5k in a bonus check. Same went for the following year, more or less- I got a raise, and made a little less in salary, but the same overall on the year. The third year, we didn’t turn a profit (Asian Financial Crisis of 1999), so there were no bonuses at all.

The next company I worked for gave out a $500 Xmas bonus to almost everyone, but that was it- it wasn’t performance based.
The last company I worked for, a consulting company, had a relatively generous bonus structure on paper. Each person had a billable rate, and they tracked the money they collected on the hours we billed.

In essence, we got a percentage of that, based on performance and pay grade. So, say I made 50k, had a billable rate of $250/hr, I billed out 1800 hours, and had a percentage of 13%, in theory, I should have been eligible for a bonus of about 8.5k.

The problem was, that me and some of my coworkers struggled to make enough hours to qualify for a bonus at all, due to the nature of our work, as opposed to most of the accounting type consultants.

In addition to that, even if we had, there was the pitfall that it’s what they COLLECTED, not what we billed. So if we billed 200 hours in the Spring, and they didn’t collect it until the following year, we were fucked on the year we billed the hours in.

We also had the issue of our management writing down the billed hours to satisfy clients, and in some cases, if they fucked up and we did a bunch of extra work that the clients didn’t need or want. Not our fault, but we suffered anyway.

It was a sweet deal if you did a job that you could bill 50-60 hours a week, every week. But, if you were like us, and billed 200 in a couple of weeks, then had a week of nothing, then billed 50 in 3 days, then nothing for a week, etc… it tended to be aggravating.

19

We get one quarterly and a yearly one just before Christmas (which is not called a Christmas bonus though many of us refer to it as such).

This is based on sales, safety and production iirc, The quarterly ones are a percentage of your quarterly earnings (not including any overtime) and the yearly ones are a percentage of your yearly earnings. So everyone gets the same percent but how much you get depends on how much you made.

20

I’m in the grocery business. Twice a year bonuses total about 10% annual salary.