
Five-figure bonuses stun employees  - prakash
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27958458/
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sgrove
I was afraid this was going to be some story about top-level management
cutting jobs in the harsh economic climate, and then rewarding themselves
(only somewhat handsomely) with bonuses. I'm glad to see an uplifting story
instead.

From the perspective of the purchasing company, I wonder what effect it would
have on employee retention. The article mentions that life hasn't changed much
in the interim, but it was also unexpected. Some employees may find this a
good opportunity to strike out on their own, or retire just a bit earlier.

I would be curious to see if the aggregate effect is one of employee loyalty
or loss.

~~~
Prrometheus
It's a somewhat hard life being a financier because your pay is so variable.
You might mock the I-banker who got "only" a 5-figure bonus, but what if he
took out a mortgage in 2004 with his new wife on the premise that he would be
making six figures? Variation is a cost of the lifestyle, and a stressful one
at that. It is hard to make any long-term plans. On that note, it's rare to
find bankers without family trouble, due to both the work hours and the
financial issues.

~~~
Retric
Plenty of people with highly variable pay save most of their income in the
good times to deal with this. Dumping 80% of that 100k bonus into savings
might not feel glamorous, but it's going to help your home life more than you
might think. And down the road you can transition to a lest intense job and
have enough savings to top off your lifestyle.

PS: Then again spending more than you make seems is far more common among the
highly compensated.

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blasdel
My grandfather did a similar thing!

He had an independent uranium geology/prospecting/speculating business in the
70s -- with a bunch of young roughneck employees he would go out with a drill
rig to the middle of nowhere on private land, trading a new well to the
landowner for the opportunity to take a core sample.

He was making decent money in mining claims, then Three Mile Island happened,
and uranium prices dropped through the floor, killing all cash flow. A bunch
of the employees effectively became family, practically living with them on
little pay.

When uranium prices bounced back in the 90s, my grandfather sold a number of
claims (the business's previously-worthless assets), and his old loyal
employees who had eventually moved on to paying work got _really late_
5-figure+ bonuses.

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patio11
I think that is a very kind and generous thing those employers have done. Had
it been me, I would have considered it even more kind and generous to
structure the bonus such that it was not lump-sum.

Sudden wealth, even sudden relative wealth, destroys a lot of people who are
not used to dealing with it.

Heck, banking on the power of defaults (90% of employees choose the default
contribution for their IRA, 90% choose the default withholding, 90% choose
...), you could probably have accomplished as much good by giving everyone a
letter saying:

"Thank you for your service. You are being given a large bonus this year. You
have two options for receiving it: less money now or more money later. If you
want to receive more money later, do nothing. If you want to receive less
money now, fill out the attached form and hand it to your supervisor by
Christmas."

~~~
bmj
I wonder, given the circumstances surrounding the bonus (the company was
sold), if this wouldn't be an option.

~~~
patio11
If you've got $6.5 million to give away I'm fairly sure you can pay some
lawyer $10k to set up a trust. (Heck, just give him a slice of the interest on
the trust -- half a percent should cover his expenses nicely.)

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gaius
It's about time people working for companies making real, actual things were
rewarded for the wealth they create in the same style as mere symbol-
manipulators.

~~~
petercooper
Sure - it's an awesome story and more should do it, but you give the
impression that manufacturing is more noble or meaningful than "mere symbol
manipulation". Is software a "real, actual thing"? Is cancer research a "real,
actual thing"? We can't all work in the industrial sector - nor should we.

~~~
gaius
It was a dig at the Wall Street types who manipulate symbols of value (i.e.
money) without creating real wealth themselves.

Of course manipulating symbols in the wider sense can create wealth - we're
hackers, right? ;-)

~~~
yters
If the stock market doesn't create real wealth, then why is it so successful?
Is it merely siphoning real wealth away to the pockets of parasites?

The stock market is about giving money to those who will use it most
effectively, so, when done right, it can be seen as very efficient resource
allocation.

~~~
jleyank
At best, the market's the place where funding originates. It helps others
create wealth. At worst, it's merely a middleman, pocketing a cut of other
people's transactions. This is accepted as it's useful to have a "market for
money", but I would not say it creates wealth in the same way as something
that processes ideas to sellable code or raw materials to finished product.

~~~
yters
Both code and the market create value by processing information. Code can
break too, but that's not an argument against writing code. So, I'm not seeing
a strong argument that the market is essentially different than any other sort
of value creating information processing we do.

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mihasya
If all companies worked like this, trickle down economics would actually work.
Till then...

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st3fan
I think this is great. It is the right thing to do.

