On Personal Enjoyment and Compensation
Today has been another hard day… specifically, for me in the realm of emotional turmoil and personal happiness. Yesterday, I got my yearly bonus number, and it was less than 50% of what I had expected. This expectation was based on deals and promises and last year's numbers, and frankly, I was more than a little disappointed. Yet, after I heard the number, I was calm, and collected on the outside, and asked if that was it.
My manager then wanted to know how I felt.
Hmmm… first, I think this is a very silly move on his part. He knows what he said, he knows it's less than 50%, and he expects anything but anger from me? Foolish man. But he wants to know. So I tell him Hey, it's not important to the discussion, is it? Just to try and say "You don't really want to know - you're just trying to give me a chance to vent."
But he pressed on, and said that he cares about how I feel.
Not true, I think. Not really. If he really cared, he'd have made the number bigger, and if it wasn't going to be bigger, he wouldn't try to make it out to seem like anything other than a kick in the pants. You hired me because I was smart… why are you now treating me like I'm an idiot? I know what's going on here. I've owned a business. It's not about good/bad. It's about compensation. Period.
So we had a talk, and the more we got into it the less honest they seemed to be with me. Maybe it was because I was asking a lot of uncomfortable questions of them - like if the compensation isn't important, or I can do nothing to impact it, then what's my motivation for working hard? Why not just put in a decent day's work and be done? Why kill myself?
They had no answer, because there is no defensible answer to that. In this business, they pay you for killing yourself. I've heard them say it time and again, place after place. That's why the bonus is so much of your yearly compensation. They want to see you earn it every single day. I get it. No problem. But then when you come through, they better pay you, or someone else will.
Which brings me to my point… If I'm getting no personal gratification from this job - or let's say I'm not getting any additional personal gratification from this job for working the extra hours, then why do it? It's a simple problem. I'm sacrificing my home life for this job, in the thought that I'd get paid for it and make my home life better. But if that implicit contract is broken, then what's the point? I might as well live on less, and be happier because I'm not killing myself.
Better yet - get a different job and work for someone that honors that contract.
It's a classic blind spot… companies spend gobs of money finding the "right people", and then some will cheap out on the bonus. This makes the person leave, and the replacement cost is far far greater than the difference in the bonus. It's simple business sense. Dollars and sense. If you pay a good person well, they will stay. Pay them poorly, and they leave, and you have to spend even more money to get the next good one.
Don't forget that the bad reputation you're building with employees as a cheapskate firm will make it even harder to get good people in the door. It's just bad business.
If, as an employer, you have set expectations, then you better meet them, or get pretty close. And less than 50% of expectations isn't even remotely close.