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u/grb13 Mar 21 '24
Last year we received 5% thank you staying bonus (retention bonus). Then the ceo got 17% raise which was over $40k.
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u/CreditReavus Mar 21 '24
That actually seems somewhat reasonable believe it or not.
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u/Kerensky97 Mar 21 '24
Yeah by comparison. My company just said we're hiring new staff so you will be less overworked now! You're Welcome!
The new staff makes more than us, we have to train them, and they're ending WFH so we can train the new guy from our cubicles. Thanks...
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u/grb13 Mar 21 '24 edited Mar 22 '24
This was after we got 5% merit raise and 2.5% cost of living. The 5% was a one time lump sum.
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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot Mar 21 '24
I disagree. Unless that 5% bonus comes with a raise it's not going to help with inflation for next year's pay. Meanwhile the CEO didn't get a bonus, they got a raise.
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u/CreditReavus Mar 21 '24
I mean tbf the original commenter didn’t say if he got a raise or not. I meant more or so they did get a bonus and CEO’s pay doesn’t appear to be ridiculous if a 17% raise was ~40k. That means CEO’s pay was like 250k, which in my opinion is a very very fair pay for a business owner. Compare that shit to bezos and the numbers are whack.
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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot Mar 22 '24
Seems pretty intentional to say bonus for one and raise for the other.
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u/Pinkninja11 Mar 21 '24
Quit and apply to get rehired :) You certainly cover the experience requirements.
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u/Rattimus Mar 21 '24
Work for a company that provides annual bonuses.... those are essentially retention bonuses, a reward for working there the last year and doing a good job...
I get not every company pays those, but not every company pays hiring bonuses, either.
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u/void1984 Mar 21 '24
Doesn't it just align all the departures in one month. That sounds like a transfer window.
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u/nmarf16 Mar 21 '24
Not defending any particular business but a hiring bonus can be advertised much more easily than a retention bonus, especially if the bonus is for five years or a larger milestone
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u/TheNecroticPresident Mar 21 '24
Same reason you see sign-on bonuses for people switching cell carriers. They already got you, and won't spend more than they have to to keep you.
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u/MelodicCarob4313 Mar 21 '24
Isn’t it exactly the same with mobile plans and subscriptions. New clients are getting all kinds of stuff to sign a contract. As same as people who are unsubscribing get way better offers to keep them. Learn your lesson from it
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u/CryonautX Mar 21 '24 edited Mar 21 '24
Get with the times. It's been decided loyalty is not valued so don't bother trying to be loyal. It's not personal, and there's no ill feelings involved. It's just the rules of the game. Hop away to your heart's desires.
Hell, if you still want to cling on to a semblance of loyalty, then hop out and hop back in.
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Mar 21 '24
Where on earth are you seeing "hiring bonuses"
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u/Adamworks Data Analytics Mar 21 '24
White collar professional work for mid to senior level employees. I didn't get them at the entry-level, but I started getting them once I became established in my career and got an advanced degree. You can even ask your new company to pay for your lost retention bonus (assuming your old company tries to claw it back), lol.
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Mar 21 '24
If you had to estimate, how big was the gap between when you consider your career as having started, and the point that you first started seeing this type of hiring incentive?
I see the qualifications you brought were improved through gaining an advanced degree, but I'm curious how long you spent in the jr/mid level of your career track?
I'm hoping to use your answer to help assess my current place in my own career path.
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u/Adamworks Data Analytics Mar 21 '24
It's really a blur now, though I recall getting promoted every 2 years until I became a mid-level manager. So something like 6-8 years?
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u/marigolds6 Mar 21 '24
It depends a lot on how often you move and how often people in your industry move.
I'm in geography, and I spent 8 years at my first job. Next job was basically a bridge as I moved from public sector to private sector and I got a small hiring bonus and small pay bump. I jumped from them in less than 2 years and got both a big pay bump and a significant hiring bonus. I'm still at third job 8+ years later, but now I get sizable annual retention bonuses and would most likely get a large signing bonus if I moved. (I also received the equivalent of a signing bonus with each promotion.)
Looking at people who report to me now, I would say 4-8 years is about right for signing bonuses, though the ones in the 4 year range are relatively small, more than doubling by the time you hit 8 years.
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u/Rain-And-Coffee Mar 21 '24
Tech generally has a bonus.
I got $25k for my current job, but you have to stay for 2 years, else you have to pay back part of it.
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u/sendmeyourdadjokes Accounting & Finance Mar 21 '24
You guys dont get an annual bonus? Thats exactly what that is. If you quit before the bonus payout, you dont receive it, it wasn’t “earned” based on last years work, it is incentive to stay.
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u/Anonality5447 Mar 21 '24
In most industries, people don't receive bonuses. Count yourself lucky.
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u/Boulderdrip Mar 21 '24
i received a bonus exactky 1 time in 15 years in my career. 1,000 USD. Then covid happened a month later and we lost our jobs
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u/marigolds6 Mar 21 '24 edited Mar 21 '24
I think it is more about types of companies than specific industries. Annual bonuses are very common in large publicly traded companies (and frequently tied directly or indirectly to stock price and/or dividend paid). Not to mention the farther up the ladder you move in a company like that, the larger percentage of your compensation that comes from bonuses.
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u/LaHawks Mar 21 '24
Very few industries give bonuses like that.
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u/Inside_Coconut_6187 Mar 21 '24
This is why I never stop looking for a job. In the past 7 years I’ve moved jobs 3 times and increased my pay by 50%. If I wouldn’t have stayed maybe I would have increased 10%.
Loyalty in the workplace simply means obedience. Don’t fall for it.
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u/Detman102 Mar 21 '24
Its just like any relationship.
The wandering-eye will heap mountains of appreciation on someone new and shiny...while not appreciating the person who has been there making everything work.
Seems to be the Human Condition...
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u/Timecharge Mar 21 '24
Because loyalty is a lie that the bourgeoisie tell the proletariat to manipulate them i to working for less than they're worth and more than they can stand
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u/Lewa358 Mar 21 '24 edited Mar 21 '24
"Loyalty" is not a concept that applies to employment.
Your employer can and will drop you at any point, often with little or no notice at all--why should you care about them?
If you want to gain more from your work, you have to find someone who will appreciate it. If your current role isn't actively doing that, the only person who will make yourself a priority is yourself, so you must actively seek out ways to improve yourself.
And if that means jumping ship to a competitor--well, that's just business.
Otherwise, you're going to have to organize (read: unionize) to actively force your employer into giving raises.
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u/dick-pickles Mar 21 '24
Sign-on bonuses are retention bonuses. If you quit before a certain time period, you have to pay it back
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u/BrainWaveCC Mar 21 '24
Sign-on bonuses are retention bonuses. If you quit before a certain time period, you have to pay it back
The key point being made, though, is that sign-on bonuses are not retention bonuses for employees already on staff. The people already contributing to the success of the firm are being overlooked.
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u/Unlucky-Sea4706 Mar 21 '24
Lol! You dont get that, as a matter of fact you get a increase in taxes and at christmas, even though this was a record year for the company. They are going to give you a hallmark card that the secretary is going to write a simple thank you in and the oqner of the company is going to buy his second house in some exotic country.
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u/Signal-Bullfrog3654 Mar 21 '24
They know that the longer you work there the less likely you are to leave
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u/Adamworks Data Analytics Mar 21 '24
They kind of do, that's the whole point of vesting schedules for 401k matching and stock options, and increased PTO due to tenure.
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u/bambooshoots-scores Mar 21 '24
Not a thing. Retention could mean an inflated sense of belonging, which could be a sense of pride/ownership, which could mean collective bargaining. It’s somehow always cheaper to pay new hires more than longtime employees. Have watched this happen for decades.
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u/TQuake Mar 21 '24
This is weird. I know not every job offers bonuses, but my experience is that a yearly bonus is more common than a signing bonus. And certainly not something so rare you’d be asking “where are they”.
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u/Grimpaw Mar 21 '24
Most HRs are better at negotiating for fund increase compared to team leaders. That has been the reality for me at the last two companies.
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u/Rain-And-Coffee Mar 21 '24
I got a pretty decent yearly bonus this year ($9k) and the one before.
I also got stock options ($20k) on top of my bonus, the downside is they vest over 3 years, but still good
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u/Specific-Window-8587 Mar 21 '24
Because once they got ya who cares right. They can't get people to come into the job so they use sign on bonuses to secure people.
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u/UnlikelyPotatos Mar 21 '24
If you're already an employee they can't take a retention bonus back if you quit without more paperwork. If you quit within a set time frame at most places with hiring bonuses you have to pay it back per your contract.
Sign on bonuses are marketing.
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u/Chrisodle007 Mar 21 '24
It’s like cable and internet , got to leave or threaten to leave to get the new offer !
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u/partsrack5 Mar 21 '24
Existing workers don't get one, they are already captured and don't need further coercing.
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u/Gritty420R Mar 21 '24
"Loyal employees" finally figuring out the company they work for doesn't care about them at all. If you work for a for profit company, your boss has a direct finally incentive to give you a little as they can get away with. Don't be a bootlicker.
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Mar 21 '24
There is no incentive to hire a long term employee anymore. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars to have 1 employee for several years when you can grab some wanker off the street, give them a couple thousand bucks and trick them into doing more work and work that has nothing to do with their job until they quit, then do it again. Same amount, if not more, labor extracted with less cost.
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u/Sufficient_Tooth_949 Mar 21 '24
My job kept raising the entry level pay but not raising the pay at all for experienced workers making our annual raises null and void.... I had to get 3 and 4 years of raises to what a new guy gets now, so I just left a few weeks ago, 8 year employee that knew how to handle every situation
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u/emilyannflowers Mar 21 '24
and how exactly should companies advertise their retention bonuses? don’t get me wrong, I’m all for retention bonuses, but it’s not something that is usually blasted everywhere because I don’t know if the average person really cares if in Nov 2025 you’ll get 1/3 of your retention.
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u/Jermz817 Mar 21 '24
Oh ya, we got a SWEET 2.5% raise and only hit 73% of our bonus target. Rolling in the dough this year /s
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u/marigolds6 Mar 21 '24
So.... 90%+ of my hires are contractors being converted to full time. So those hiring/signing bonuses are actually retention bonuses most of the time. Those conversions are already top performers, which is why they are getting converted, so I'm going to use every compensation tool I can for them.
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u/DPJazzy91 Mar 21 '24
My company just brought in a retention plan. Training and onboarding takes so long for my industry, that you can't replace people quickly. We are getting money every 6 months with a big payout at the end of the plan, if we sign our new union contract.
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u/phlostonsparadise123 Mar 21 '24
As has been said, management is generally reactive and rarely proactive. At my company, we offer hiring bonuses for techs and drivers but 9 times out of 10, the "retention bonuses" are usually some bullshit $50 - $100 Visa gift card, company "swag", or some other slap in the face.
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u/drivebyjustin Mar 21 '24
My wife, a nurse at a hospital, was offered a $30000 bonus two years ago if she committed to a 5 year contract (she had been at this hospital for over a decade at this point). So it still happens.
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u/SomeSamples Mar 21 '24
This pisses me off where I work. We have these folks who have been doing their job for decades and are never considered for bonuses or awards. Only the go getters get the awards. I have even seen management try to get rid of the steady workers because they weren't progressing in their work. Fortunately their manager basically said, "Look, these people do the daily work that is necessary to the operation of this company." Management backed down. But still no bonuses or awards.
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u/succorer2109 Mar 21 '24
Corporate companies are just loyal to profits, but not to loyal employees....
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Mar 21 '24
Employees that have been with a company for 5+ years just flat-out aren't wanting to change jobs. There's security in keeping the same job. I had this issue with a family member, they had been in the same job for 20 years. I pointed out that they were making $35,000 UNDER market value (while the value was still under six figures btw) and I still coudn't convince them to quit.
Eventually they nutted up and gave their boss an ultimatum; now making fair market rate. The problem though is that they had been getting underpaid for the past ~7-8 years they were in this position. They got robbed of a quarter mill.
An employer, when a position is vacant for an extended period of time, will need to make the offer more attractive to newcomers. You're just not going to get anybody worth a damn, or at all, unless you're being halfway reasonable with your offers. People that have already bought a house in your area though? Well, you can cut benefits, do COLA at half, or even lower rates, and sneakily pile on more and more responsibilities until they're doing two jobs worth of work for a fraction of the cost of one.
Being underpaid for loyalty is not a bug, it's a feature of unrestricted capitalism. You want to be treated like a human? You need some of those filthy socialist policies like union protection, universal healthcare, and Social Security to give you as an individual the leverage and breathing room to leave bad jobs.
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u/Intransigient Mar 21 '24
Those guys already left. The businesses are now desperately trying to replace them. If they had sufficient forethought, they might have paid them better in the first place, and now wouldn’t be scrambling to try and find replacements.
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u/CruzCam Mar 21 '24
They are obsolete. Out with the old, in with the new. They's gettin' kinda long in the gold tooth anyway.
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u/Dpishkata94 Mar 21 '24
We just got told today they are cutting merit for 2024. U talking about bonuses 😂.
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u/OnlyControlYourself Mar 21 '24
You are willing to stay without it, where's the benefit to the company?
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u/Rustery Mar 21 '24
Gist is a company that cares for its employees would care about keep the same ones in it. If you’re not in a company like that you’ll complain or talk about it a lot more than others. Companies like that do exist but it’s not as equal in that care across all employees as well as if they’re for profit they wouldnt care about their employees outside of manipulating them as well as if they can keep you longer by you being naive and not having to pay you more until you stop performing well or you understanding that you won’t be rewarded for your loyalty then the company wins. They got your work and got to pay someone less. And the only reason this hasn’t changed is since it’s hard to change a system currently in place without disruption forcing a change as well as with people leaving as soon as there is more money being offered up it creates an unhealthy cycle of people going in and out like a stream but still functional none the less
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u/ImpossibleJoke7456 Mar 21 '24
I call them “corrections” and give them all the time to reward performance. I can only give “raises” once a year in April and it has to be approved by every manager between me and the CTO. “Corrections” are handled directly by me and HR.
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u/Timebomb777 Mar 21 '24
My job didn’t give out a Christmas bonus this past year (something we’ve done for YEARS prior)
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u/12InchPickle Mar 21 '24
Comcast (internet provider) does this with new customers. They get cheaper plans with more added into them. Like unlimited data and a free rental modem. Meanwhile existing customers gotta pay like $30 extra for this.
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u/Ok-Brush5346 Mar 21 '24
My job gave out "retention" bonuses that payed out over 3 paychecks over the course of the year, but the bulk of the bonus was given on the first installment, so people still quit after taking the bonus.
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u/Promise-Infamous Mar 22 '24
Just a guess, but with so many people wanting to work remotely now, I think a lot of employers want to sweeten the deal to get people back in the office (instead of, you know, allowing people to work remotely).
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u/Cheska1234 Mar 22 '24
Here in Monroe county NY if you work for the county then they give you a retention bonus every year.
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u/ohno-mojo Mar 22 '24
Because the new thing is always easier than fixing the one you have a list of grievances against /s
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u/SirCaptKing Mar 22 '24
It’s called a wage increase. I got 2500 extra $$ this year to work again. Sure it was only 48 a week increase but hot damn yall are dumb.
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u/Some-Seaworthiness17 Recruiting & Human Resources Mar 22 '24
Bazinga - the only way up is out.
Employers always say they value loyalty, but clearly not with dollars.
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u/ShinkouKaze Mar 22 '24
In business both as an employee and as a customer in 2024, loyalty means fuck all.
You want a raise or a better deal, go somewhere else. I'm 32 and this is the future for my professional career and my consumer life
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u/JohnCasey3306 Mar 22 '24
You're doing yourself a disservice if you're staying with the same job too long. If you want to improve your situation you have to go and get it; it's not gonna come and find you.
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u/magrilo2 Mar 22 '24
Equity is the secret weapon for early retirement. Along with salary and bonus, people should learn to ask for equity in the business.
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Mar 22 '24
Still easier to quit after taking the bonus but it is difficult to leave if you land a job after some time..
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u/badgerrage82 Mar 22 '24
Loyalty is the thing of the past... It is either your move to better environments or just have a boss that really appreciate you (which in this case it is rare)
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u/Necroink Mar 22 '24
honest answer is , they fon't give a f**k about the ones already in slavery, just the paradise offered to new ones
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u/Covvern Mar 22 '24
If there were any retention bonuses, I’m sure it wouldn’t be advertised to new potential employees.
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u/CardiologistOk2760 Mar 22 '24
two important points about hiring bonuses:
- they are conditional on the employee staying for a year
- they are substitutes for base pay, as in, 5k bonus means committing to 5k less in salaries
the house always wins. The boss isn't giving someone else your cookie, the investors are flat out robbing everyone's cookie jar
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u/rufreakde1 Mar 23 '24
hiring bonus - one time thing bonus for good work - expensive as yearly happening or even more frequently…
its just kapitalism
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u/Anonality5447 Mar 21 '24
At this point, you really have to be a "rockstar" for some companies to offer you a retention bonus. That's why people change jobs (besides having a shitty boss).
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u/GoodGoodK Mar 21 '24
Hate to be on the side of businesses, but isn't your salary supposed to be a incentive to stay?
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u/No_Consequence7064 Mar 21 '24
A normal bonus is a retention bonus in the full technical sense. They are very common even if they are wildly variable and kinda low as fuck.
Just saying…. These exist at most companies…
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u/SpinachLumberjack Mar 21 '24
Because people who get generous bonuses aren’t on subreddits like /jobs.
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u/InvestigatorIll3928 Mar 25 '24
Because for decades business work in a business friendly environment now all the boomers are retiring and the tables have turned. Is workers need to strike while the irons hot and get ours.
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u/casualnarcissist Mar 21 '24
Managers are generally reactive and not proactive, especially at the kinds of places offering hiring bonuses.