Q

[tar heel]

What kind of companies do people who get huge bonuses work for? Are bonuses made part of the compensation package when you're hired? Neither DH nor I have ever worked any where with major bonuses. DH got a bonus a couple months ago -- $50 minus taxes. A month or more pay is a HUGE BONUS.

I'm always amazed by the amounts DISers spend on Christmas gifts for siblings, nieces and nephews, etc. Is this b/c people feel really flush at this time of year b/c they got their bonuses?

I'm wondering if I should look for a new job.

 

[CapeCodTenor]

A law firm is one place where you can get a fairly decent size bonus. Last year a fellow co-worker of mine got a $500 bonus at the end of last year and he'd been with the firm for just over a year. Last year I got somemthing like $100 for my time in office services, I was hired in July of '05, and a seperate $200 for my time as a paralegal.

 

[dodukes]

Dont worry before this firm i never got a bonus either but at least we were treated pretty nice year round and especially around hte hoidays.
At my job we get reviews, raise(if any) and bonus(most likely) at teh end of year. Its not like they even do it reasonably so you can actauly use the money to buy presents or something, its alwasy last minute, the day before we leave for the weekend or a few days befroe xmas. And my biggest bonus yet has been $250 minus 401k, taxes, and anything else they can think to take out.
Personally I would give up my bonus to have a job like i did when i was in college at the Y. The $h!t you have to endure to even get you check is not worth it IMO at this job. I hate to sound ungrateful but sometimes id rather say keep you piddly $100 (ne year bonus)

 

[Queen Quinnella]

DH's company will give him a huge bonus at the end of the year. They consider it a part of his salary. The dollar amout varies on how long you have been there and what position you have. He will get a bonus of about $20,000.

 

[Bob Slydell]

That's a pretty broad question. I've worked at various companies and had different types of bonuses, ranging from 10-20% of salary per year (in my consulting days during the Y2K times) to nothing (at my current company, a manufacturing company that's struggling financially).

In my wife's case, she's always done very well with bonuses (not necessarily at Christmas time, but rather a year-end bonus, and their "year-end" is mid-calendar year). In her case, it's public accounting, so her bonus is pretty much tied to her performance plus how the firm does overall.

I've also had friends that worked for companies that literally built their bonuses into the compensation packages for people. The company was famous for giving 25-40% bonuses each year, but the danger of that was that people would budget according to the higher number and then get in trouble, financially, when the actual number ended up considerably lower.

So there's all kinds of different situations -- too many variables in play to know whether or not you or your DH should be looking for a different company.

 

[M 'n C]

Some of the big 4 public accounting firms give bonuses. Mine has some type of formula they take into consideration which determines who gets a bonus and which bucket you would fall into for a bonus bucket 1 is the highest at my firm and it goes down to bucket 4 which is no bonus. Things they consider is overtime (not highly considered since we all work 250+ hours OT a year), out of town travel that is excessive (4 or more weeks out of the year not including our required trainings), number of inventory observations you do especially the month of December, volunteer hours, recruiting hours, risk level of your client.

Last year my bonus was equal to my raise (13%) due to the office I work out of and the activities I did last year listed above.

 

[Honu]

Large law firms. Our support staff start out with a year end bonus of 2 weeks salary and increase from there based on tenure and performance.

 

[Mono~rail]

My dh works in the natural gas industry. His old company gave the yearly bonus at the beginning of the year when they did the yearly employee reviews. The amount of the bonus was based on performance for the year. There were 5 levels employee could be rated at, and the highest 4 were given bonuses on a pro-rated basis.

An example would be that a 1 is the highest level/best employee rating. An employee who rated a 1 would get say a 10% bonus of their gross pay for the prior year. A 2 rating would get 8%; a 3 would get 6%; a 4 would get 4%, and a 5 (the lowest possible would be put on probation and get no bonus and have to improve their performance.

There was also a limit on how many employees could be rated at a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. So say if there were 20 employees at a station, there could only be three 1's given, five 2's, five 3's, five 4's, and two 5's.

It wasn't given that a bonus would be received or how much the bonus would be. If you wanted a bonus, you had to really stay on top of the game and perform well.

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The way bonuses worked at my hospital was according to how well the hospital had done financially over the year. The bonus was given at Christmas. It is a not for profit public hospital so if the hospital was in the red then no bonuses were given. If the hospital was ahead financially then a percentage of that "profit" is given in the form of Christmas bonuses. We didn't get a bonus at all last year because the hospital was in the red.

The year we did get a Christmas bonus, it was based on employment status.
Full time employees got like $75; part time got like $50; and prn got $25. It didn't matter what your position, pay, employee standing, or length of employment was.