This reminds me of my first job as a developer, age 21. I haven’t shared it before, so here goes...
There was a ‘crunch’ coming up at work (i.e. IMHO, bad planning) and so the boss offered everyone a bonus if they performed well.
However, the older employees warned me that the criteria for such bonuses were often ill-defined. I therefore pushed for clear achievable objectives. These pre-agreed objectives were promised, but never provided.
Anyway, we all work hard, some more than others, but we met all the deadlines.
Then comes bonus time, and they propose that I be given 30% of the maximum bonus. I explained that I felt this was entirely unreasonable, as I met all my deadlines. No other objectives were set, and therefore I felt I deserved the full bonus.
They didn’t agree, and we went three rounds of meetings with more and more people in the meeting. Each time they tried to convince me what I was asking for was unreasonable.
At this point I should add that I had seen this boss (CEO, small company) be what I would now call abusive. Verbally abusive to junior staff members, and insulting members of staff behind their backs. So my loyalty was, well, absent.
So on the third round of weirdly manipulative meetings, we come to an impasse. So I explained that I still stand by my request, and I pulled out my letter of resignation.
At which point there is a long silence. My boss puts his head in his, and the other two people in the meeting (another boss, and my coworker) looked surprised, to put it mildly.
After collecting his thoughts, my boss asks: what is to stop me threatening to resign every time I don’t get my way? To which I calmly explain that he didn’t have to pay (Ie. I could just quit).
After a bit more stunned silence, the boss relents, and agrees to give me the full bonus.
I wait until the bonus is in my account then I hand in my notice anyway. Abusive bosses don’t get loyalty.
The best part is, the coworker in the meeting also didn’t get the full bonus, despite working much harder than me. He’d only asked her into the meeting to try to guilt/manipulate me. So not only did the boss have to give me the full bonus, he had to do the same for her too.
After that I went freelance. And 15 years later I can say it was the best decision ever.
> After that I went freelance. And 15 years later I can say it was the best decision ever.
Every time I've left a job, I've been uncertain and conflicted. Every. Time. Then, a week or two into the new job... Every. Time. ...I thought, "Wow! I should have done this sooner!"
I’ve worked for a startup who was giving 866 stock options per month. Had I known they are valued $125 today, I would have:
- Shut up a few more times because I’d trust more the managers, and just followed the stream,
- Accepted to be patient about being a developer on a boring project, because what stressed me was “I don’t know enough to reach the career level that can allow me to ever buy a house.”
- Made 4 millions instead of 1.
I regret leaving and aggressively seeking for a better career, but at the time, things snowballed negatively because I wasn’t getting enough emotional attention. Of course it was a rational choice on both sides, but it was a mistake overall.
On my leaving card, all my colleagues wrote variations of “To the most motivated guy every” – proof that I was putting in decent work, albeit not working cleverly enough.
You really shouldn’t feel bad, because what happened has a low probability.
It’s like saying I should’ve invested in X which got quadrupled in price last year.
Most stocks (even very promising ones) didn’t achieve anywhere near that growth.
So you choosing the right one among the many to “shut up and stick to it just a little bit longer” has a low chance of exceptional returns on your investment.
You cannot see the future, even the most sophisticated analysis can be wrong, and even the best companies can stagnate for a loong time before getting lucky.
Exactly. This is like being dealt a horrible set of cards in poker and kicking yourself for folding. Let's say you got 2,7 and then found out the cards on the table turned out to be the rest of the 2s. Folding was still the right move
I wonder how widely the concept of expected value is discussed outside of poker or statistics. Simple concept, but it can really help with all kinds of decisions in life.
The problem is that people make lots of claims towards the direction of "stock options are always worthless" when they should say more like "stock options are often worthless but sometimes can be ridiculously valuable". Startup game just provides high returns to small minority, and some people after couple of negative experience seem to decide that everything must suck then and spread it around in here and other forums.
The mindset you should have (I know it's easy for me to say) is that you made the best decision with the data available at the time.
For every success story, there are many more failures, where after years of hard work, the company still doesn't succeed, where the managers that look like idiots are really idiots, and the stock options end up being totally worthless.
Regrets are pointless. Had I known what I know now I'd have put my (unused) beer budget into crypto this time last year and be looking at retirement now.
Ignore the money, divorce your happiness from money, and do what makes you feel happy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Counterpoint: they sell ~8 hours of their day. Selling that to the highest bidder ignores that there's different environments that might be better or worse for everyone's general sense of fulfilment. IMO, chasing highest pay only is a recipe for an unhappy life that only pays off on the short term.
No one should sell themselves short, but choosing, say, a 100% worse environment or a dead-end technology stack for a 5% higher pay (or whatever) is not wise.
Why? My job is extremely easy with a great team and manager. I could get more, but I'd have to work in a high stress environment, and life is too short for that shit.
I think the grandparent was implying all other things being equal. If the highest bidder requires that you work in significally different and more difficult conditions, then it's not really comparable.
The problem is evaluating the size of the bid. Salary is only one part of the equation and people rarely get wealthy on salary alone. There are multitude factors when evaluating the "bid" of the company and to actually understand what is valuable and what is not is the difficult part.
It's not. That is an independent contractor relationship. Employment means you play ball for the stability of the paycheck. If you want to throw a tantrum every time you feel slighted, you shouldn't commit to a full-time permanent job.
Employees are not the top of the totem pole, there are always other factors that people making these decisions have to consider. They don't always have to share that with you. It's a nice idealistic view to think otherwise, and I truly hope you always find work in places like that. But this is not the lived reality for the majority of people, and it's actually not a bad thing.
They pay me because of my work/because I am valuable. From the story, the poster was valuable (otherwise the boss would not have paid him/her out).
> Employees are not the top of the totem pole, there are always other factors that people making these decisions have to consider
And that is entirely his/her thing. If I was promised this and that for a given task, I should be getting it, even at the detriment of the company, his her own paycheck, whatever. I am not responsible for the well-being of a company, it’s not your “family”.
Of course, during unexpected events (like COVID), things like an
OPTIONAL temporary pay reduction for every employee (very much including the bosses themselves) is acceptable, and I think any employee planning to stay there will gladly accept such if the leadership is otherwise not exploitive/fair.
"Value" does not just comprise of "coding ability". "Attitude" is a key part of it, and I guarantee you the vast majority of all hiring managers everywhere would eliminate a candidate if they demonstrated high entitlement during the interview process.
If they somehow get hired because that quality was hidden somehow during the interview process, the moment it surfaced, there would be behind-the-scenes discussions on how to cut that person from the team or company, because they are destroying morale with the rest of the team.
I am intrigued by the downvotes, because I am not saying anything controversial or disconnected from reality. People may not like it, but if they're so sure of their position, I do encourage them to put an equivalent line of the counter-argument on their resume when they're applying for their next job.
One more point: I make my comments having done all sides: Employee, independent contractor, employer. You are never prevented from leaving to start your own thing, as the original commenter indicated. But harbour no illusions that working full time for someone in an employment agreement allows you to act like you're an independent contractor that can randomly walk away. You can certainly give your two weeks notice and do so, but after the 2nd time, you'll be radioactive in the job market.
> "Attitude" is a key part of it, and I guarantee you the vast majority of all hiring managers everywhere would eliminate a candidate if they demonstrated high entitlement during the interview process.
I do agree with you that not only technical abilities are considered, for good reason. But not standing up for ourselves and letting us being bullied and exploited by higher ups is not an attitude in my book. We may have read the story very differently, and of course we only got one viewpoint on what happened. But I think you would agree that there are exploitive bosses (just as there are many great leaders), and there are many who simply can’t stand up for themselves in a corporate environment.
Certainly, there are plenty of exploitative bosses and we should definitely encourage people to stand up for themselves. I provide new hires with several books, one of which is a book on personal finances that includes a chapter on negotiating a higher salary. It's important to me that people are empowered in their work and their lives.
But this is not the story of the comment I was engaging with. The original comment stated:
Boss: What's stopping you from doing this every time you don't get your way?
Commenter: Nothing. That's how negotiating an employment relationship works. Holy shit.
Again for context, the original story stated that the bonus was brought up but the criteria for receiving it was never officially documented or agreed upon. The bosses decided on 30%, and the poster felt entitled for more. He's certainly entitled to feel that, and he's certainly entitled to make his case for it. He's also certainly entitled to resign if he didn't get his way.
But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form. Like I said, he can do it, he did do it, the company can't and didn't claw it back after he resigned, it's now 15 years later, but this story does not portray the protagonist in a positive light for hiring again in the future.
That should not be a controversial statement. You should always know your value and worth, and this goes BOTH ways. I would say the same about any role, whether it's sales, marketing, HR, ops, customer service, or whatever else. One can't be unreliable in a company, and expect that not to be a problem for future job opportunities.
You seems to have a very 'personal' view of the employee/employer relationships. But i think the core of the issue is that for the last 40 years, corporation in general, have work very hard to "depersonalize" this relationship to the point where most employee have lost any sense of loyalty. So the way to see this is as a legal business relationship where every party maximize they own interest and they is nothing wrong about that. An employer should'nt takes is personally.
I see this weird dichotomy every time on asker news or in corporate america : Companies treat employee like a resources and try to extract maximum value out of them (like promising a vague bonus and giving only 30% of the target without clear explanation) and get confused when employee do the same.
> But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form
No the bonus was paid for service rendered. After that his continue employment was subject to renegotiation. Let's not forget that the employment term were probably "at will" on the demand of the employer.
OP felt that his employer broke his trust ? Would you work with someone you don't trust ?
> That should not be a controversial statement.
I honestly think it is. And i think your statement are really pro employer and doesn't reflect the current state of the average modern employer/employee relationship.
> One can't be unreliable in a company, and expect that not to be a problem for future job opportunities.
That OP did meet his requirements meant he is not unreliable. If OP wasn't providing value at the company , he would have been fired a while ago.
Reliability, as everything has a cost, in this case it was paying the full amount of the bonus...
I do respect your opinion on the topic and you seem to just look at the story from the employer’s point of view, as opposed to perhaps the majority of people here, who rather “root” for the underdog.
But I still don’t disagree entirely with the quoted part.
> Boss: What's stopping you from doing this every time you don't get your way?
Downscaling the dramatic effect of the exact text a bit, I think the response is fair, if we mean under “don’t get your way” something significant. Like how about a transfer to a different building? A good boss should ask a given employee beforehand, whether it is feasible for him/her, but if it was already decided and the employee can’t have a say, pretty much resignation is the only “tool” he/she can leverage. Even at pay negotiation, while seldom brought up explicitly, resigning is there implicitly.
All in all, I think talking about the exact incident is fruitless, because we only got an anecdotal story without both sides, so I think you and I “drew” the rest of the story differently.
Negotiating is expensive, and constant renegotiation is bad for morale. Employers wishing to avoid that should not change the terms of the agreement by eg requiring or expecting crunch time. Such a change is an act of renegotiation, and employees will leave (BATNA) or negotiate for more compensation. If employers do not wish to add additional compensation to match their changed expectation, well, OP had his resignation in hand.
> I guarantee you the vast majority of all hiring managers everywhere
You're qualified to speak for a majority of hiring managers everywhere?
Maybe you meant in a relatively small geographic area, in a relatively small number of companies? Maybe some of the same ones that colluded to keep salaries low by making illegal agreements amongst themselves?
The problem with most discussions on this topic is that everyone thinks their own experience is universal.
Incidentally, what you're assuming is that your internalized reality (of being allowed to resign at most twice per career) is real for everyone. It absolutely is not, which is why you're getting downvoted.
You're qualified to speak for a majority of hiring managers everywhere?
As I stated, feel free to place your counter-point in your resume next time you're looking at next steps. We are unlikely to cross paths in the professional world, but I would be happy to hear about your positive success in the job market with these statements prominently displayed.
your internalized reality (of being allowed to resign at most twice per career) is real for everyone
That is not what I stated so please don't misrepresent it. The discussion is about resigning or threatening to resign whenever you don't get your way in a company. The original comment stated:
Boss: What's stopping you from doing this every time you don't get your way?
Commenter: Nothing. That's how negotiating an employment relationship works. Holy shit.
Again for context, the original story stated that the bonus was brought up but the criteria for receiving it was never officially documented or agreed upon. The bosses decided on 30%, and the poster felt entitled for more. He's certainly entitled to feel that, and he's certainly entitled to make his case for it. He's also certainly entitled to resign if he didn't get his way.
But to threaten to resign if he didn't get it, and then resign anyway once he did get it, is just poor form. Like I said, he can do it, he did do it, the company can't and didn't claw it back after he resigned, it's now 15 years later, but this story does not portray the protagonist in a positive light for hiring again in the future.
> As I stated, feel free to place your counter-point in your resume next time you're looking at next steps. We are unlikely to cross paths in the professional world, but I would be happy to hear about your positive success in the job market with these statements prominently displayed.
Which statements ? like saying on your resume "I quit my job because i didnt get the bonus i felt entitled to" ?
This is hardly a good metric. Most people when reading a piece of information would have the tendency to assign blame to the party they do not identify with. The way to look at it, if you were to ask the employer to add to the job description "The last guy who this job quit he didn't get the bonus he felt entitled to" would equally deter job applicants.
And second , some people can absolutely pool this off, depending on how valuable they are to the company.
I allow my boss to be very demanding. Want me to take an important customer call during holidays? Sure, I can convince my wife to allow that. Want me to work a week in a different timezone? Let me check first, but should be doable.
But. Do. Not. Ever. Touch. My. Compensation!
Being promised 100% but arbitrarily receiving 30% would be a no-go for me.
> I allow my boss to be very demanding. Want me to take an important customer call during holidays? Sure, I can convince my wife to allow that. Want me to work a week in a different timezone? Let me check first, but should be doable.
That's a really hot take. That shows that the company is very fickle and very bad about planning.
And frankly, I'm not going to shed a tear if they badly planned a business meeting on my vacation and then expect me to attend.
Now, given my position, I specialize in "accidents" or the recovery of. I get paid well for that. And I can decide when and what my schedule looks like. Outside of that and the appropriate pay for that skill, I expect my hours to be stable and consistent. In exchange, I will deliver consistently and stably and get money for that.
Tl;dr. Touching my hours (aside real unplanned disasters) IS touching my compensation, and you will not do this without appropriate offsets.
I should probably add that given the amount of holidays / parental leave we get in Sweden, these interruptions feel like a refreshing break from holidays. :))
But I agree with you. "Available randomly" is something I charge for.
After you pulling a resignation notice as an argument, an experienced boss would instantly know you would not be an asset he could rely on even mid-term, so his best option from a business perspective would be giving you no bonus at all (or the original one), and immediately starting to look for a replacement (and probably firing you).
This is an employer-employee power relationship. In general the employer has the power, but it cuts both ways, to some extent.
Pulling a resignation notice shows that relationship to have broken down, probably irrevocably, I agree. But, the employer initially broke the relationship, by not keeping their promise regarding the bonus.
The employer (perhaps here the boss's boss) knows they have treated the employee unfairly to an extent that could become legal, which would have an associated cost, and also could impact upon the other employees' motivation (and how employees evaluate the promise of future bonuses).
If the employee is essential and their replacement cost is high, then there's an significant additional cost to firing them fast.
The employer might have to weigh up the costs, and could reason that it's cheaper or otherwise better for the business to pay the bonus.
> However, the older employees warned me that the criteria for such bonuses were often ill-defined. I therefore pushed for clear achievable objectives. These pre-agreed objectives were promised, but never provided.
He asked for clear conditions and management agreed to provide them, but never did. They were playing him. The comments from the older employees suggest this wasn't the first time they used this tactic.
> what is to stop me threatening to resign every time I don’t get my way? To which I calmly explain that he didn’t have to pay (Ie. I could just quit).
This might be my English failing me but I can't understand your answer; it doesn't seem like it's actually addressing the question that was asked to you.
Could you elaborate a little further? I was met with that question before and would like to learn how to handle it well.
It's just pointing out "yeah, if you're worried that I'll keep doing this, then feel free to just let me resign - but if you want me to stay, you'll have to live with the risk that I'll do this again". It's not assuaging the manager's fears at all, because there's really no way to do that.
There was a ‘crunch’ coming up at work (i.e. IMHO, bad planning) and so the boss offered everyone a bonus if they performed well.
However, the older employees warned me that the criteria for such bonuses were often ill-defined. I therefore pushed for clear achievable objectives. These pre-agreed objectives were promised, but never provided.
Anyway, we all work hard, some more than others, but we met all the deadlines.
Then comes bonus time, and they propose that I be given 30% of the maximum bonus. I explained that I felt this was entirely unreasonable, as I met all my deadlines. No other objectives were set, and therefore I felt I deserved the full bonus.
They didn’t agree, and we went three rounds of meetings with more and more people in the meeting. Each time they tried to convince me what I was asking for was unreasonable.
At this point I should add that I had seen this boss (CEO, small company) be what I would now call abusive. Verbally abusive to junior staff members, and insulting members of staff behind their backs. So my loyalty was, well, absent.
So on the third round of weirdly manipulative meetings, we come to an impasse. So I explained that I still stand by my request, and I pulled out my letter of resignation.
At which point there is a long silence. My boss puts his head in his, and the other two people in the meeting (another boss, and my coworker) looked surprised, to put it mildly.
After collecting his thoughts, my boss asks: what is to stop me threatening to resign every time I don’t get my way? To which I calmly explain that he didn’t have to pay (Ie. I could just quit).
After a bit more stunned silence, the boss relents, and agrees to give me the full bonus.
I wait until the bonus is in my account then I hand in my notice anyway. Abusive bosses don’t get loyalty.
The best part is, the coworker in the meeting also didn’t get the full bonus, despite working much harder than me. He’d only asked her into the meeting to try to guilt/manipulate me. So not only did the boss have to give me the full bonus, he had to do the same for her too.
After that I went freelance. And 15 years later I can say it was the best decision ever.