One of the companies I worked at previously made a big deal about employee
-driven performance review / promo packets every year. Everyone's title had a level like a role playing game. There was also a culture of compensation transparency among coworkers. I thought it was all quite toxic, leading to a lot of very well compensated people stressing out and complaining. At its worst, it lead to instances of passive aggression and depression across many teams.
My current company encourages regular direct feedback, mostly lacks titles internally, and there's a culture of compensation opacity among coworkers. Folk don't talk about money outside topics of general interest, and managers and HR are responsible for periodically reviewing and adjusting compensation for fairness. I haven't had to worry about or discuss money professionally in years, other than to get called into a short meeting to be pleasantly surprised by an adjustment. There's no bonuses other than the occasional verbal praise I receive from appreciative coworkers and management, and I think that's worth more than incrementally more money.
One time I did offer to pay out cash to any coworkers that reduced network traffic on a particularly over-utilized CAN bus, at a bounty of $0.10/Kbps. One sucker, er, respected coworker fell for it. Best $20 I ever spent!
My current company encourages regular direct feedback, mostly lacks titles internally, and there's a culture of compensation opacity among coworkers. Folk don't talk about money outside topics of general interest, and managers and HR are responsible for periodically reviewing and adjusting compensation for fairness. I haven't had to worry about or discuss money professionally in years, other than to get called into a short meeting to be pleasantly surprised by an adjustment. There's no bonuses other than the occasional verbal praise I receive from appreciative coworkers and management, and I think that's worth more than incrementally more money.
One time I did offer to pay out cash to any coworkers that reduced network traffic on a particularly over-utilized CAN bus, at a bounty of $0.10/Kbps. One sucker, er, respected coworker fell for it. Best $20 I ever spent!