Was it you or Charlie ?
12 replies (most recent on top)
Dont understand what you are crying about. Charlie only received a 285% bonus and I received 9%. Sounds about right.
You don't know what you're talking about. Director here. My managers make recommendations, and then every year most of those are tossed out the window in favor of HR/comps approach. There is no discussion about it, the amounts are approved and imposed without even telling us, until it's too late to do anything about it. The people delivering you the news rarely have much real influence on the final amounts, they are just there to pick up the pieces and manage the fallout of the often disasterous decisions made by people that have no idea how you perform or what your job even entails.
Zero transparency at Wells Fargo. Direct managers can manipulate many things and they can hide just about anything from their staff employees. Bank of America was the same way. This is how they can create politically toxic environment.
At one of the wall street banks I used to work for (before WF and BOA), they had only a 360 performance rating and review system. Direct managers were not allowed to tamper with their staff employees' performance ratings or reviews. Each employee requests non-team manager reviews, non-team peer reviews and team peer reviews. Basically, just about anyone you worked with, except for your direct managers. This bank's org structure was very flat and had less bureaucracy. I have to admit, they had a great organizational system. Their bonus and merit increase were much bigger than Wells Fargo's. Why don't I go back there? Because they are now requiring employees to go to the office 5 days a week and I don't live in NYC anymore.
A friendly reminder, managers can manipulate staff employees' performance ratings any way they want to. This is a fact.
Bonus was definitely down this year. Many people are saying this. Pool total was decreased
@a3 absolutely what happens!! PLUS they are experts at this and know how to gaslight, manipulate and document every detail of the yr to ensure their plans dont go awry. What I mean is to prevent you from improving performance you get pushback, scrutinized and reminded you are not meeting expectations in a role where everything is subjective due to how leadership set dept up due to lack of experience amongst leaders to truly set up KPIs when they could easily. They dont want to because it will uncover the truth.
You, called personal accountability. Take ownership of what happens as a result of you actions
To reiterate another poster - managers do NOT have complete discretion on how to distribute bonus pools. There are targets based on ratings. Exceed those targets and you need justification. Bonus numbers get reviewed up the leadership chain and by HR to ensure compliance. All of these checks are in place to prevent the exact scenario people are concerned about.
Now, a manager who has favorites can absolutely sl--t their ratings so that preferred employees get the hiring rating while employees they don't care for get lower ratings. It's easy enough to find good and bad examples from every employee to make the case when writing reviews. And since you (as an employee) don't have visibility into the ratings or rationale you really have no idea if that favoritism is occurring. Calibration should weed that stuff out but it often doesn't. In large orgs, a 2-up boss doesn't know their staff as well as their direct manager and will generally defer.
“If your manager is dirty, he/she can fix the cash distribution any way they want.”
That’s bullsh-t! The system itself is programmed with limits. Furthermore, all compensation reviews go through multiple levels of reviews. An unethical manager might be able to move a little bit more money to a favorite, but they certainly cannot set it any way they want.
Your manager. This is how it works... the company allocates a budget for annual bonus pool, distribute them to each LOB, each department, from the Sr. leadership to lower level managers. It's like a waterfall of bonus money. Each LOB, department or teams will be given certain amounts based on the bank's strategic priority and the previous year's performance. One thing you need to be aware is that each leader has complete discretionary control on how they want to distribute the bonus pool among their direct reports. This is where favoritism and biases come in. If your manager is dirty, he/she can fix the cash distribution any way they want, even if those are wrong and unethical.
Charlie had a great year and earned that money
Bonus is given to DEI hires based on race and level in band, not on merit - HR made changes to final comp all over company to ensure DEI is intact - after approved by management