4 ms·

Why are multimillion dollar bonuses accepted and standard for management but somehow shocking for engineering? I like seeing recognition that a top engineer's

by Andys 16y ago

Why are multimillion dollar bonuses accepted and standard for management but somehow shocking for engineering? I like seeing recognition that a top engineer's work could net the company many millions of dollars of revenue.

blhack 16y ago
I'm so happy to see somebody say this. There really seems to be no limit to the insanity of bonuses and retention packages and signing perks and soforth for executives.
m104 16y ago
Exactly. I read an article like this as implying that, "serious money is only for executives and rich people, not for workers. Workers are commodities, tools." From the article: "How many lives could be saved through research, aid, or vaccines? How much good could be done with $3.5 million?" The author is literally implying that giving $3.5 million to a world-class engineer is a waste. Not a word about the millions or billions of dollars of compensation for management, as you said. None. It's as if the author can't possibly imagine that a single engineer could do work valued at $3.5 million, ever. What causes this type of mentality? What is this even called? Crab-bucket mentality? Self loathing? It's one thing to see workers struggling for fair compensation for their contribution to an organization's financial success and quite another to see a resistance "from within" to that struggle. Don't programmers, engineers, designers, etc. want their peers to be more successful?
- mkelly 16y ago
  All of this is a lot more diluted when the workers you're talking about already make much more than is required for comfortable subsistence. It's one thing to talk about self-loathing hurting the cause of workers struggling to meet their basic needs, but at the level of most employed software engineers, I'm not sure how much it matters. That said, I don't see any difference between engineers and executives in this regard, so if it's okay (by whatever measure) for one to receive multimillion-dollar bonuses, so it is for the other, IMHO.

by Andys 16y ago

blhack 16y ago

I'm so happy to see somebody say this. There really seems to be no limit to the insanity of bonuses and retention packages and signing perks and soforth for executives.

m104 16y ago

Exactly. I read an article like this as implying that, "serious money is only for executives and rich people, not for workers. Workers are commodities, tools." From the article: "How many lives could be saved through research, aid, or vaccines? How much good could be done with $3.5 million?" The author is literally implying that giving $3.5 million to a world-class engineer is a waste. Not a word about the millions or billions of dollars of compensation for management, as you said. None. It's as if the author can't possibly imagine that a single engineer could do work valued at $3.5 million, ever. What causes this type of mentality? What is this even called? Crab-bucket mentality? Self loathing? It's one thing to see workers struggling for fair compensation for their contribution to an organization's financial success and quite another to see a resistance "from within" to that struggle. Don't programmers, engineers, designers, etc. want their peers to be more successful?

mkelly 16y ago
All of this is a lot more diluted when the workers you're talking about already make much more than is required for comfortable subsistence. It's one thing to talk about self-loathing hurting the cause of workers struggling to meet their basic needs, but at the level of most employed software engineers, I'm not sure how much it matters. That said, I don't see any difference between engineers and executives in this regard, so if it's okay (by whatever measure) for one to receive multimillion-dollar bonuses, so it is for the other, IMHO.