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My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor

My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency. Forms had to be filled out, lost, found, signed, routed, xeroxed, left on desks while people were on vacation. Passed through legal and security. Also, the bonus was distributed among all the team members being rewarded. The $1000 figure was the maximum allowed for the total bonus, not the individual bonuses. My team did something outstanding. It took 18 months of hard labor. Overtime. High stakes demonstrations. We ended up bringing in tens of millions of dollars in funding. A full year later an extra $150 showed up in my paycheck. PS I forgot another incident. I was nominated for a prestigious award, given by an official very high up at the Pentagon. I was asked to write my own nomination letter. I was given the award; to receive it I had to dress up in a suit, show up early to work, shake the official’s hand, and then spend an hour giving him a tour. The actual award was a letter of commendation and a challenge coin. There was no bonus. Theoretically, the challenge coin would be worth a lifetime of free drinks in bars frequented by military members. Or so I’m told. I don’t drink.

awestley 7y ago
Ouch. A slap in the face to you and they might as well have burnt that $150 (Likely $300 dollars before taxes) since it had the total opposite effect.
- quintushoratius 7y ago
  > Likely $300 dollars before taxes The net bonus was probably $150 before tax; it's a rare employer that pays the tax for you.
  - awestley 7y ago
    Net by definition means after certain adjustments have been taken out (like taxes). Regardless $75/$150/$300 in any case, it's a slap in the face. A slap that you need to pay taxes on.
acollins1331 7y ago
I still don't have an email address.
throwaway66666 7y ago
Damn! My current CEO wants to do the same. But he wants people to vote across teams. EG, backend engineer nominates machine learning researcher. Machine learning nominates HR. For a $1000 bonus, or a new ipad previous generation. Reasoning is that the manager cannot approve because that would reward favoritism, so random people nominating random people it is. Bad ideas coming from a good place I guess, but people are going to feel demoralized for sure in the end.
- asark 7y ago
  It's surprisingly easy to accidentally be designing a game and not realize it. And designing games is hard. And one can closely approximate the percentage of the population that's put so much as one thought toward how to do so—the limits of the practice, the balance, the ways your rules can be abused or encourage behavior you hadn't anticipated—ever, as zero. That when someone starts to recognize what they're accidentally doing they tend to give up, or abandon any effort to do it well, or ditch it and go with some familiar, proven pattern instead even if it sucks and doesn't fit the situation, makes sense. It's hard, and very few people are good at it. It's easier to recognize that you're playing one than that you're making one, it seems.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    Obligatory: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13 https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13
- Spooky23 7y ago
  These schemes always suck. After a major datacenter migration and other big transformation projects, that place I worked at setup an awards committee and had unbiased judges rate nominations. I was the only technical reviewer... the rest were customer success manager types, hr, even accounting. End of the day, the most passionately written nominations were for people in IT support, mostly for doing shit they weren’t supposed to do. The “customer champion” replaced toner quickly at our expense, (it was supposed to be paid for by the customer for reasons). The other big one, that came with cash, was given to someone who was a notorious master of getting other people to do their work. I felt bad for the organizers, as they really intended to do a good thing.
agumonkey 7y ago
It's always like that. Such a common trick. Something in humans is eager to prove themselves to the hierarchy.
gameswithgo 7y ago
A challenge coin! Are people who tend to run companies total children, or do they think that those of us working for them are children?
- deeng 7y ago
  Yes.
- Nexxxeh 7y ago
  I think it's more a cultural thing. Not everyone is financially motivated, they want the recognition. A challenge coin is a tool for doing that. It's in a similar vein to a medal. It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea. Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.
  - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
    If you are in the military, you can use challenge coins to get yourself free drinks. The idea is that when everyone is at a bar, the guy or gal with the challenge coin from the highest ranking officer never has to pay for rounds of drinks. I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challenge that I would almost certainly win, given who this coin was from -- that would be a tremendous faux pas. So at best, this is the sort of object that carries some real meaning in a very particular social context among a very particular set of people, but that meaning doesn't carry over to anywhere else. Like baseball or Pokemon cards, I suppose. How would you feel about your boss switching out Christmas bonuses for packs of World of Warcraft cards?
    - defen 7y ago
      How long are challenge coins "valid"? If someone had a challenge coin from Eisenhower (not sure those exist, let's pretend they do) would that person essentially always win, forever?
tssva 7y ago
Besides the overtime everything else would be part of the job you were being paid to do. As a federal employee depending on your job classification you were paid either 1.5x your salary or 1.5x the salary of a GS-10 Step 1 adjusted for your locality for the overtime. Most likely in private industry you would be a salaried employee and not have received overtime pay or a bonus which exceeds what you received in overtime pay. Also challenge coins, especially given to a civilian employee, are considered an honor in the DoD. Your post gives the impression of a great sense of entitlement on your part.
- GlenTheMachine 7y ago
  Maybe they are to uniformed members of the military. I've never once seen a civilian use, display, carry, or talk about a challenge coin. They typically get thrown in the back of a desk drawer and forgotten about. We literally have no use for them whatsoever. They don't even make good paperweights. I have a stack of fourteen of them. Most of them I was given for spending thirty minutes giving some random officer a tour of the lab. They're not exactly hard to get.
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    I’d say most “gun nuts” at least know what they are. They’re not that obscure.
brokenmachine 7y ago
> Theoretically, the challenge coin would be worth a lifetime of free drinks in bars frequented by military members. Or so I’m told. I don’t drink. This may be frowned upon in the military, but you could rent the coin out to people?
- StavrosK 7y ago
  The free drinks are because the coin impresses people enough that they volunteer to buy you drinks, it's not an official voucher.

awestley 7y ago

Ouch. A slap in the face to you and they might as well have burnt that $150 (Likely $300 dollars before taxes) since it had the total opposite effect.

quintushoratius 7y ago
> Likely $300 dollars before taxes The net bonus was probably $150 before tax; it's a rare employer that pays the tax for you.
- awestley 7y ago
  Net by definition means after certain adjustments have been taken out (like taxes). Regardless $75/$150/$300 in any case, it's a slap in the face. A slap that you need to pay taxes on.

acollins1331 7y ago

I still don't have an email address.

throwaway66666 7y ago

Damn! My current CEO wants to do the same. But he wants people to vote across teams. EG, backend engineer nominates machine learning researcher. Machine learning nominates HR. For a $1000 bonus, or a new ipad previous generation. Reasoning is that the manager cannot approve because that would reward favoritism, so random people nominating random people it is. Bad ideas coming from a good place I guess, but people are going to feel demoralized for sure in the end.

asark 7y ago
It's surprisingly easy to accidentally be designing a game and not realize it. And designing games is hard. And one can closely approximate the percentage of the population that's put so much as one thought toward how to do so—the limits of the practice, the balance, the ways your rules can be abused or encourage behavior you hadn't anticipated—ever, as zero. That when someone starts to recognize what they're accidentally doing they tend to give up, or abandon any effort to do it well, or ditch it and go with some familiar, proven pattern instead even if it sucks and doesn't fit the situation, makes sense. It's hard, and very few people are good at it. It's easier to recognize that you're playing one than that you're making one, it seems.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Obligatory: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13 https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13
Spooky23 7y ago
These schemes always suck. After a major datacenter migration and other big transformation projects, that place I worked at setup an awards committee and had unbiased judges rate nominations. I was the only technical reviewer... the rest were customer success manager types, hr, even accounting. End of the day, the most passionately written nominations were for people in IT support, mostly for doing shit they weren’t supposed to do. The “customer champion” replaced toner quickly at our expense, (it was supposed to be paid for by the customer for reasons). The other big one, that came with cash, was given to someone who was a notorious master of getting other people to do their work. I felt bad for the organizers, as they really intended to do a good thing.

agumonkey 7y ago

It's always like that. Such a common trick. Something in humans is eager to prove themselves to the hierarchy.

gameswithgo 7y ago

A challenge coin! Are people who tend to run companies total children, or do they think that those of us working for them are children?

deeng 7y ago
Yes.
Nexxxeh 7y ago
I think it's more a cultural thing. Not everyone is financially motivated, they want the recognition. A challenge coin is a tool for doing that. It's in a similar vein to a medal. It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea. Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.
- GlenTheMachine 7y ago
  If you are in the military, you can use challenge coins to get yourself free drinks. The idea is that when everyone is at a bar, the guy or gal with the challenge coin from the highest ranking officer never has to pay for rounds of drinks. I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challenge that I would almost certainly win, given who this coin was from -- that would be a tremendous faux pas. So at best, this is the sort of object that carries some real meaning in a very particular social context among a very particular set of people, but that meaning doesn't carry over to anywhere else. Like baseball or Pokemon cards, I suppose. How would you feel about your boss switching out Christmas bonuses for packs of World of Warcraft cards?
  - defen 7y ago
    How long are challenge coins "valid"? If someone had a challenge coin from Eisenhower (not sure those exist, let's pretend they do) would that person essentially always win, forever?

tssva 7y ago

Besides the overtime everything else would be part of the job you were being paid to do. As a federal employee depending on your job classification you were paid either 1.5x your salary or 1.5x the salary of a GS-10 Step 1 adjusted for your locality for the overtime. Most likely in private industry you would be a salaried employee and not have received overtime pay or a bonus which exceeds what you received in overtime pay. Also challenge coins, especially given to a civilian employee, are considered an honor in the DoD. Your post gives the impression of a great sense of entitlement on your part.

GlenTheMachine 7y ago
Maybe they are to uniformed members of the military. I've never once seen a civilian use, display, carry, or talk about a challenge coin. They typically get thrown in the back of a desk drawer and forgotten about. We literally have no use for them whatsoever. They don't even make good paperweights. I have a stack of fourteen of them. Most of them I was given for spending thirty minutes giving some random officer a tour of the lab. They're not exactly hard to get.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  I’d say most “gun nuts” at least know what they are. They’re not that obscure.

brokenmachine 7y ago

> Theoretically, the challenge coin would be worth a lifetime of free drinks in bars frequented by military members. Or so I’m told. I don’t drink. This may be frowned upon in the military, but you could rent the coin out to people?

StavrosK 7y ago
The free drinks are because the coin impresses people enough that they volunteer to buy you drinks, it's not an official voucher.