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Ugh, when I was at accenture (briefly, after an acquisition), they had a similar "points" system where you could cash the points in for rewards. Most of it was

Ugh, when I was at accenture (briefly, after an acquisition), they had a similar "points" system where you could cash the points in for rewards. Most of it was absolute junk. I did manage to extract a bit of value when I found they could be cashed in for Nintendo eShop money - there's worse things than a free game - but still. Just ... give me money. In a previous gig we were on the receiving end of a fairly pathetic "Christmas bonus". It was $100, which is a decent amount, but after tax we only saw about $60 of it. The "insult" was very much compounded by the fact that the previous year's bonus had been $300, and worse, that the company sent out an email the previous week which said "expect a little something extra in your paycheck next week, Merry Christmas!". Then your check hits your account and you're like "... wait, is this even different than my normal pay" and then you're logging into ADP to check your statement only to realize "oh, it's just $60". I don't ever like to complain about free money - after all, it's pure sugar on top of your agreed upon salary no matter how you slice it - but at some juncture you hit the point where it's just not even worth the trouble.

couchand 4y ago
> after all, it's pure sugar on top of your agreed upon salary no matter how you slice it I strongly disagree, at least in my area and culture. It's widely assumed that employers will provide some kind of year-end holiday-time bonus. It's just as much a part of exprcted total compensation as tips in industries afflicted by that cancer. An employer stiffing employees deserves to be called out for violating norms.
topkai22 4y ago
My work was thinking of adopting one of those points based systems for peer recognition. I happened to have been on a team that had already built a small recognition system internally already, so I got to sit in on the pitch meeting. There was a lot to like about the pitch, but my reaction to the “rewards store” was “ugh, this feels like the incredibly manipulative and icky ‘reward catalogs’ we got whenever their was a youth fundraiser. It would lower my trust in the company. Can we just do cash?” Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it. The most contact I've had with sales is walking through their area, but it just comes of as a totally alien culture to me. Their walls were covered with posters about this or that quarter's big prize. They even had an area commemorating the big prizes from years past.

couchand 4y ago

> after all, it's pure sugar on top of your agreed upon salary no matter how you slice it I strongly disagree, at least in my area and culture. It's widely assumed that employers will provide some kind of year-end holiday-time bonus. It's just as much a part of exprcted total compensation as tips in industries afflicted by that cancer. An employer stiffing employees deserves to be called out for violating norms.

topkai22 4y ago

My work was thinking of adopting one of those points based systems for peer recognition. I happened to have been on a team that had already built a small recognition system internally already, so I got to sit in on the pitch meeting. There was a lot to like about the pitch, but my reaction to the “rewards store” was “ugh, this feels like the incredibly manipulative and icky ‘reward catalogs’ we got whenever their was a youth fundraiser. It would lower my trust in the company. Can we just do cash?” Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it.

tablespoon 4y ago
> Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it. The most contact I've had with sales is walking through their area, but it just comes of as a totally alien culture to me. Their walls were covered with posters about this or that quarter's big prize. They even had an area commemorating the big prizes from years past.