as non-existant as paid overtime when i first started working.
hefty when i had no soul and worked in corporate world, expensive ($1000's for ten people) dinner for department, gift card to restaurants, plus blowout christmas party at different chicago landmark every where. Last year rented out Union Station and packed it.
currently, somewhere in between. which is perfect.
interestingly, how rewarding the bonuses were invertly proportional to how rewarding the architecture and work there was.....and still holds true today.
I've gotten a bonus every year - usually dependent on how much OT I put in. Lately though, it's been a solid 10% of my gross salary... Not bad, but not great either...
I thought I got a good bonus last year, but my principal left a printout on his desk that listed everyone's bonus, including his. Needless to say, his bonus was about $20K more than anybody else's..
dml955i ... so, what's wrong with the principal taking home $20k more than anybody else ... does anybody else provide a personal guarantee on the firm's debt ... does anybody else stamp the drawings ... does anybody else stand to lose his / her home if there's an E&O claim not covered by insurance ... does anybody else bring in the level of new business that the principal does ... does anybody else cover the losses in years the firm doesn't make a profit ... does anybody else truly stand behind the work that the firm produces ?
these are not trivial considerations and ones that you will understand much better when you have spent a little time walking in your principal's shoes.
i've had various experiences with the old year-end bonus. seems to vary alot with architecture firms.
for comparison's sake though, consider that i once worked in the financial sales office of an insurance company. it was kind of a startup situation, so in order to attract talent my boss had convinced the board to pay all of us sales reps a $1,500 monthly bonus for the first six months and a $2,000 monthly for the next six months...and that was the minimum, if the rep had a good territory (such as manhattan where the firm had an established presence) he could easily blow past those numbers.
as good as it sounds though, i should also mention that is when and where i learned that money is a trap if you dislike you job, i.e., the more you are paid then the harder it is to walk out and the more dependent you risk becoming on something you dislike. i weathered a 70% paycut to return to architecture but it has probably been worth it.
On the tax shelter thing-
I had a former boss explain to me once how the 10k bonus I was getting was basically so he wouldn't get screwed on the company’s taxes. I sent the account a dozen roses.
The same boss always bragged about how his salary was less than all the employees, I peeped the profits at the end of the year once, 6 figures all into his bank account. Which I had no problem with, but it just turns out he was a hypocrite. And diggers points are all very true, working with this particular boss made me see all those responsibilities up close every day, those 6 figures still weren't enough.
well, that year-end tax point is true ... if the firm is a corporation, then leaving any real money in the company at year-end causes the corporation to pay very onerous corporate income tax on the retained earnings ... corporate tax rates
this is not a tax dodge ... corporations are doing what the tax code was designed to motivate ... get that money out of the company and into the hands of the employees ...
however, this scenario does leaves a bitch of a problem ... companies like design firms find it very hard to retain meaningful earnings over the years to smooth out the inevitable fluctuations in revenue that occur from year to year
i had the equivalent of 2 weeks salary as a bonus last year. not much but it sure is better than a kick in the ass... especially with all the additional expenses that come with Xmas.
no idea... I've only been here six months, and it's my first fulltime job. My last internship gave me $300 though, which was awesomely unexpected.
On the secretary thing - ours lives in Beverly Hills, while a good part of the rest of us gravitate towards the cheapness of Culver City. And she's one of those people who never seem to wear an outfit more than once. But she's been here a long time and puts up with a lot of shite, so good for her.
Digger - I totally understand the "unloading profit in the form of employee bonuses to avoid taxes" thing. Just wish that myself and the other employees would get a bigger taste...
And yeah, I get that it's his name on the letterhead, his liability insurance, his stamp, his risk, blah blah blah... He works about a 5 hour day, his wife doesn't work, he has a phat house, and his little rugrats go to expen$$$ive private schools. He jets off too exotic locales for vacations while we toil away at the office and scrounge up enough cash to pay the rent and eat Ramen...
On the plus side, our principal does invest some of the profits back into the firm in the form of new computers and equip, but I'd rather have the $$ in my pocket...
giving bonuses is not a tax scam. If I give a $10,000 bonus to an employee, what it means is the company and therefore I make $10,000 less. Correct, I do not have to pay the 35% tax rate on that $10,000, but I also don't have the 65% that I could have kept. Yes, I do give bonuses to employees averaging 17% of payroll. But it does cost me that money- it is not some tax savings. I could have kept the over $100,000 I gave in bonuses this year . One of my worst experiences ever was when I gave an employee a very significant bonus ($14,000), and the next morning, he saw me in the lunch room and thanked me, and in the very next breath, said his wife asked if it would be possible for him to get a company car too. I felt totally punched in the gut. If you get a bonus, yes you deserve it, but show a bit of gratitude, or at least don't be a jerk and think that you only got it because your boss was scamming the IRS.
Digger- unfortunately, the tax codes are not designed to get the money in the hands of the employees. Dream on. Every tax code allows the managment significant advantages over the employees. Look at the 401 K plan. The poor intern earning barely nothing gets nothing in their 401 K plan because they cannot afford to put the money in for the company to match. The Vice President gets the maximum in the 401 K because the company pays him enough that he can put in the maximum contribution. maybe they even 'gift' it to him.
Vado, you are correct, bonuses are taxed just like payroll. You can only give a gift of food or some other minor thing with a value of less than $25 to avoid taxes. So be happy for the larger amount and paying taxes on it. One good thing- if you have a pension plan, and say you get a 4,000 bonus. Say they put 5% in a simple IRA for you. The bonus counts towards your W2 salary that it is calculated on, so you make an additional 200 in your pension.
As far as corporate taxes, many architecture firms are organized as limite partners, or S corporations. The extra money can just go to the principals and owners- there is not tax loss. We are organized as an LP with a general partner a Corporation. It gives you the liabilty protection of a corporation, but you are taxed as a partnership.
You can leave as much money in the company as you want. We keep significant amounts of cash in the company. You pay taxes on it, and then keep in the company, but you don't have to wring the bank account dry every year.
i seriously will receive the smallest bonus in the office and if like last year will be around $10,000. it goes up from there to around $25,000. its a small firm that does huge projects.
In past years, at a variety of different firms, my bonuses have ranged from a low of a box of candy and a fifty dollar bill, to a high of about $9000. I'm really hoping to break the 10k mark this year, but there's no way to know really. I guess it could be anywhere from nothing, to another box of candy, to some amount of $$... Only time will tell.
so loans and other deferred payment type stuff all come with a bonus payment clause. buy a house, pay 1k a month most of the time but come bonus time its 4k (twice a year). sorta makes the bonus thing a bit of a non sequitur.
I was debating whether or not to quit on my review date, but then I found out that's when bonuses are dished out... so I guess I have to wait until after Christmas to do the deed. Greedy, maybe. Do bosses give bonuses because they expect you to stay around and keep working the next year?
Grimhart
you're not greedy and you don't belong to your boss. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as i'm concerned. If your boss gets unhappy about then tough shit, it's a free, open market and in case you feel bad about it always remember that he or she would have no qualms about letting you go if they had to. call me cynical but that's what the real world is about. so well done an good luck in your search for a new job after xmas.
Grimhart
you're not greedy and you don't belong to your boss. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as i'm concerned. If your boss gets unhappy about then tough shit, it's a free, open market and in case you feel bad about it always remember that he or she would have no qualms about letting you go if they had to. call me cynical but that's what the real world is about. so well done and good luck in your search for a new job after xmas.
Grimhart- just wait as long as you can after recieving the bonus. It'd look bad if it were an obvious take-the-bonus-and-run situation, so try to stick it out long enough that it's not too obvious.
I'd advise not to quit within days of receiving your bonus as that will only result in lingering resentment that could pose trouble down the road (architecture is a small world.) But: bonuses are awarded in consideration for efforts in the previous year (or whatever time period they follow in your firm) so they don't imply any sort of continuing obligation on your part. Most employment situations in architecture firms are "at will" both on the employee's and employers part and can be terminated for practically any reason at any point without guilt on either part.
I've postponed job switches twice for similar reasons: once waiting to leave because bonuses were due soon (in that case I left about a month after I got the bonus) and in another case waiting until I passed a certain date on which I became vested by a certain higher percentage in my profit-sharing account (in that case I left almost immediately afterward, as I didn't feel that anyone other than maybe the accounting staff would pick up on the specificity of the timing.)
writing as a so-called "boss" ... as a general rule, i think formerlyunknown has it about right ... at our firm, we share the economic rewards of our firm's operations with the people who helped to create those rewards ... year in / year out, it's an effort to be fair with the people who work here and we have no long-term expectation that such distributions, by themselves, will "bind" the individual to the firm ... such attachments come solely from broader aspects of the employment relationship ... money is only one dimension ... and for many, one of the smaller dimensions.
if you are unhappy where you are, you should leave ... as for the timing of your departure, that really depends on whether you want to burn a bridge or not ... because it's really hard to keep certain attitudes truly private, your employer probably already knows of your unhappiness ... if you take your bonus and storm out immediately, human nature is such that your firm will notice and probably remember
this is a very, very small profession and it's not uncommon for people to recycle at a firm one or more times. if that option is important to you, just try to remember the golden rule ... if you were in the firm's shoes, how would you react to your own behavior ?
I had been avoiding this thread as I knew I was going to get a bonus but almost passed out when I saw how large it was. It was unexpected for sure. Granted it wasn't nearly as big as some of the ones mentioned above ($25k? Are you serious? Do a lot of work for the Sultan of Brunei, eh?) but it was probably the most money I've ever held at one time.
As such, I felt compelled to write thank you notes to my bosses and I did. I started them off with phrases like "I don't know if this is protocol or not, but..." blah blah blah. I do feel truly grateful and although our workload and client base is largely uninspiring (draining, even) they have been very generous to me and I'm still learning a lot.
So to those of you who actually do give bonuses, what do you think, did I do OK?
That tax thing does make a lot of sense. And FYI, the secretary who drives the Land Rover (not Range Rover) bought it used, at a discount, from her parents-in-law, who seem to have mysterious and large amounts of money, with which they take their entire family on cruises. Maybe they get $25k bonuses too! :oP
i had a boss who would play santa claus at the christmas lunch, handing out bonuses like he was father fricking christmas...at my new job we had our christmas dinner and there was none of that. and i never received anything in the line of $10K...that's pretty amazing but i can see how small firm + big projects = serious bank
Every year there is this inevitable thread and the inevitable person claiming the $10k or more bonus working in an architecture firm. Not sure where you guys work but do you have anything at all resembling an resonable salary? Do you work solid 60 hour weeks all year? Knowing what it costs to run an architecture business there just shouldn't be profits like that lying around unless there is something a miss.
I work about 45 hours a week, salvaging some life outside the office thankfully. The firm spends their quite healthy profits in good salaries and benefits throughout the year. Our bonuses are very reasonable from $500 - to maybe $2000, depending on years employment, etc. It's reasonable and everyone is happy.
Now if the matching 401k and medial/dental and all other benefits weren't covered, I'm sure they'd have the spare profts to give me $10k. Not that I'm doubting anyone, but each firm is unique and I don't think the spead in compensation is really all that vast across the profession.
look ... there are very many different business models in our profession ... some firms pay very large salaries and provide exceptional benefits, but then don't do much for their staff at bonus time ...
other firms pay salaries at the low end of the competitive range, then bulk up through large payments at year-end ... and, there's everything in between ... none of these are either 'right' or 'wrong' ... it's just how those firms evolved and, in many cases, is based quite a lot on the type of clients those firms serve
i know a couple of firms in our area that pay fairly modest base salaries, work their people long hours and, in some years, pay year-end bonuses to a LARGE portion of the staff that equal their base salary ... some of their people get burned out fairly quickly and leave ... but others love the energy annd excitement of the place and never, ever complain about money.
it's mostly about risk sharing ... if the employee takes more of the economic risk associated with the firm's business success, then the employee's going to expect higher bonuses in good years ... if the employee is very well paid in base salary and doesn't take a lot of economic risk, then bonuses tend to be smaller
different strokes for different folks ... but it's rare that you can have it both ways ... low risk, short hours and high bonus
So ... who's expecting some serious jack, come bonus time ?
What's been your experience with Holilday Bonuses ?
as non-existant as paid overtime when i first started working.
hefty when i had no soul and worked in corporate world, expensive ($1000's for ten people) dinner for department, gift card to restaurants, plus blowout christmas party at different chicago landmark every where. Last year rented out Union Station and packed it.
currently, somewhere in between. which is perfect.
interestingly, how rewarding the bonuses were invertly proportional to how rewarding the architecture and work there was.....and still holds true today.
I've gotten a bonus every year - usually dependent on how much OT I put in. Lately though, it's been a solid 10% of my gross salary... Not bad, but not great either...
I thought I got a good bonus last year, but my principal left a printout on his desk that listed everyone's bonus, including his. Needless to say, his bonus was about $20K more than anybody else's..
Ouch.
Jebus!
dml955i ... so, what's wrong with the principal taking home $20k more than anybody else ... does anybody else provide a personal guarantee on the firm's debt ... does anybody else stamp the drawings ... does anybody else stand to lose his / her home if there's an E&O claim not covered by insurance ... does anybody else bring in the level of new business that the principal does ... does anybody else cover the losses in years the firm doesn't make a profit ... does anybody else truly stand behind the work that the firm produces ?
these are not trivial considerations and ones that you will understand much better when you have spent a little time walking in your principal's shoes.
also could be some kind of tax loophole
i would be mighty supprised if i got so much as a middy out my boss
nicomachean ... tax loophole ? watcha got in mind, please ?
I'm expecting $30,000 and a Range Rover.
gift certificate to BK
Yeah... bonuses are a good way to shed taxable assets while simultaneously keeping employees happy.
I am just hoping to get kissed as I get Fucked!
Our secreterary drives a range rover. wierd...
just started this job in october, can't say that i am expecting all that much
Bonus......One more year of Architecture.....with good clients....that is what I'm hoping for.
i dunno, getting treated well throughout the year is good enough for me
Is the secreterary who drives a range rover getting kisses blown her way?
i've had various experiences with the old year-end bonus. seems to vary alot with architecture firms.
for comparison's sake though, consider that i once worked in the financial sales office of an insurance company. it was kind of a startup situation, so in order to attract talent my boss had convinced the board to pay all of us sales reps a $1,500 monthly bonus for the first six months and a $2,000 monthly for the next six months...and that was the minimum, if the rep had a good territory (such as manhattan where the firm had an established presence) he could easily blow past those numbers.
as good as it sounds though, i should also mention that is when and where i learned that money is a trap if you dislike you job, i.e., the more you are paid then the harder it is to walk out and the more dependent you risk becoming on something you dislike. i weathered a 70% paycut to return to architecture but it has probably been worth it.
Bonus... yeah right. I might 3 instead of 2 days off this year.
On the tax shelter thing-
I had a former boss explain to me once how the 10k bonus I was getting was basically so he wouldn't get screwed on the company’s taxes. I sent the account a dozen roses.
The same boss always bragged about how his salary was less than all the employees, I peeped the profits at the end of the year once, 6 figures all into his bank account. Which I had no problem with, but it just turns out he was a hypocrite. And diggers points are all very true, working with this particular boss made me see all those responsibilities up close every day, those 6 figures still weren't enough.
well, that year-end tax point is true ... if the firm is a corporation, then leaving any real money in the company at year-end causes the corporation to pay very onerous corporate income tax on the retained earnings ... corporate tax rates
this is not a tax dodge ... corporations are doing what the tax code was designed to motivate ... get that money out of the company and into the hands of the employees ...
however, this scenario does leaves a bitch of a problem ... companies like design firms find it very hard to retain meaningful earnings over the years to smooth out the inevitable fluctuations in revenue that occur from year to year
I am expecting a 20 spot
...and no days off
i had the equivalent of 2 weeks salary as a bonus last year. not much but it sure is better than a kick in the ass... especially with all the additional expenses that come with Xmas.
puddles - I once left a job in an inflated market to move back home and had the same money problem - called 'golden handcuffs'.
good for you
no idea... I've only been here six months, and it's my first fulltime job. My last internship gave me $300 though, which was awesomely unexpected.
On the secretary thing - ours lives in Beverly Hills, while a good part of the rest of us gravitate towards the cheapness of Culver City. And she's one of those people who never seem to wear an outfit more than once. But she's been here a long time and puts up with a lot of shite, so good for her.
thats why they have secretary's day and not cadmonkey day!
man I wish that pic would load... for some reason when people post too big of pics, only the top 1/5th of it loads.
Digger - I totally understand the "unloading profit in the form of employee bonuses to avoid taxes" thing. Just wish that myself and the other employees would get a bigger taste...
And yeah, I get that it's his name on the letterhead, his liability insurance, his stamp, his risk, blah blah blah... He works about a 5 hour day, his wife doesn't work, he has a phat house, and his little rugrats go to expen$$$ive private schools. He jets off too exotic locales for vacations while we toil away at the office and scrounge up enough cash to pay the rent and eat Ramen...
On the plus side, our principal does invest some of the profits back into the firm in the form of new computers and equip, but I'd rather have the $$ in my pocket...
every bonus ive received has been taxed just like payroll.
giving bonuses is not a tax scam. If I give a $10,000 bonus to an employee, what it means is the company and therefore I make $10,000 less. Correct, I do not have to pay the 35% tax rate on that $10,000, but I also don't have the 65% that I could have kept. Yes, I do give bonuses to employees averaging 17% of payroll. But it does cost me that money- it is not some tax savings. I could have kept the over $100,000 I gave in bonuses this year . One of my worst experiences ever was when I gave an employee a very significant bonus ($14,000), and the next morning, he saw me in the lunch room and thanked me, and in the very next breath, said his wife asked if it would be possible for him to get a company car too. I felt totally punched in the gut. If you get a bonus, yes you deserve it, but show a bit of gratitude, or at least don't be a jerk and think that you only got it because your boss was scamming the IRS.
Digger- unfortunately, the tax codes are not designed to get the money in the hands of the employees. Dream on. Every tax code allows the managment significant advantages over the employees. Look at the 401 K plan. The poor intern earning barely nothing gets nothing in their 401 K plan because they cannot afford to put the money in for the company to match. The Vice President gets the maximum in the 401 K because the company pays him enough that he can put in the maximum contribution. maybe they even 'gift' it to him.
Vado, you are correct, bonuses are taxed just like payroll. You can only give a gift of food or some other minor thing with a value of less than $25 to avoid taxes. So be happy for the larger amount and paying taxes on it. One good thing- if you have a pension plan, and say you get a 4,000 bonus. Say they put 5% in a simple IRA for you. The bonus counts towards your W2 salary that it is calculated on, so you make an additional 200 in your pension.
As far as corporate taxes, many architecture firms are organized as limite partners, or S corporations. The extra money can just go to the principals and owners- there is not tax loss. We are organized as an LP with a general partner a Corporation. It gives you the liabilty protection of a corporation, but you are taxed as a partnership.
You can leave as much money in the company as you want. We keep significant amounts of cash in the company. You pay taxes on it, and then keep in the company, but you don't have to wring the bank account dry every year.
heres your bonus...dont spend it all in one place
i seriously will receive the smallest bonus in the office and if like last year will be around $10,000. it goes up from there to around $25,000. its a small firm that does huge projects.
In past years, at a variety of different firms, my bonuses have ranged from a low of a box of candy and a fifty dollar bill, to a high of about $9000. I'm really hoping to break the 10k mark this year, but there's no way to know really. I guess it could be anywhere from nothing, to another box of candy, to some amount of $$... Only time will tell.
bonuses are part of the salary here.
so loans and other deferred payment type stuff all come with a bonus payment clause. buy a house, pay 1k a month most of the time but come bonus time its 4k (twice a year). sorta makes the bonus thing a bit of a non sequitur.
I was debating whether or not to quit on my review date, but then I found out that's when bonuses are dished out... so I guess I have to wait until after Christmas to do the deed. Greedy, maybe. Do bosses give bonuses because they expect you to stay around and keep working the next year?
Grimhart
you're not greedy and you don't belong to your boss. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as i'm concerned. If your boss gets unhappy about then tough shit, it's a free, open market and in case you feel bad about it always remember that he or she would have no qualms about letting you go if they had to. call me cynical but that's what the real world is about. so well done an good luck in your search for a new job after xmas.
Grimhart
you're not greedy and you don't belong to your boss. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as i'm concerned. If your boss gets unhappy about then tough shit, it's a free, open market and in case you feel bad about it always remember that he or she would have no qualms about letting you go if they had to. call me cynical but that's what the real world is about. so well done and good luck in your search for a new job after xmas.
Grimhart- just wait as long as you can after recieving the bonus. It'd look bad if it were an obvious take-the-bonus-and-run situation, so try to stick it out long enough that it's not too obvious.
I'd advise not to quit within days of receiving your bonus as that will only result in lingering resentment that could pose trouble down the road (architecture is a small world.) But: bonuses are awarded in consideration for efforts in the previous year (or whatever time period they follow in your firm) so they don't imply any sort of continuing obligation on your part. Most employment situations in architecture firms are "at will" both on the employee's and employers part and can be terminated for practically any reason at any point without guilt on either part.
I've postponed job switches twice for similar reasons: once waiting to leave because bonuses were due soon (in that case I left about a month after I got the bonus) and in another case waiting until I passed a certain date on which I became vested by a certain higher percentage in my profit-sharing account (in that case I left almost immediately afterward, as I didn't feel that anyone other than maybe the accounting staff would pick up on the specificity of the timing.)
writing as a so-called "boss" ... as a general rule, i think formerlyunknown has it about right ... at our firm, we share the economic rewards of our firm's operations with the people who helped to create those rewards ... year in / year out, it's an effort to be fair with the people who work here and we have no long-term expectation that such distributions, by themselves, will "bind" the individual to the firm ... such attachments come solely from broader aspects of the employment relationship ... money is only one dimension ... and for many, one of the smaller dimensions.
if you are unhappy where you are, you should leave ... as for the timing of your departure, that really depends on whether you want to burn a bridge or not ... because it's really hard to keep certain attitudes truly private, your employer probably already knows of your unhappiness ... if you take your bonus and storm out immediately, human nature is such that your firm will notice and probably remember
this is a very, very small profession and it's not uncommon for people to recycle at a firm one or more times. if that option is important to you, just try to remember the golden rule ... if you were in the firm's shoes, how would you react to your own behavior ?
I had been avoiding this thread as I knew I was going to get a bonus but almost passed out when I saw how large it was. It was unexpected for sure. Granted it wasn't nearly as big as some of the ones mentioned above ($25k? Are you serious? Do a lot of work for the Sultan of Brunei, eh?) but it was probably the most money I've ever held at one time.
As such, I felt compelled to write thank you notes to my bosses and I did. I started them off with phrases like "I don't know if this is protocol or not, but..." blah blah blah. I do feel truly grateful and although our workload and client base is largely uninspiring (draining, even) they have been very generous to me and I'm still learning a lot.
So to those of you who actually do give bonuses, what do you think, did I do OK?
That tax thing does make a lot of sense. And FYI, the secretary who drives the Land Rover (not Range Rover) bought it used, at a discount, from her parents-in-law, who seem to have mysterious and large amounts of money, with which they take their entire family on cruises. Maybe they get $25k bonuses too! :oP
25k in bonuses? i hate to be the echo of WK but thats unbelievable. if i could forward a resume...
No kidding.
The thank you note thing seems to have gone over well. I've already been thanked for my thank you note. This could go on for days, lol....
no, thank you wonderk
those bonuses are larger than my yearly income, sigh, and talk about overtime, merry Xmas northern hemisphere !
i had a boss who would play santa claus at the christmas lunch, handing out bonuses like he was father fricking christmas...at my new job we had our christmas dinner and there was none of that. and i never received anything in the line of $10K...that's pretty amazing but i can see how small firm + big projects = serious bank
Thi is my first year with a real job, not "free-lancing" I was almost surprise that people were posting about bonuses.
I think Ill get an "atta-boy" and a pat on the back no bonuses in this firm I fear.
oh and no xmas party either, ho ho ho
Every year there is this inevitable thread and the inevitable person claiming the $10k or more bonus working in an architecture firm. Not sure where you guys work but do you have anything at all resembling an resonable salary? Do you work solid 60 hour weeks all year? Knowing what it costs to run an architecture business there just shouldn't be profits like that lying around unless there is something a miss.
I work about 45 hours a week, salvaging some life outside the office thankfully. The firm spends their quite healthy profits in good salaries and benefits throughout the year. Our bonuses are very reasonable from $500 - to maybe $2000, depending on years employment, etc. It's reasonable and everyone is happy.
Now if the matching 401k and medial/dental and all other benefits weren't covered, I'm sure they'd have the spare profts to give me $10k. Not that I'm doubting anyone, but each firm is unique and I don't think the spead in compensation is really all that vast across the profession.
look ... there are very many different business models in our profession ... some firms pay very large salaries and provide exceptional benefits, but then don't do much for their staff at bonus time ...
other firms pay salaries at the low end of the competitive range, then bulk up through large payments at year-end ... and, there's everything in between ... none of these are either 'right' or 'wrong' ... it's just how those firms evolved and, in many cases, is based quite a lot on the type of clients those firms serve
i know a couple of firms in our area that pay fairly modest base salaries, work their people long hours and, in some years, pay year-end bonuses to a LARGE portion of the staff that equal their base salary ... some of their people get burned out fairly quickly and leave ... but others love the energy annd excitement of the place and never, ever complain about money.
it's mostly about risk sharing ... if the employee takes more of the economic risk associated with the firm's business success, then the employee's going to expect higher bonuses in good years ... if the employee is very well paid in base salary and doesn't take a lot of economic risk, then bonuses tend to be smaller
different strokes for different folks ... but it's rare that you can have it both ways ... low risk, short hours and high bonus
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