Raises and Bonus

We finally got our raises and bonuses. Yay, I think.

I'm really conflicted as to how I feel about the results. On one hand I'm glad that I got any raise and bonus with all of the economic horror stories that are going around. On the other hand, the results weren't very inspiring.

The raise was for 2.7% but my bonus was cut 45%. When put in dollar terms the net result is that I'll get about $200 more this year than last year. Somehow I don't think I'm winning the battle against inflation this year.

This is after the company got done telling us how great the results last year were. Unfortunately it turns out that our bonus structure is dependent on the individual unit that you're in and apparently the unit I'm in is struggling.

With the market being up more than 50% since last year this doesn't make much sense to me, but there isn't much I can do about it. I'm not responsible for generating new business and I'm not even sure what metric is being looked at when bonuses are decided.

Normally I'd try to negotiate a better raise or bonus, but my boss tried to get me the full bonus but the decision to cut the bonus came from way up top. Meaning I'd have to go to my boss's boss to get anything changed and I don't think I have the leverage to do that.

To make matters even worse, my manager didn't seem optimistic that things would get much better next (this) year, or possibly even the year after that.

Which is really discouraging and makes me wonder if I should start thinking about checking out other companies.

In an ironic twist, we get to fill out our employee satisfaction survey soon. I think I know exactly what I'll be telling them.