[coaxial]

In my experience, bonuses are also very discretionary and completely opaque. I've seen countless offers touting a sizeable bonus at the entire discretion of the company with no way to know what are the criteria for award. And what do you know, nobody ever got these phantom bonuses because reasons. But it was included in offer letters and used to lower the negotiated salary as of it was a sure thing, and not everyone was savvy enough to push back.

[foobiekr]

I've worked at companies that document bonuses and companies that don't. Documented bonuses are a completely different situation.

My current employer is documented: it calculates your pro-rated fraction at each grade level for the bonus period two deal with promotions and then divides by 2 (bonus is paid out in two payments per year) and then multiplies grade level * company performance * employee performance. Any employee can calculate exactly how their manager ranked their performance. They can complain (or leave). With one weird exception people's grade levels are visible to others which means their bonus target is visible. For some people, 100% of their details (everything: base, etc.) are sometimes known to anyone who is interested (this applies to me).

(I should note that I don't think the compensation is transparent at VP level and above and know from experience there are tons of shenanigans there.)

When I worked for companies that did not document the bonus methodology, it was appalling. Bonuses were for glory hounds and friends of management. Terrible. A lot of employees didn't even know bonuses were paid.

I think the same issues exist for compensation (equity and base as well as special packages or retention bonuses) that exist for bonuses. It would be interesting to see if you could meaningfully execute a company with total transparency but I don't think it would survive contact with reality.

[maxxxxx]

"It would be interesting to see if you could meaningfully execute a company with total transparency but I don't think it would survive contact with reality. "

I think you can. There are some companies that do it already and places like military and Congress (they fully publish salaries) are transparent without falling apart. Secrecy around salaries is just a tool for employers to keep salaries low.

[cuboidGoat]

>It would be interesting to see if you could meaningfully execute a company with total transparency but I don't think it would survive contact with reality.

Entire countries manage it. Sweden, Finland and Norway publish all income tax returns.

[kradroy]

I work at a company where they're very transparent about bonuses. I've been told by the VP of my department that it's always advantageous to align my compensation with that of the higher-ups. They usually opt for higher base bonus percentage from their merit increases. Our base bonus percentage is not fixed. It can increase each year. You can start at a 9% bonus, but 3 years later it could be 15%.

Each year they announce how much, by percent, the bonus pool will be funded. And as long as I've worked there the bonus pool has been funded at >100%. The company is very fiscally responsible and they do everything in their power to meet their targets.

There are 4 categories of performance and if you meet the top two, you're guaranteed 100%. The policy for how much bonus % you receive is in the employee handbook. So your bonus is: (your base bonus percentage) * (performance percentage) * (bonus pool funding percentage) * (base salary). The only way you can get screwed is if you're tagged as underperforming. I've only known one person who's to ever receive that tag, and he was definitely underperforming.