Paired Assessment - What do you think?

[ucbalumnus]

@theloniusmonk

“The success or failure of the project, division, or company is the “team grade”. Regardless of how good your contribution was, the bonus or layoff that you get depends on the overall success or failure which is largely dependent on others’ contributions.”

That’s not true in most high tech companies, bonuses are tied to your individual contribution as well as meeting or not meeting group goals. Managers get a lot of feedback on who contributed little vs who drove the project. Let’s say you release a product successfully and the mgr or team lead gets $50K of bonuses to divide up, they’re not going to give 5K to ten team members equally.

The big bonuses of stock option gains are based on entire company performance (as viewed by investors). Yes, ongoing bonus grants can vary based on how managers view individual performance, but the biggest grants tend to be at initial hire.

Of course, if the group is cut or the company closes, the high performers lose jobs just like the low performers.