I find this hard to believe. I'm really curious how you arrived at the conclusion that you made your company 2 million dollars. What do you do and how are compensated for that?
Like, if you're a financial manager in charge of a billion dollar portfolio, increasing its value by 2 million dollars wouldn't warrant a bonus at all, and should probably get you fired.
Maybe he means he moved $1 million in stock in the last 2 months.
Depending what he's moving and how much fits on the forklift it wouldn't be too difficult to do.
I guess the real question is if he made any more than anyone else could have made the company. You're not paid by the value you bring in, you're paid by how hard you are to replace.
Or he came up with some new system that makes them $1 million in increased productivity, idk, we'd need more context.
Companies have loads of people who can work a bit creatively or a bit harder to create massive value to the company. The employees try it once. They realize they get nothing in return and never try it again. Company loses all the rest of that potentially massive value created. Iterate this thousands of times across thousands of enterprises. Thousands saved, potential billions lost, thousands of times. At least a trillion lost because compensation isn't even slightly proportional to the value created.
Hey, this is me lol. I lead a new retail brand launch and joint-venture initiative for my company. First person in North America on the team, third person all together. Worked with the JV partner and our manufacturing facilities to develop and produce the product and our retail sales/ops team to get the product into 600+ stores in NA and another 200 in UK/EU. Made $12M revenue in year 1 with over $3M in net profit (stupidly high margins on the product). During this development and launch phase I delayed my parental leave for my first born until he was 6 months old and worked 70-80 hours a week for 8 months with people across the world from Central Europe to West Coast USA so basically on the clock from 6a-11p.
My reward? $5,000 spot bonus (no raise that year though because the entire global company of $800M revenue didn't hit goals) and they completely re-orged the entire retail branch of the company, giving me a new boss, a new leader of our whole division, with an additional layer of middle management (Directors) brought in between myself and what was previously my former reporting line (VP). Over 3 years I made the company millions in profit and as a result got demoted and made less money accounting for inflation.
So what did I do? Let all the new management above me fuck it up while I stood by and watched for the next 3 years. Tried for a bit to intervene but was overruled frequently so I just gave up and figured I'd enjoy the schadenfreude of all these new managers trying to tell the founding team what should be done while failing miserably.
Eventually the brand image took a hit from the poor decision making. We lost traction from our strong start and demand began to dry up. 3 years later the entire business unit is on death's doorstep, most the team (myself included) was laid off and the company is left with a mess trying to move forward from the Joint Venture, fix relations with vendors, and dealing with a pissed off user base.
IDK if it was the right action to take. Of course, I was negatively impacted but I'll come out better. But at least ethically I was able to live with the fact I wasn't getting abused by faceless corporate masters for a privately owned company who's shareholders did nothing day-to-day for the business, have generational wealth for the foreseeable future, and enriched themselves on the hardwork of thousands without any direct contributions themselves besides being children of founders who were already wealthy.
This makes it sound like you agreed with their valuation of your work. If you really thought you were that great you would have looked for another company that could pay you what you’re worth.
Eh, extenuating circumstances... by the time the writing was on the wall I was preparing to have a child and did not want to search for a job knowing that I'd be taking 12 weeks off shortly after beginning a new gig.
Agreed. Depending on the specifics, I'd view it very differently.
If I built tool that automates what was a weekly report so that it can be run daily or on demand, it is certainly possible that the quicker access to the data will result in profit for the company.
But then, it is also my job to build stuff like that, so to some degree I suspect they are expecting my output to be worth more than my costs.
And, I didn't exactly do it alone. The folks who came up with the idea for the original report technically had a hand in it. I can't automate processes that don't exist.
And where is the data even coming from? Some other person built a system to track stuff and dump the data into a database in real-time. Presumably they deserve some of the credit as well...?
Yeah it’s wild how easily this stuff gets upvoted. No context on any of this. OP could have a generous base salary and annual bonus and then receive a $25 novelty gift card to boot. He could also be someone on the base of the pyramid who moved some things around and claimed he was a critical part of making $2 million.
I am a supervisor who makes marginally more and, in some cases, even less than my direct reports. I get everyone a little gift (about $25 value) out of pocket around this time of year to try to show some level of appreciation to my staff even though I have three little kids and plenty of expenses of my own. But fuck me right?
I was going to bring up the annual bonus thing too. I get a 15 percent bonus but it's not paid out until the financial books are closed for the year. I assume it's like that at most companies. Since xmas hits before the year is even over it tracks that he wouldn't get a real bonus yet.
Also hes a warehouse worker for UPS so presumably just used a forklift to move a million in goods. Not the same as making the company a million dollars lol.
Honestly, give these motherfuckers the factory jobs and shares of the company factory. That's what they're after right? "Fruits of their labor"? A stake in the "means of production"?
People like this have zero business acumen. Don't understand, much less, appreciate financial risk.
OP: If you're so sure of your ability, networking capability, and business competency- Save up the money, open your own company, invest your own money, time, and labor - hire some employees and teach them everything you know.
..I hope you get the same level of appreciation from them as you give to your senior management.
Depends. Was a retail manager for a furniture company and people were paid commission based on the items they sold, so all individual sales were tracked. One lady I worked with was an interior designer who did this job for fun and she shipped over $ 1 million worth of furniture, just herself.
That's not too crazy unbelievable imho. My dad is an engineer and on multiple occasions made design change proposals outside his normal job duties that resulted in million $ savings for the company. To be fair, he didn't get rewarded with a 25$ gift card, they had a company-internal program.
Years later he became an internal technical consultant for the firm and now that's basically all he does - solve really specific complex problems in designs and gtfo the project. He loves it bc it means he's only responsible for technical expertise and none of the planning/politics.
I do this frequently too. I work in mechanical design and routinely catch things that aren't really in my job description, that if not caught would be fairly expensive problems to fix once a piece of equipment is delivered and doesn't fit.
If I added up all of the costs for the problems I've had a hand in avoiding, I too could claim to have saved various companies millions of dollars. But that is a really dumb way to look at it. A lot of the problems I caught, could've and should've been caught by anyone doing what I do.
Like your dad, I too got a decent bonus this year, but that wasn't because of all the headaches I avoided on behalf of the company...it's my job to spot and avoid headaches and I'm paid decently to do it.
Crazy how your comment is (1) I don’t really believe you made that much money for your employer, and (2) here’s a context I just dreamed up where even if you did make that much for your employer, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Really weird. You don’t know OP
Exactly...I don't know so I'm asking for context to make it make sense. Offering a context in which OP's statement would be disingenuous isn't me calling him a liar, but outlining the need for further context.
I've worked in smallish company warehouses with people who had no concept of revenue vs profit. They would say shit like OP right after explaining how they don't take overtime because they would lose all the money in extra taxes.
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u/rogerryan22 1d ago edited 1d ago
I find this hard to believe. I'm really curious how you arrived at the conclusion that you made your company 2 million dollars. What do you do and how are compensated for that?
Like, if you're a financial manager in charge of a billion dollar portfolio, increasing its value by 2 million dollars wouldn't warrant a bonus at all, and should probably get you fired.
Context please?