Guitar Gear Forum

My company, and my career with it, officially turn twenty-one this weekend. It took almost fifteen of those years to get my job to be exactly what I wanted it to be, but man I've never been so comfortable in a job. Are there stupid office politics yet? Yeah. But I've somehow managed to extract myself from the more toxic people and surround myself with the better people to work with so I mostly manage to avoid the worst of it.

For a little bright spot in a year of shit, the coworkers and I are having a little socially distant drink at the end of the day to celebrate. Come to the cart at the end of the hallway, sanitize hands, take a glass and pour what you'd like to take back to your desk and enjoy while we chat in teams. Choices include mezcal, rum, two types of bourbon and two scotches, one super peaty, one lighter. No bottom shelf garbage. Class all the way.

I believe at this point I'm one of only three people left from the original hires, and one of only two that started day one and weren't up front investors. Just me and a gal that now runs an offsite location, sitting in dad's living room with one computer setting up the entire business plan and creating skus. From that to a twelve million dollar a year net company in 21 years.

Seems like forever ago and like it just happened all at the same time.

Congrats! That's a big anniversary. Especially in this day and age. Hopefully they take care of you and appreciate that loyalty!

JiveTurkey wrote:Congrats! That's a big anniversary. Especially in this day and age. Hopefully they take care of you and appreciate that loyalty!

On profitable years they do. My salary is OK on its own, but the yearly bonus they do is pretty fucking righteous. They take a certain percent of net profit for the year then use a calculation that multiplies your years of service and then divides by the number of people currently in the bonus pool. We usually end up with something in the high end of 4, sometimes right up to five figures. Which is a nice chunk of change to get all at once. This year has been record setting for us despite a few off months when the pandemic hit, so I'm thinking we might actually break the five figure limit that's taunted me so many years in the past.

On top of that, I built our dealer network ordering web site from the ground up, and that now accounts for over 85% of all of our business. To say the higher ups are happy with what I've managed to accomplish would be an understatement, so the company tends to have a "well, if he wants it, I suppose we should let him have it" attitude towards my requests. It helps that I don't abuse that like some have in the past, but it's nice to be able to say, "Hey, my wrists are feeling it, can I buy that four hundred dollar split keyboard," and the only pushback you get is them saying to have the ergonomics guy approve it. Which he immediately did once we contacted him.

Damn. Those are some nice bonuses Hope you break that 5 figure ceiling this year

congratulations!! out company used to do a similar bonus structure - without the years of service part.
Pandemic has put a damper on it
and the last one we got - I should have received a bonus close to 5 figures - but the head honchos got together and decided 'it was too much money' for us - so they only paid out a third of the bonus pool.
Was still in line with previous years bonuses I had received - so really didn't even really think about it until my best friend at work (company controller) told me what had gone down.
He ended up getting let go over the argument he had with upper management about it.
(with a years severance - it's good to know where the bodies are buried)

[/rant]

but congrats!!!!

clipless bumper wrote:congratulations!! out company used to do a similar bonus structure - without the years of service part.
Pandemic has put a damper on it
and the last one we got - I should have received a bonus close to 5 figures - but the head honchos got together and decided 'it was too much money' for us - so they only paid out a third of the bonus pool.
Was still in line with previous years bonuses I had received - so really didn't even really think about it until my best friend at work (company controller) told me what had gone down.
He ended up getting let go over the argument he had with upper management about it.
(with a years severance - it's good to know where the bodies are buried)

[/rant]

but congrats!!!!

Being a controller must suck balls when you deal with corrupt management.

My dad was controller at the previous company we both worked at and at this one. The one up the road was fucking brutally horrible. Upper management was trying to get him to cook the books before showing them to the corporation that had bought the company out so he went to the corporation with both the cooked and the uncooked books and told them what's up. When he flew back he was unceremoniously "voluntarily resigned."

But that's a part of what lead to this company being created, which is a direct competitor and has devastated both their workforce and their sales. Dealers started jumping ship the first year we were open, and we've hired so many of their people away we started referring to them as our "academy." They get 'em and train them, then piss them off so much they go looking for a job where they need the same skillset and we're the only other game in the area that hires so much.

It's a bit more epic than that even, but I say much more and it'll start to be easily google-able.