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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

The idea is if someone helps you in a really big way that you’re able to reward that. So you can ask the company to give the person either credits for an internal store, or a direct addition to their salary for one month.

Obviously, there are limits to how many pay bonuses you can give out and if it’s direct money or store credits.

Directly asking for a peer bonus’ is not very “googly” (and yes, this is a term they use- in case you needed evidence of Google being a bit cultish).

There are companies who help do this “as a service”; https://bonusly.com/

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My last workplace had a similar institution, only the reward was candy bar or similar that you could go grab from a bowl in the kitchen (working on an honor code basis), in addition to getting some praise on Slack for general warm fuzzies. It was more of a symbolic gesture for recognizing small everyday things, of course, but it was nice IMO.

> The idea is if someone helps you in a really big way that you’re able to reward that

It never ceases to amaze me how (early) big tech embraced and even promoted things that would have been considered "career limiting" in traditional big corporations.

By systematising/gamifying this stuff you actually help distract people from participating in the realpolitik going on within the executive team. If you stop other non-exec level realising the real way power is exercised within the company with these distractions it removes a potentially very large pool of competitors for power within the org.

Don't know about your flavor of 'traditional big corporations' but my banking megacorp has internal reward system across various 'virtues' for a decade+ at least. Its not direct reward -> money link (thats rather for hiring success), it just helps you create sort of karma, and when bonuses, raises and promotions are considered then this is taken into account.

Since that process is invisible to those being measured you never know details (and shouldn't as long as management is sane, and if isn't this the least of your concerns), but its not ignored and in this way it helps keeping people motivated to generally do good work.

Big bank. Management theory at the time was to create competition between the silos for resources, time, budget, headcount, good desk locations in the bi-annual room desk shuffle, bonuses and even time of day from management. Even sales and trading - the most symbiotic of functions competed.

> would have been considered "career limiting" in traditional big corporations.

How so?

I wasn't aware of bonuses-as-a-service. Thanks for sharing.

Credits to the store? I have never heard of this or seen that.

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