OP, are you a man or woman? What race are you?

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you feel now how your colleagues felt when they realized that they were being paid less than you (through bonuses) for the same job.

This.

Anonymous wrote:Your boss has told you this wasn’t performance related, and that it was about equalizing shares among employees (which IS a real thing that companies do especially smaller, private ones for all around fairness and also because it is often easier for the company to give grants than to equalize salary).

You have acknowledged that the other person who did not receive a grant is also a strong performer. And you are a strong performer.

You have also acknowledged that you are otherwise happy with your comp.

So why would you take this so personally, and actually want to quit over it? It sounds like your supervisor could have done a better job explaining the circumstances to you, although just reading your explanation of it, I still understood it. I’m honestly curious of your age/seniority level?

You also said that the other employee who did not receive a grant recently was promoted. Do you feel that you should have been promoted as well, and are upset about that? That’s a legit concern, if the case, and if so, you need to have a conversation with your supervisor about that, understand why you weren’t promoted, and what is the path to your promotion.

This is my reaction too. Grow up OP.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you feel now how your colleagues felt when they realized that they were being paid less than you (through bonuses) for the same job.

Right. I’m poster 9:36, and in my experience (I’m management) this is exactly one reason why a grant leveling may be done, because sufficient employees who were “below market” in the amount of stock they had been granted brought this to our attention.

At this specific moment in time, it feels unfair. However, you don't know whether the boss was unfair to the 8 people before this specific moment in time. It sounds like he thought he's been unfair. The explanation was vague, probably because there were multiple criteria involved and he didn't feel like guiding you through all his reasoning.

Unless there's a history of unfairness towards you, I would not be overly upset about this one incident, OP.

I'd find a new job

Do not quit. The job market is terrible. But do start looking for another role, it may take a long time to find one.

It sounds like you feel now how your colleagues felt when they realized that they were being paid less than you (through bonuses) for the same job.

Your boss has told you this wasn’t performance related, and that it was about equalizing shares among employees (which IS a real thing that companies do especially smaller, private ones for all around fairness and also because it is often easier for the company to give grants than to equalize salary).

You have acknowledged that the other person who did not receive a grant is also a strong performer. And you are a strong performer.

You have also acknowledged that you are otherwise happy with your comp.

So why would you take this so personally, and actually want to quit over it? It sounds like your supervisor could have done a better job explaining the circumstances to you, although just reading your explanation of it, I still understood it. I’m honestly curious of your age/seniority level?

You also said that the other employee who did not receive a grant recently was promoted. Do you feel that you should have been promoted as well, and are upset about that? That’s a legit concern, if the case, and if so, you need to have a conversation with your supervisor about that, understand why you weren’t promoted, and what is the path to your promotion.

Well, now you know how much your employer values you - it sounds like they will keep you around but are not one of their valued employees and probably aren't going to advance.

Keep cashing those paychecks and look elsewhere.

I have worked in a similar situation where the firm was trying to equalize comp. There were some leads that were really good at giving out bonuses - and others who were not. After a few years leadership realized there were major differences and tried to fix it.

Ugh - this is hard. If you like it and want to stay, I would take a week and sulk privately, then go to your boss and ask for opportunities for you to increase your comp / stock / whatever on a go forward basis.

I ran into this once and my boss lit me up for using information that was part of my day to day role in that convo so at least they were nicer about it?

OP here. There was not "snooping" - I was working on a project preparing documents for a third party and someone on another team passed me the individual bonus documents by mistake instead of a redacted version.

I'm curious how you found out by "accident." Was there snooping involved?

I'm on a team with 10 people. I recently discovered by accident that eight of them got stock bonuses earlier this year of various amounts - two of us (including me) got nothing. I called my boss and asked if this was performance related and he said no it wasn't performance related, but only offered some vague explanation that it was about trying to give the other people more shares to make things more equal. I do have a fair number of shares from previous grants - but I have been working hard just like everybody on the team in the past year - So being excluded from this bonus really hurts. We work at a small private company so there's not a tight limit on stock options/RSUs like at big public companies.

How can I move forward from this? It's been a week and I'm still extremely upset at my boss who did this. It feels extremely personal to be in the bottom 20% even though he said it wasn't performance related. I know the other person who got a zero is a high-performer, but she was recently promoted and I haven't been. Even if I had gotten an award on the smaller side to his point that they are trying to "catch up" other employees that would've been something.

I feel like quitting but this is a rare WFH job with good base pay (I have no complains about my salary) and the flexibility is really valuable. So I don't want to cut off my nose despite my face. But I have lost all trust in and respect for my boss and the organization that I guess just doesn't value me.