Bonus payment negotiation case

WittyDeveloper

I'd like to have some opinion on this topic, preferably but not exclusive from some IT guys or those in leadership positions.

I work as a software developer and found a trick to boost speed in our application. We're talking 25 up to 210% speed gain globally on about 3 million lines of code. There are clients who run intensive computations and complain about hour-long bad performance. Implementic the trick took me 2 days, most of which was speed measurement.

I our latest talk my boss offered me a mediocre salary gain, but we agreed on a bonus payment in yet undetermined amount.

1.) How much do you think I can demand?

2.) If you have some expertise in this area, how much do you think would be the price for a speed-up like this on "the market"?

I kept it quite short, if you need any information, let me know.


For anyone who is interested, I switched from client to server JVM, which is fairly basic stuff but no one in my company knows about this.

NetworkNewb

I'm confused, is that not what the company is paying you to do? work on their software... Sounds like a networking engineer going up to the IT manager and saying "I know how to speed up the network, but your going to have to pay me extra"

networker050184

Have to agree with NetworkNew here. Exceeding expectations should net you some bonus, but probably not as big as what you're probably expecting. 10-20% seems about the average I've seen over my career for an over achiever.

Now, if you were a contractor brought in to specifically target a performance upgrade on this code you'd probably be making a pretty penny doing it. That is a completely different story though.

210mike

I understand your feelings, it's common for people to go "I went above and beyond and saved the company all this money and made things 100 times better, I should get a big fat reward", but unfortunately that's not how the world works.

BigMevy

I'll echo the others' takes, but I'm curious as to what the mediocre pay raise is? Is this a part of a normal review process, or did you go an ask for this specific to this project?

As to your second numbered point, first I would have to know what the financial impact of your fix is? Maybe if you can provide hard data on that, it might give you a basepoint for negotiation.

WittyDeveloper

Thanks for the quick response!

I don't want to seem greedy or such. I just think I've contributed a big thing beyond what is expected of me and as networker050184 said I feel I should earn some bonus for that.

@NetworkNewb
My tasks are actually in a total different area such as developing new features and such.

@networker050184
10-20% of what exactly? As a gain on anual salary or as single bonus payment (that's what I'm asking for)?

@BigMevy
Mediocre is 3% raise in 2 years in the company and yes it's normal review.

Financial impact probably none as this is not our business model works.

NetworkNewb

"My tasks are actually in a total different area such as developing new features and such."

If that is the case, it isn't what your company is paying you do and so I would definitely do what your doing then. I would probably be greedy I'm guessing it would have some financial impact, in that your "fix" is saving a bunch of time and that extra time is allowing those people to work on more things that could bring profit to your company. Without your knowing your business or what this code actually saves, your code make the company millions more or a few thousand more. In end it really just depends how valuable your company thinks it will help. Wish I had any experience so I could give you better advice. Gratz on whatever you end up getting out of it though!

networker050184

WittyDeveloper wrote: »

@networker050184
10-20% of what exactly? As a gain on anual salary or as single bonus payment (that's what I'm asking for)?

Most places I've worked any substantial bonuses are given as a percentage of salary on either a yearly or quarterly basis. This would be separate from your normal merit increase in salary. Merit increases are usually around 3-5% in my experience. It all probably depends on HR standards if you work in a decent sized company though. Bonus and merit increases are usually structured and deviating from that structure usually requires approval pretty high up the ladder.