this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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That's because they have a fixed budget and the proportions are tied to evaluated performance tiers, increasing your rating would contractually require them to compensate you more from the same pool of money
You're falling for the "we've constructed this machine to tell you no so you can't argue with us" ploy
No, as I said to another, upper management has every opportunity to fix the budget. Your direct manager however can not
I've found that laughing in their faces and putting in 2 weeks is fairly effective at breaking that wall. Amazing what money they can find when faced with the alternative. Otherwise, the correct move is to actually leave. All of you cowards that submit to the machine make it worse for everyone.
And I have in fact left that kind of jobs myself. Not trivial in a job market like this one though.
Need to make unions stronger again.
Nah, that's bogus. It's a private company, they can do what they want. They could have absolutely given OP the 5/5 rating, and just had them sign something saying that they were content with the bonus appropriate to a 4/5 rating. No one would have had to receive a penny less.
It's very annoying to have managers say their hands are tied when they very well could go to bat for you with their superiors. I was lucky to have one manager really push for me in the past like that. It's rare.
That fixed budget is what they always say. The budget for the company is their problem, not yours.
Upper management can certainly increase the budget. Your line manager probably can't
Yeah exactly. So it keeps everyone in their place, powerless to change anything within the structure that exist. Exactly as intended.
Yeah, no shit, thank you for repeating what I said. The point being I never cared about the money and didn't even understand it was only about the money. I only wanted recognition.