So we have all seen the video of a CEO telling people not to care about bonuses. But keep this in mind, those bonuses are tied to reaching a milestone, and these people work in sales.
Meaning they probably worked overtime to manage to find clients to sell chairs to. All this, with a promise of a nice bonus, that might account to 20-80% of total comp for people working in sales. Those people were not denied extra pay – they were effectively denied part of their salary, that they worked for.
As I said, bonus in sales is tied to reaching milestones, so these people are rightfully owed this money, but when you call it a bonus suddenly as a company you can avoid paying it. Now that is fucking evil.
I just finished four rounds of interviews with a company where the pay was okayish-to-low however they promise End of Year bonuses of 1-3 salaries for good performance. I told them this is not acceptable to me and I want more guaranteed income, they did not lile that, and I just went away from the interview process.