The biggest surprise: the third-largest allocation went to the ninth-highest-paid person in the firm, a remote developer who handles small tasks and spends a lot of time helping others. The largest bonus was 2,530 and smallest was 855 shares. The company makes public a distribution curve of all the bonus grants, with no names attached, so workers can see what the highest and lowest bonuses were.
(The money or shares allocated to employees each quarter varies depending on company performance.) Employees only know what bonuses they receive, but don't learn who allocated what. Some rules apply: Workers cannot reward themselves, nor can they give options to company founders, who already have sizable shares. Rosedale plans to repeat the experiment quarterly. He says he wanted to let that company's 200 employees anonymously vote on who they found most effective, regardless of title or seniority.Īt Coffee & Power, options vest immediately, but since the company is still private, they have only paper value-at least for now. "Who knows better than employees themselves who the contributors are or the go-to person with a technical problem?" she says.Īn entrepreneur who co-founded Coffee & Power last year, developed the market-style bonus system, using both cash and stock options, at his previous firm, Linden Lab, creators of "Second Life," an online game. Rank-and-file workers often have the best information about how others really perform, saysĪ management professor at Carnegie Mellon University.