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Old 02-21-2026, 16:32   #1
Last hard class
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New Bonus Program

Just read about a new bonus program for the WO’s. Its an auction style program where you bid on your bonus. I am very curious to see how this goes. Apparently, it is based on some corporate model. Bonuses can be a directional indicator of how the top brass look at the available talent pool.

Do you guys consider this a better program than the existing one?


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Old 02-21-2026, 20:09   #2
Radar Rider
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Evaluations are too subjective to be used as a consideration for bonuses. For any MOS, you either pay a bonus, or you don't. Although objectivity in personnel evaluations is the goal, such is only possible if human biases are removed from the system. If you can find an entirely unbiased evaluation. I challenge you to present it to me. Otherwise, "performance" based bonuses are too subject to bias to be reasonable.
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Old 02-21-2026, 21:04   #3
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This is the very definition of a good idea fairy.

What they’ve failed to take into account is that there are different levels of commercial relationship:
- Transactional
- Employee / Team Member
- Partnership

Considering the military is pretty much the only institution that can say, “this operation has a level of acceptable losses…”, I think we can agree that the US Army’s relationship with its personnel falls somewhere between Team Member and Partnership.

However, the kind of thinking that produced this “bid” idea is very much transactional.

I’m imagining this was invented by a senior officer who hasn’t been near a combat arms unit for quite a while, hasn’t been at the coal face at all for some time, and who has forgotten the Army’s core values and what leadership actually means.

But my real concern is: how the hell did a truly stupid idea like this get signed off by multiple levels of leadership?

But I guess creating resentment in your staff might be the new leadership doctrine coming out of Harvard or something. Facepalm

S
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Last edited by Scimitar; 02-23-2026 at 00:19.
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Old 02-22-2026, 06:48   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Scimitar View Post
This is the very definition of a good idea fairy. S
I used to refer to my Warrant as the “Orucan Bird”

He was always “Or you can…” Or you can….”

This has the markings of some CW5 420A Admin Warrant Officer’s “Or You Can” nonsensical proposal after she just got done with her 2nd Masters degree and she’s working on her Doctoral Thesis on “Corporate Management in Modern Business”…..

“Or you can”
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Old 02-22-2026, 11:32   #5
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Originally Posted by Last hard class View Post
Apparently, it is based on some corporate model.
LHC
Been living through countless iterations of the “latest corporate model” here in the private sector for the last quarter century.
They never work as intended.
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Old 02-22-2026, 17:50   #6
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Been living through countless iterations of the “latest corporate model” here in the private sector for the last quarter century.
They never work as intended.
+1 This often comes from people Bubba references coming to the .Mil world thinking "Hey, let's run this like a profit-center, rather than as a cost-center." Zero Defects, Lean Sick Smegma, and their progeny. One of several ways they cripple is to make a management heirarchy track new metrics of how they did in measuring how people did.
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