- I'm a big fan of talking real numbers.
Earlier this year, I made a video telling you
every single salary that I've had throughout my career.
And I also made a video talking about
the different standardized salary levels
that we pay for designers at ConvertKit.
But another side of this
that I haven't really touched on yet
is the bonuses and other compensation
that I've received throughout my career,
which, spoiler alert, in some cases has added up
to being about 20,000 extra dollars per year.
So let's go into detail about that.
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in my previous money talk videos, let's call them,
I focused on talking about salary
because I do believe it's the most important number
to consider when you're accepting a job offer,
because it's the number that's guaranteed.
You need to make sure that the money that's coming in
on a regular basis is gonna to cover your needs
and it's a good baseline for comparison.
However, when you're considering a job offer,
you do need to total in the bonuses, benefits,
other types of compensation that a company offers as well,
because, in some cases, it can add up to a lot.
Now I haven't kept track of this, honestly,
as well as I did it for my salaries,
but I'm gonna go through it as best I can.
And remember, if you wanna know what salary I was paid
at each of the jobs I'm gonna talk about,
then you can watch the video on a card
in one of these corners.
I think it's that one (laughs).
Okay, my first job in the industry,
first job out of design school,
I honestly don't remember any bonuses,
like any monetary benefits
that we got as part of the job.
It was all just salary was the compensation.
And we had the regular benefits for a New Zealand company,
which meant four weeks vacation,
which I think is like mandatory.
We've got sick leave as well,
which is also mandatory in New Zealand.
And they also paid for me to go to two conferences
while I worked there, which I thought was very cool
and very exciting for me as a new designer in the industry,
to have a company pay for me to go to a conference,
especially fly to one.
That was very exciting.
And I was very appreciative.
My second job though,
is where I really got my first taste
of the idea of bonuses as additional compensation.
This was my first job in the tech industry.
I was working at a company called Xero,
which is an accounting software company
that was founded in New Zealand.
And Xero had two types of extra compensation,
a long-term incentive and a short-term incentive.
The short-term incentive was a portion of your salary,
I think it was 2.5%,
that you would be paid out in cash at the end of the year,
depending on how the company went reaching its goals.
For me in my first year, my short-term incentive bonus
was about 1,500 New Zealand dollars,
which I think is about a thousand-ish U.S. dollars.
But the thing was that because it was paid out,
depending on the company reaching goals,
I never got 100% of it.
I think it was usually like 80 to 90% of it was paid out.
And it was called a short-term incentive
because you'd get it every year.
The long-term incentive side of things was shares
because Xero is a publicly-traded company.
So you got allocated some shares,
which vested to you over time,
which is why it's called a long-term incentive.
And I think every year you got 5% of your salary
allocated to you in shares.
And it was a percent of the salary
rather than a certain number of shares
you got each year because it depended on
what the market was doing.
So in my first year there,
the shares were quite low and I got a bunch of them.
And the second year that shared allocation time came around,
our stock price had gone up
and so I got less individual shares,
but it was worth still 5% of my salary.
I was at Xero for a little less than three years.
And I ended up with 244 shares
that I own and are mine and that were vested to me.
Right now, they are worth a little less
than 24,000 Australian dollars,
which is 16,700 U.S. dollars.
So that's really exciting.
They're just sort of sitting there
as my rainy day fund, honestly.
I don't know much about stock trading
or the share market and that.
I sort of try and keep an eye on it, but yeah,
they're there for me
as something I can pull from and sell those shares
if I choose and need to in the future.
As well as those extra monetary incentives compensation,
we had the usual vacation time, sick leave as well,
as a standard for New Zealand companies.
I think through Xero
I could have also had discounted private health insurance,
but I didn't need to in New Zealand.
What else, what else?
Oh yeah, they also did typical tech company things as well.
So that was really exciting for me
to discover for the first time.
We had a barista in the office.
They would do Friday night drinks.
They also had ice cream Tuesdays,
where a local ice cream company would come in
and you could have subsidized ice cream scoops
during the summer.
That was fun.
I also got to go to a few conferences
as part of the Xero team.
And they did KiwiSaver matching as well,
which is New Zealand's pension retirement fund.
401k, I think, is what it's called in the U.S., that thing.
My next job was at a London-based tech company.
They didn't do cash bonuses,
but what they did have was stock options.
Now options are different from shares
because shares are when a company is publicly traded,
is listed on the stock market.
Owning a share means immediate access to it, I guess.
Like you could sell that thing immediately
and get some money back.
And it's up to you if you wanna wait
to see how the market changes,
if it might be worth more in future, that sort of thing.
Options, however, are a way for a startup
or a tech company that isn't publicly traded
to give employees equity in the company.
And what it means is they give you the option
to buy stock in the company at a set price.
Options are also things that usually vest to you over time.
Like over time, you get more and more options
that you could choose to invest in the company.
Usually if and when you decide to leave the company,
you can choose if you wanna exercise your options
and pay for them and own that piece of the company
so that if the company does get publicly listed,
or if it sells, you would get a portion of the proceeds
because you are a company owner.
That was probably really horrible explaining.
I hope they made a little bit of sense.
I'll leave a link in the description
to something that explains options versus shares
perhaps a little bit better.
But when I left this company,
I chose not to exercise my options.
I don't know now if that was a mistake or not,
but at the time I didn't really understand
what it was all about.
And I also didn't see the plan
for this company to be publicly traded,
to be sold and all that.
So I wasn't really sure
what I was investing in and didn't like,
didn't see that I would get a return on that investment,
even though it probably would have been small.
I think it would have cost me like 150 pounds
to exercise my options, but I just chose not to,
because I don't believe in investing in things
that I don't fully understand.
And that's what I did.
Also at this company in the UK,
they have similar mandatory leave periods
and mandatory sick leave, like New Zealand does.
So I had all that, and they also provided tea, coffee,
ice creams in the summer as well.
I'm noticing a trend in the companies that I've worked at.
Now onto my current company, ConvertKit,
which is where I discovered the joys of profit sharing,
which is yet another way
that a company can incentivize employees
based on performance.
So I can book it after we take a portion
of our profits aside for taxes
and for savings for the company,
52% of the remaining profits are divided
amongst the team twice a year.
The amount each person gets in their share of the profits
is based partially on how long they've been at the company.
So the idea is that the longer you're there,
like if the company keeps doing well,
your profit sharing checks
will keep getting bigger and bigger.
It's not guaranteed, of course,
but it's something that everyone in the company
can have an impact on
in choosing how we spend the company's money.
And, of course, it pushes us all
to do well in our job as well
so that the company can make more money
so that we can make more money (laughs)
What I love about the way ConvertKit does profit sharing
is that, unlike at Xero,
where our bonuses were a percentage of our salary,
at ConvertKit, it's not dependent on your salary,
like that doesn't have any impact
on how much profit sharing you get.
Which I think is good because everyone at the company
has an equal ability to impact the company's profits
and so it's reflected by that all being equal.
Profit sharing is always a really fun time, obviously,
because you're getting money (laughs)
but they usually happen on team retreats
when we're all hanging out together.
And the directors hand out these little cards
with nice messages in them that the directors have written.
And it says how much your profit sharing amount is as well,
which is very cute.
I've saved all my cards, 'cause it's just nice
to have these cute little handwritten messages, you know.
I was like shocked the first time
I opened my little profit sharing envelope
because it said that my amount
that I was getting was about $11,200.
And that was the most money I'd ever been given
at one time before.
It's very exciting, and it's still exciting
every single time this happens.
I've been at the company four years now.
And in that time, I'm just gonna read this number
off my phone to make sure it's correct.
My profit sharing in total has added up to $78,457.
So that's almost an extra 20,000 per year
if I spread it out throughout my time at the company.
And it is before tax, for all the people wondering that,
but still that's a huge bump over my salary.
At ConvertKit, we have stock options as well,
which is very cool.
And just like that level of ownership and equity
in the company means a lot more to be here,
just because of my alignment with the company's mission
and the direction that it's going.
We get three weeks vacation in the first year,
going up to four in your second year and every year after.
Get sick leave.
We get 4% 401k matching, which for me ends up
being like an extra 4% paid to me of my salary
for me to put into my own retirement savings.
We have, well, the U.S. employees
get healthcare benefits paid for, obviously.
I get a stipend to pay for my own health care
over here in Spain.
We get to go to a conference each year.
We have a learning budget.
Yeah, lots of cool things
and they keep adding to them over time as well,
which is really cool to see.
That is where I'm at right now.
I'm excited to keep working towards the company's profits
so that the profit sharing checks
can keep on coming for ConvertKit.
But I hope that was really useful
to hear about the different ways
that I've been given additional compensation
in the jobs throughout my careers.
I'd love to hear if any of this
was like completely new to you,
if there's ways you've been compensated
that I didn't talk about.
Tell me about them down below in the comments.
I think this is really good to talk about
because like I said, this is something important
for you to consider along with the salary
when you get a job offer.
Thanks for watching everyone.
Let's keep having conversations like this,
talking about money, talking about what we're paid.
I think it's really healthy for everyone
when we make this stuff public
and don't just keep it all hidden and taboo
like the world would want us to.
Thanks for being here and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye.
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