"Bonus"?
What's a "year-end bonus"? Is that something rich people get for jobs that involve pushing papers around?
Bonuses are a tool that favour employers, not employees, so you should be happy not to get one.
Imagine if your employer withheld half your pay every check, and instead of paying it throughout the year, paid it all in a lump sum at the end of the year. Then further imagine that if your employer was not satisfied with your performance, they could retroactively halve your pay by never paying you out the half they withheld over the course of the year.
Yes, that's what a cash bonus is: a tool whereby an employer defers pay and reserves the right to cancel it entirely. Compensation structures that include a bonus are bad for you as an employee, not good. Bonuses are not magical free money on top of your normal pay; in industries like finance and software engineering, they are a part of your normal compensation structure, but paid on a deferred basis.
Yes. I work for a startup company that is hemorraging money. No raises, no bonuses, nothing, nada - oh but when we hire people to replace those who quit, they get market rate (aka 20 to 30% more than the rest of us).
So we got a new CEO (that took our raise money) and a new VEEP. The VP really pushed a bonus structure for meeting goals (which is incentive, and better than what we had, which was nothing). Here's the kicker - the bonus structure/ incentive is ONLY for director level and above, not for manager and below, and WTF do you think the engineers who are actually designing, building, producing, fixing things are doing all day?? I learned about this from my director who told me he'd share his bonus if he got it, since I was essentially doing all the work.