Lightwave's 30% Bonus

A while ago when I was covertly trying to escape from Potatohead I drove to another site in the area and interviewed for some open job positions in the Lightwave division. Lightwave manufactures test and measurement gear for fiber optic applications. That seemed pretty interesting to me at the time. However, after I spent the better part of a day looking around observing their operations and talking with supervisors I realized they were a bad crowd of employees. In their group they collected many people I'd had negative experiences with previously in other departments of the company. Incompetent managers will inbreed, they hire more bad managers to work alongside them and hire plenty of substandard people to work for them. My gut feeling told me that was the case there. Lightwave also struck me as a product division with a real attitude problem, one of pure arrogance and greed. I left their division late that afternoon unimpressed and completely turned off by them.

Perhaps everyone in Lightwave felt a sense of entitlement, like they could get away with being a bunch of condescending, obnoxious bastards because they were raking in an estimated $100 million a month in equipment sales. Technicians working on product lines in Lightwave were spoiled brats. They were each given personal laptop computers, and their own refrigerators to place under every workbench. Some employees who saw the gross excesses in Lightwave were apathetic to it and thought to themselves, "Good for them. At least some of our folks are getting over on management." Others became fiercely jealous. Why should Lightwave's staff get better treatment than the rest of our workforce when we are working just as hard if not harder? They had a good point there. My opinion was quite simply that Lightwave reeked of corruption from top to bottom. I wanted to stay the hell away from them.

Profit Sharing is one of the few remaining employee benefits we have. Twice a year if the company is financially stable and sales have been strong everybody here receives a bonus. The funny thing about it is when that bonus has turned out to be fairly substantial, corporate sort of freaks out about it. Reacting swiftly they alter the formula by which the profit sharing is calculated. So the next time a bonus might be headed our way a payout will be severely degraded compared to what it could have been previously. Corporate has tweaked the math to generate a lower profit sharing result numerous times in recent years.

Then the asshats in Lightwave go and give themselves a 30% payout bonus on our latest round of profit sharing. Nobody anywhere else in the entire company was given a profit sharing check larger than a single digit percentage. Somehow upper level managers in Lightwave manipulated their situation to dish out some serious loot to their own people. I'm disgusted with them, but I have to laugh. Now that Lightwave pulled this stunt the watchful eye of the corporate board has shifted focus towards their division. I expect a serious beat down is on the way and those idiots are going to be held accountable.

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't pursue a job in Lightwave.