My company came up with a structure where we have an overall quarterly revshare in replace of bonuses for the entire company. It works where engineers get X% and sales reps get ~4 x X% of the revshare pool for each team. Of each team's bonus pool, 2/3 is given out guaranteed based off a few tangible factors and then the remaining 1/3 is given out to individuals who have performed above & beyond.
The idea behind this are a few-fold but essentially:
As an engineer (now CEO/CTO), I've hated having to wait the full year for my bonus. It's just a way to lock me in for the year when my incentive to stay should be to love the work & team. I don't want to create a place to work where you're forced to stay because of some guaranteed bonus - if you want to leave, leave & then let's hire someone who finds the work engaging + we all know performance slips as you wait for the bonus.
For the sales team, it means they're incentivized to work with the engineering & product teams to make sure they get the engineers the proper feedback in order to build a better product that they can sell more easily.
We've found this has generally built a better more team-oriented & results-oriented culture. Happy to expand but overall I think a quarterly revshare for everyone is a much better end-result (other than the fact I'm now forced to care more about making sure engineers are happy but that should be a huge focus regardless...).
Edit - also worth noting that we give everyone equity so there's still a long-term focus of building a company, not just cashing out quickly.
The idea behind this are a few-fold but essentially:
As an engineer (now CEO/CTO), I've hated having to wait the full year for my bonus. It's just a way to lock me in for the year when my incentive to stay should be to love the work & team. I don't want to create a place to work where you're forced to stay because of some guaranteed bonus - if you want to leave, leave & then let's hire someone who finds the work engaging + we all know performance slips as you wait for the bonus.
For the sales team, it means they're incentivized to work with the engineering & product teams to make sure they get the engineers the proper feedback in order to build a better product that they can sell more easily.
We've found this has generally built a better more team-oriented & results-oriented culture. Happy to expand but overall I think a quarterly revshare for everyone is a much better end-result (other than the fact I'm now forced to care more about making sure engineers are happy but that should be a huge focus regardless...).
Edit - also worth noting that we give everyone equity so there's still a long-term focus of building a company, not just cashing out quickly.