Despite COVID, 40% of tech companies give year-end bonuses

When you look at the data, you can clearly see that companies follow different patterns depending on their funding status.

(L-R) Piplwize co-founders  Jonathan Wasserman and Amit Rapaport (photo credit: Courtesy)
(L-R) Piplwize co-founders Jonathan Wasserman and Amit Rapaport
(photo credit: Courtesy)
What is the likelihood that your employer will give out year-end bonuses? Some 40% of Israeli hi-tech companies are giving bonuses this month, worth an average value of a bit more than a month’s salary, according to data from Piplwize, a start-up that offers real-time salary analytics.
“At the end of the calendar year, bonuses are a topic on everyone’s mind,” Piplwize founder and CEO Amit Rapaport said. “And when a company is considering how much to give, it is important that they have data about what companies similar to them are doing.”
When you look at the data, you can clearly see that companies follow different patterns depending on their funding status, she said. For example, 90% of companies that have done an IPO or have been acquired give out bonuses, while only 2% of seed-stage or series-A funded start-ups do. About 35% of companies in series B or C stages of funding give an annual bonus, while 50% of series D and E companies do so.
A trend that Rapaport found inspiring was that across the board, the size of the bonus an employee gets is dependent on his performance at work, not his rank in the company.
“We don’t see that managers get higher bonuses than junior employees,” she said. “Companies want to show appreciation to their best workers regardless of their rank in the company.”
The average bonus across all categories was 105% of a monthly paycheck, effectively a 13th salary. The data was based on salary information from more than 100 Israeli tech start-ups.
The ability to access industry-wide salary data enables a company to ensure that its compensation packages are sufficient to help it hire top talent and reduce turnover, Rapaport said.