Originally Posted by Unregistered

I don't work for EM. I am with Shell, however our salary packages are fairly similar. In Shell you do get a 3 months fixed bonus. However rather than viewing it as a bonus, you should see it as your total annual salary being divided into 15 months rather than 12. On top of this fixed annual salary (which includes the 3 months bonus) we will also get a performance bonus which is variable. Depending on your job function this performance bonus can be extremely huge and variable. For example, those in sales for certain business lines can stand to make as high as 10-12 months worth of variable bonus if they perform very well making money for the company. The downside is that you can also not get anything if you perform poorly.

Before you start jumping up and down wanting to join the company, please note that the above are typically not applicable to managers. The scheme described is for the sales reps (there is a somewhat similar scheme for oil traders) at what I would call lower job groups (ie. lower base salaries)...front-line troops who are given huge incentives to make money for the company. Senior managers tend to get higher base salaries and their variable bonuses (plus additional performance shares awarded) will have a higher component tied to the company's overall performance rather than individual business performance. The ratio of overall variable to fixed salary will be much lower compared to the front line sales staff described above.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the scheme for engineers. If they have reached managerial positions, it would be similar to other managers regardless of function, else I am sure there will be incentives to compensate for various hardships (eg shift work etc)

Trust this helps