I worked at a very successful company that used a similar model: flat 50% of profits paid to employees as bonus. This worked fantastically well in the short term. Now, 10 years later, the company is still very successful but the upside has all shifted to the owners due to departures, renegotiations, and new hires not getting the same terms. So at 3 years it looked very pro-employee but at 10 years it looks very pro-owner.
Would have been really "interesting" if there had been a liquidity event...
The owners stuck around. Why didn't the employees? Serious question... were people fired for having too remunerative packages? Or did people just move on mostly?
I do agree it can be hard to make it fair once a company is big enough or growth slows dramatically, but that's a problem to deal with 3-5 years from now :)
I worked at a very successful company that used a similar model: flat 50% of profits paid to employees as bonus. This worked fantastically well in the short term. Now, 10 years later, the company is still very successful but the upside has all shifted to the owners due to departures, renegotiations, and new hires not getting the same terms. So at 3 years it looked very pro-employee but at 10 years it looks very pro-owner.
Would have been really "interesting" if there had been a liquidity event...