Interesting and with credibility, Misk as I tend to agree with your posts and comments (+20!). I just don't trust my company even after 20 years and moving into leadership years ago, so anytime I see a corporation making a choice like this I can't help but be extremely skeptical.

I would always prefer a base salary increase to my arbitrary bonus, but with the balance between net benefit to employees over the bottom line of the Corp, why would a company do it if it didn't pay out less in the long run? Or are they counting on merit based salary levels for performant individuals being a better deal over typical company-wide gaming of bonuses being easier to control?

Reading the article it seems to be related to a shortage of labour in Japan, so not my situation where we have been laying off people for years now. I'd love it if we did this for positive reasons like attracting better talent and increasing average salaries. I guess that's where my disconnect is.