I've been blessed enough to see a big bonus and cursed enough to see the smallest. The problem is, neither of them affected my motivation -- and not because I'm such a dedicated worker.
When I got a big bonus, I felt good of course. The next day, the same problems confronted me, and I didn't work any less or more hard to solve them. You can't make your brain pump out more than what it does, or come up with more innovative solutions suddenly. The best I could have done was maybe type a little faster.
When I got a small (ahem, zero) bonus, I was very unhappy of course. But a guy that I enjoyed working with expected me to deliver some code by the end of the week, and I spent the rest of the day dedicated to fulfilling my commitment. That guy didn't affect my bonus one way or the other, so why should he suffer? (Another demonstration that friends at work contribute significantly to your job enjoyment.)
The kicker is that my own productivity was one of the smallest factors. Much bigger: profitability of the company, industry trends, macro-economic conditions.
In good years, a few people felt good, but most had mixed feelings. After all, most people view themselves as above average, but most will receive an average bonus.
In bad years, everyone felt bad: people that had worked hard felt cheated, and those who didn't were upset just out of disappointment.
So, on net, bonus day as practiced on Wall Street is typically a mixed to negative experience. It's supposed to reward and thereby encourage performance, but it's so weakly related to performance that it's more like a lottery. This is the mechanism setting the culture at all these financial institutions that are too big to fail?
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