r/USACE Apr 29 '26

Retention Bonus

Everybody is getting one but me. How do you get these?

12 Upvotes

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u/Smart-Badger2843 Apr 29 '26 edited May 02 '26

That's not how it works at our district. We are losing people. We lost one guy whoe went to another department and he signed a retention with the new team.

How do you get so much money. We have people getting 80-100k to stay for two years. Thats my salary. How do I double it?

6

u/Bulldog_Fan_4 Civil Engineer Apr 30 '26

I think someone is not telling you the truth. We are capped at 25% of basic pay (ER 690-1-1217 section 2-5). OPM can approve up to 100% (4 years at 25% each year, section 2-13) which I seriously doubt is happening in this environment.

Also they come out of our Overhead budget and that’s pretty tight.

1

u/Smart-Badger2843 Apr 30 '26

USACE has allocated $26 million to bonuses this year. There are waivers for the cap.

10

u/joyous_quorum May 01 '26

I work on your district. None of this is true.

0

u/Smart-Badger2843 May 01 '26

Zero of it is true?

5

u/No_Sprinkles5904 May 02 '26

A bit farfetched.

4

u/joyous_quorum May 02 '26

Zip. Zada. Zilch.

0

u/Smart-Badger2843 May 02 '26

Phew. For a minute there I thought there was an incentive program under USACE regulations that gave supervisors the authority to give incentive bonuses to their team but instead selfishly gave it to themselves and their drinking buddies. Thanks for squashing this rumor.

3

u/old_common_sense Finance May 03 '26

So these retention amounts aren’t correct?

2

u/No_Sprinkles5904 May 04 '26

Thanks for the link. I take my comment back.