A salary of 70 million won.
To most people that is a high enough salary.
But suppose there are two people at IT companies both earning 70 million won.
One of them gets a few percent of salary added each year as a performance bonus,
and the other receives, when the company does well, close to a full year’s salary in one payment.
The base salary is identical.
Yet the money that actually lands in the account can be entirely different.
That is why looking only at salary in the IT industry can mean missing half of your compensation.
In 2026 this gap became more extreme still.
SK Hynix kept a structure that funds its bonus pool with 10% of operating profit and removed the cap on payouts. The PS paid out in early 2026 reached roughly 2,964% of base pay, producing cases where an employee on around 100 million won in salary received about 148 million won in bonus alone.
Kakao, over the same period, posted its best results ever in 2025 and still saw conflict grow over its bonus structure and payout criteria. In the end the 2026 compensation debate showed that this is no longer an era in which “how much the company earned” alone decides the bonus.
To understand performance pay in the IT industry, start here.
A performance bonus is not a bonus.
It is how a company divides its money.
Why real income differs on the same salary
An employee’s compensation usually appears as a single number.
Salary.
In reality it is built in layers.
base pay
+ regular bonus
+ individual performance pay
+ team performance pay
+ company performance pay
+ equity
= actual total compensation
The problem is that the number shown first in a job posting or a salary negotiation is the base pay.
Base pay of 70 million won is unambiguous.
Performance pay is not.
- If the company does well you might receive a great deal.
- If your organisation performs badly it might shrink.
- Depending on individual review it can differ within the same team.
- It may come as stock rather than cash.
Which is why this is possible in the IT industry.
A company with a slightly lower salary but higher actual total compensation.
And the reverse:
A company with a high salary in the posting whose annual total compensation turns out to be unremarkable.
What creates that gap is the structure of performance pay.
Performance pay, incentives and stock options are not the same thing
In the IT industry far too much gets bundled under the word “bonus”.
In practice these are entirely different forms of compensation.
1. Performance pay
Money paid on the basis of company or organisational results.
The most representative form is:
a structure where employees receive a lot when the company earns a lot
.
Schemes tied directly to company profit, like SK Hynix’s PS, are the classic case.
2. Individual incentives
These weight individual performance and review more heavily than the company as a whole.
Even on the same team at the same level, the amount can differ by:
- grade A
- grade B
- grade C
.
It is a scheme you see often at platform and IT service companies.
The advantage is that it can reflect an individual’s contribution.
The disadvantage is that, from the employee’s side, it can produce a dispute over opacity — “why exactly did I get this much?”
3. RSUs
RSU stands for Restricted Stock Unit — equity compensation subject to transfer restrictions.
In plain terms it is closer to:
compensation in which the company promises to give you stock later
.
You normally have to work for a set period before you actually receive the shares.
Which makes it different from a cash bonus.
It is not money you can spend now; its value depends on long service and on the share price.
4. Stock options
A stock option is the right to buy company stock at a fixed price.
They matter especially at startups.
If the company grows they can be worth a great deal.
If it fails to grow as hoped they can be worth almost nothing.
So a startup’s “salary + stock options” must not be compared on the numbers alone.
You have to look at the company’s growth prospects and at the conditions under which you can actually exercise the right.
Performance pay at IT companies splits into three broad models
First: tied to company profit
The most intuitive one.
The company earns a lot, employees receive a lot.
The representative form is:
using a fixed percentage of operating profit as the bonus pool
.
The advantage of this model is that the basis is clear.
From the employee’s side, watching company results gives a rough sense of the size of the bonus.
The most powerful case in the 2026 IT and semiconductor industry is SK Hynix.
SK Hynix: 10% of profit as the bonus pool
SK Hynix’s management and union maintain a structure that uses 10% of operating profit as the PS pool and has removed the previous payout cap.
The PS paid in early 2026 climbed to roughly 2,964% of base pay.
Applying the usual structure in which base pay is around a twentieth of salary, an employee on 100 million won can be calculated as receiving PS of roughly 148 million won.
What matters here is not simply that “the bonus was large”.
It is that employees can feel an increase in company profit connect directly to an increase in their own compensation.
That is the power of profit-linked compensation.
The company grows → profit rises → the bonus pool grows → employee compensation increases.
Simple.
And powerful precisely because it is simple.
As of August 2026 even the payment method was renegotiated. The provisional agreement included paying 40% of PS in cash and 60% in company stock. For the first year, a cash option on part of the stock portion was also proposed.
In other words, the total bonus and how it is paid became separate questions.
From the employee’s side:
not only “how much do I get” but
“when, and in cash?” becomes part of total compensation.
Second: tied to individual review
This model reflects individual review and contribution in finer detail than overall company performance.
The issue is less whether the bonus is large or small than how transparent the basis is.
The 2026 compensation conflict Kakao put on display
Kakao posted record results in 2025 — revenue of roughly 8.0991 trillion won and operating profit of 732 billion won.
Operating profit rose 48% year on year.
And yet conflict between management and the union grew over the 2026 bonus.
According to reports, the bonus paid in early 2026 ran at 3–9% of salary by performance grade, and the opacity of the payout criteria became one of the core points of contention.
In the negotiations that followed, a proposal to use a fixed share of operating profit as the compensation pool, and whether to count RSUs as part of performance compensation, became the sticking points.
The final agreement in August 2026 included a 6.3% rise in total salary and a special incentive payment of 3 million won.
What this case shows is clear.
Record company results do not automatically
mean a record bonus.
The bonus is decided not by results but by the compensation system.
And if that system is opaque, employees can be dissatisfied however high the bonus is.
Third: long-term compensation
A model you see especially at startups and platform companies.
Rather than paying a lot of cash now, they use:
- RSUs
- stock options
- long-term incentives
.
For the company, it reduces cash outflow while holding on to key people for longer.
For the employee, there is a chance of large compensation if the company grows.
But there is risk too.
Being granted 10 million won of stock that you cannot actually receive for three years is hard to treat as equal in value to 10 million won in cash today.
The share price may fall.
Leave the company and part of the entitlement may vanish.
So long-term compensation must be evaluated separately from cash bonuses.
The key change in 2026: performance pay started to unsettle salary
In the past performance pay felt strongly like “a bonus received on top of salary”.
Not any more.
At some companies the bonus can exceed the salary.
SK Hynix is the representative case.
In the early 2026 payouts, an employee on around 100 million won could be calculated as receiving a bonus of roughly 148 million won.
At which point the number “100 million won” cannot explain that employee’s actual compensation.
Total compensation comes closer to:
base salary of 100 million + a bonus of about 148 million won
.
Of course this structure is strong when company results are good.
When results worsen, the bonus can shrink too.
So profit-linked compensation carries volatility.
But the important point is:
base pay provides stability, and performance pay shares out the fruits of growth.
The weight of the two differs from company to company.
Why semiconductors and platforms structure bonuses differently
Even within the IT industry, semiconductor and platform companies must not be compared on the same basis.
Semiconductors: the swing in company results is large
In semiconductors, operating profit moves sharply with the market cycle.
When memory prices rise and AI server demand explodes, results can increase abruptly.
When the cycle turns, profit falls just as fast.
So:
a structure where the bonus also becomes very large in a strong market
is natural.
That is also why SK Hynix became the representative bonus case of 2026.
Platforms: individual and team contribution is examined in finer detail
Platform companies do not work like semiconductors, where profit grows simply because output grew.
Development, service, advertising, content, AI — performance is often assessed in fine-grained detail by organisation.
Which makes individual and team review important.
But the more complex the criteria become, the more employees ask this question.
“The company earned a lot — so why did I receive so little?”
Kakao’s 2026 conflict started from exactly that question.
Why bonus swings are bigger at game companies
Even within IT, the games industry has relatively high bonus volatility.
The reason is simple.
The success of a single title can change the whole company’s results.
Even in the second quarter of 2026, results at the major game companies diverged sharply.
Krafton posted its best quarter ever in both revenue and operating profit, a strong result among the major domestic game companies, and NCSoft rebounded substantially as well.
Other companies, meanwhile, can see profitability weaken on rising marketing and labour costs.
So when joining a game company, rather than:
“Is this a game company?”
what you should look at is:
“Which game, which organisation, which project is this company’s bonus tied to?”
.
One successful new title can make compensation large.
A failed project can make the bonus you expected disappear.
Game companies are an industry where you especially have to accept volatility in performance pay.
At a startup, look at the stock options before the bonus
At large corporations and big IT companies, the cash bonus often matters most.
Startups are different.
An early-stage startup may not have much cash.
So they sometimes offer:
- a relatively low base salary
- a limited cash bonus
- and, instead, a large stock option grant
.
This is where you have to be careful.
The phrase “100 million won worth of stock options” is not 100 million won in cash.
There are things you must check.
- How many shares do you receive
- What is the exercise price
- From when can you exercise
- How long is the vesting period
- What happens if you leave
- How likely is the company actually to list or be acquired
Stock options at a good startup can change a life.
But most startup compensation is future value that has not yet been realised.
So:
10 million won in cash at a large company and
a startup’s “right that might one day be worth more than 10 million won” are different things.
How to check performance pay when job hunting
In an IT job search you cannot compare salary alone.
Before joining, you should at least get answers to these questions.
1. Is the bonus included in the salary figure
You need to check how far the salary quoted in the posting goes:
- base pay only
- including regular bonuses
- including an average performance bonus
.
2. How much was actually paid over the last three years
The payout history matters more than a description of the scheme.
Rather than “up to 30%”:
what the actual average was over the past three years
is the more realistic information.
3. Does individual review matter, or company results
The answer changes how stable your pay is.
The company-results type can pay a lot when the company grows.
The individual-review type can vary widely with your own performance.
4. Is there a cap on the bonus
This one matters a great deal.
A structure with the cap removed, as at SK Hynix, and one limited to:
a maximum of 300% of base pay
are completely different.
However much the company earns, a cap limits individual compensation.
5. Is it paid in cash or in stock
Equity compensation cannot be judged on the amount alone.
- Can you sell immediately
- When do you receive it
- Who carries the share price risk
You have to look that far.
6. Are RSUs separate from the bonus
As in Kakao’s 2026 case:
whether equity the company already promised gets counted as performance compensation
can become a significant dispute.
Merging a cash bonus and long-term equity into one number can change how it actually feels a great deal.
7. Are the bonus criteria published
This may be the most important question of all.
From the employee’s side:
“Can I explain why I received this amount?”
is what matters.
Clear criteria make the bonus predictable even when it is small.
Opaque criteria, conversely, can breed dissatisfaction even after good results.
In the end, what to look at in an IT job search is total compensation, not salary
As you prepare for an IT job search and compare compensation, it is better to look at it this way.
base salary
+ average bonus over the last three years
+ regular bonus
+ equity
+ the cash value of benefits
= total compensation
And there is one more step to take from here.
Stability matters as much as the amount of total compensation.
For example:
- Company A: salary of 80 million won + a stable bonus of 5 million won
- Company B: salary of 70 million won + an average bonus of 50 million won
On averages alone, B is higher.
But if B’s bonus shrinks sharply when company results worsen, the actual risk is different too.
So the right choice differs from person to person.
If you want stability, a company weighted toward base pay.
If you want growth and the possibility of high compensation, a profit-linked company.
If you want to earn more on your own performance, a company with wide differentiation by review.
If you want to bet on the company’s growth itself, a startup with a large option grant.
That is the right way to look at it.
Conclusion: “What’s the salary?” is no longer enough on its own
Performance pay in the IT industry is no longer a bonus that turns up once at year end.
It is closer to a compensation philosophy about how a company shares its profit with employees.
There can be, as at SK Hynix:
a structure where employees receive a lot when the company earns a lot
.
There can be, as at Kakao:
conflict over the criteria sitting between good company results and an individual’s actual compensation
.
There is also, as at game companies:
a structure where compensation swings hard on the success or failure of a single project
.
And startups may choose:
a structure of taking less now and betting on future growth
.
So choosing a good IT company needs one more question.
“How much is the salary?”
And then you must ask:
“How does that company divide its money?”
The answer to that question is what creates the difference in real income hidden behind identical salary tables.
IT performance pay structures at a glance
| Type | Character | Typical form | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company profit-linked | Compensation rises with results | Bonus based on operating profit | People who want high returns in a strong cycle |
| Individual review | Wide differentiation by person | Incentives by performance grade | People who want to be paid on individual performance |
| Team performance | Reflects team or division results | Project and team incentives | Roles where team performance matters |
| Long-term equity | Tied to tenure and company value | RSUs and stock options | People betting on long-term growth |
Written as of August 2026. Performance pay varies with company results, labour negotiations, individual review and length of service. The specific payout cases and estimates mentioned in reporting do not represent any individual’s actual receipts. Before taking a job or moving, check the company’s latest disclosures, hiring terms, annual report and actual compensation rules separately.
Frequently asked questions
Does the salary in a job posting include the bonus?
It differs by company. You must check whether it is base pay only, whether regular bonuses are included, or whether it is a figure that includes an average performance bonus.
What is the most important question about performance pay?
How much was actually paid over the last three years. The payout history is far more realistic information than a scheme description such as “up to 30%”.
How do RSUs differ from stock options?
An RSU is a promise to give you stock once you have worked for a set period; a stock option is the right to buy stock at a fixed price. A startup’s salary-plus-options must not be compared on the numbers alone.
Why does the bonus cap matter?
With a cap, individual compensation is limited however much the company earns. A structure with the cap removed and one limited to a multiple of base pay are completely different.
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