I still find that odd, perhaps I should quit my current job and do exactly what he does? after all automating data entry has to be a lot simpler than most programming jobs.

Lets play with the maths of this, lets say that he is generously making 40 euros, which is a lot for data entry (think like double what specialist data entry people are normally paid)

That leaves us with a bonus pool of 2100000, the claim is that he was taking 90% of the bonus, that would make the bonus pool 233333, lets round up to 250000

Ok so lets split this evenly across several employees

5 clerks = 50,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 90,000 each !

10 clerks = 25,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 65,000 each !

20 clerks = 12,500 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 52,500 each !

Thats a stunning salary ! really, I would be motivated myself to get my bonus, even if I was only taking my _equal_ share of the magic pot.

Ok lets assume that his department is huge say ....

50 clerks = 5,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 45,000 each

Sounds reasonable right? but the 50 clerks would be costing the company 2000000 Euros ! At that cost even the most stupid of organisations would be looking at automation (human via india or say the meat-cloud), or computers)

Now you might say that 40K is generous for the type of work, that he would really be earning something like 25K, still a lot for data entry which is a low skilled job that is typically hourly paid; a fine argument but if that is the case then the bonus pool becomes larger which still makes all the numbers look suspect.

Maybe he got a raise (and didn't really declare it, for some reason), even then that is somewhat higher than a basic internet search gives me for someone in Holland as a programmer (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Sala...). Now the company he works for might be clueless, but I would be surprised if they did not do a wage equivalence as most companies are low that way.

So colour me extremely skeptical, the _only_ way it makes sense is if he misplaced a zero