Not being told to clean out your desk is this year's cash prize.

If you're unhappy about your bonus this year, perhaps it'll make you feel less alone to know Lloyd Blankfein's dropped, too. (To $23 million.)

Like many a Credit Suisse employee, Thiam will see his bonus chopped (though in his case the slashing is voluntary).

Back in the day, as in pre-crisis, bonus season on Wall Street was a happy time. Sure, you still had your miserable pricks who would bitch and moan about the fact that they hadn't gotten as much as the guy who sat next to them, even they the guy who sat next to them was a "non-contributing zero who wouldn't recognize alpha if it bit him in the ass," but prior to to fall 2008, anyone who was unhappy about his or her bonus was a) quibbling over receiving a huge sum of money instead of an imperial fuck-ton of money and b) in a position to actually make good on a threat to jump ship, since firms were hiring. Now, with a few exceptions, bonus season makes people feel sad. Angry. Impotent. Like the world is out to get them. Not only has the total amount of one's bonus come down, but many companies have decreased the cash portion, while increasing the deferral period on stock to, in some cases, almost half a decade. Then you have Jefferies. Last year it let employees decide between an all stock bonus or an all cash bonus with 25% lopped off.  This year the investment bank-cum-butcher shop isn't even forcing anyone to choose, instead dumping a bag of cash on everyone's desk and reminding them who loves 'em.

Apparently bonus numbers anywhere in the ballpark of Citi's are enough to make a junior banker wonder about options elsewhere.

HSBC takes the lead, while RBS defies the odds by having any money at all to distribute.

Otherwise next week's bonus conversations could get awkward.