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Conference call: Jesse Fortune President and CEO of Eclipse Engineering (Best Firm Structural #12 for 2018), a Montana firm that likes to have a little “phun.”
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“W hen we identify an employee who fits just right into our organization, we find no value in making them wait around for 20 years to consider ownership,” Fortune says. “Everyone is on their own journey and sometimes that journey takes a little longer, but it makes zero sense to me to eliminate someone because they are not old enough.” A CONVERSATION WITH JESSE FORTUNE. The Zweig Letter: Do you tie compensation to perfor- mance for your top leaders? Jesse Fortune: Compensation is tied to performance for every single employee at Eclipse – from new graduates to principals. In our opinion, rewarding poor performance is the same as asking the top performers to write the company a check at the end of the year. TZL: Do you share base salary or bonus amounts with your entire staff? JF: The football coach, Bill Parcels said, “You are what your record says you are.” In that vein, we work to individualize
salaries and bonuses as much as possible. This makes shar- ing base salaries or bonuses of a group, especially based on some uncorrelated variable like years of experience, difficult to do. “Those with programming aptitude, people and management skills, and creativity, will be highly sought after. They will see higher wages and more opportunity. Those without these skills will be replaced, over time, with technology.” TZL: How many years of experience – or large enough book of business – is enough to become a principal in your firm? Are you naming principals in their 20s or 30s? JF: In 2001, 28-year-old Theo Epstein was named the presi- dent and CEO of the Red Sox, ultimately leading the orga- nization to the first World Series championship since 1918.
THE ZWEIG LETTER Ma
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