[filoleg]

>But "guaranteed" and "performance" going together? What's the deal here, even?!

After interviewing with a bunch of similar finance shops over the past year, I think whoever reported that info omitted one important thing: the "guaranteed" part of "guaranteed performance bonus" applies to the first year of employment only (and it isn't a secret, every single recruiter and hiring manager made that very explicit and clear).

With this context in mind, it makes perfect sense, because you don't know how things work at the new company, you will have lots of learning to do, you are not sure of how performance bonus is structured or what goes into it, you don't know the details of how to affect it in your favor, etc. With that in mind, it makes sense for those companies to reassure candidates that you have a nice headstart by guaranteeing your performance bonus for the first year, to allow you to focus on learning all of the things relevant to your position without having to stress much about the performance bonus.