Today is Bonus Day at Goldman Sachs, or as it is colloquillay known: Compensation Communication Day. On this day:

Most employees are called one by one into a managing partner’s glass-walled office, where they are informed of their bonus numbers, as well as any stock awards or deferred cash payments they will get..

In what may seem like a paradox, many Goldman employees will be hoping that the firm’s stock does poorly on Thursday. That is because the firm is expected to give deferred stock to a large number of employees in lieu of larger cash payments. The exact number of shares an employee receives will be calculated based on the firm’s closing price on Thursday, according to a person with knowledge of the bank’s plans, meaning that the lower the price, the more shares employees will get, and the bigger the potential gains if the company’s fortunes improve.

And:

Even the largest bonuses at Goldman this year are likely to be a far cry from those given out during Wall Street’s prelapsarian (Editor’s note: awesome word!) years. As Charles D. Ellis recounts in The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs, employees at the firm were once paid their yearly bonuses in stacks of $100,000 checks ($100,000 being the biggest single-check amount the firm’s payroll system could process).

Can you imagine carrying a stack of checks larger than your stash of cash in your wallet? I can’t.