I worked at Yahoo during a time of pseudo stack ranking (QPR). Managers had a target for average rating, and most managers would identify a few people for promotion and give everyone else "Meets Expectations" reviews so they could give the promotion candidates "Exceeds Expectations".
Even worse, managers generally used the success of their reports as part of their success criteria, so they we're always actively trying to promote people because if they didn't then they weren't successful at their jobs. So managers would help that one or two people get promoted, even if they we're generally useless. And the other devs on the team would get ignored.
It was a unique time in my career, when I had a performance review rating of "Exceeds Expectations" in a review that described my contributions as "mediocre".
To be fair, my manager was actually pretty good and acknowledged the disconnect is the review. I had been down leveled in an acquisition and was doing a job 2 levels higher than my own, and he wanted to give me useful feedback and knew nobody would actually read it but me.
Even worse, managers generally used the success of their reports as part of their success criteria, so they we're always actively trying to promote people because if they didn't then they weren't successful at their jobs. So managers would help that one or two people get promoted, even if they we're generally useless. And the other devs on the team would get ignored.
It was a unique time in my career, when I had a performance review rating of "Exceeds Expectations" in a review that described my contributions as "mediocre".
To be fair, my manager was actually pretty good and acknowledged the disconnect is the review. I had been down leveled in an acquisition and was doing a job 2 levels higher than my own, and he wanted to give me useful feedback and knew nobody would actually read it but me.