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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a company that operated like that. Each manager could only put in so many high marks.

Company had something like 5000 employees.

I felt good that I often got the highest mark, but others were doing well too, they deserved more.

I finally asked my boss, he told me.

“I figured out that other being told in an email how to award perf reviews… nobody checks… so I give everyone the highest reward.”

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Upper and middle management might be aware but every system needs a release valve. E.g. you can't have juries without the risk of jury nullification.

Managers who just give everyone the highest rating are generally the reason that these forced curve policies are created.

That doesn't mean the managers are wrong.

That is definitely (and self-evidently) true! Of all managers who rate everyone on their team as having achieved the highest performance standard, what fraction of those cases do you think are subjectively “correct”? In my experience, it’s way, way, way under half.

Further, it’s rare for the managers giving the 100% top performance evaluation to individuals to be leading groups with high overall accomplishment/delivery. (Occam’s Razor suggests that it’s evidence of poor leadership to be squandering the ability and contributions of all these high-performers. An analog might be an MLB Manager with All-Star players at every position and turning in a 0.500 season; they should expect to be fired.)

It's a bad metric anyway. A persons rating should not be depending on the work performance. It should be depending on the happiness factor of the person. The performance of that person is the responsibility of his/her manager. So whenever a person performance bad, the manager must either fix it or leave. This principle is having so much more success than your example.

What? That sounds like Alice in wonderland.

Sure a manager can affect performance but ultimately it's down to the individual.

And happiness is all nice and good but if work is the only thing that affects your happiness then you have some deep self-discovery urgently pending.

This is going too far the other direction. Even if we assume no one is just slacking (which is a bad assumption), sometimes people are just not suited to the job they're in, and there's nothing a manager can reasonably do to change that, short of removing them.

Oh you're one of those people who thinks other people are the cause of one's own happiness? Or lack thereof? Geesh. Your emotions are entirely your own responsibility. Full stop.

It doesn't have to be a big fraction, just non-zero. Trying to ban the expression of improbable states is a form of trying to force the territory to fit the map, then also suppressing the creation of more accurate maps. I can't overstate how stupid this is.

Under such a moronic system, with your reports' welfare on the line, I believe marking everyone as a top performer is an admirable form of rebellion.

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