Google’s changing its performance reviews to waste less time

I don't think the reporters got the key improvement of the new GRAD system: Google will no longer evaluate an employee's performance by the complexity of their projects, but by the impact. Google also gives their managers more say in promotion instead of letting a committee to make promotion decisions.

I think this is a good change as it aligns the incentives of the company and the employees. Engineers will be mainly be responsible to their peers and their manager. If an engineer's team becomes more influential because the engineer's work, then the engineer's manager will be likely to promote the engineer. In addition, business success is what Google needs, not some bullshit complexity for the sake of getting more complexity. Gone the days of "this project is so hard it must be solving big problems".