It is to your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, and that sucks. Thankfully, people are generally pretty good and don't do this too much, but I can see it creating a very toxic work environment.
It isn't in your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, it is in your favor to make them look great, because they review you! You can ask different people for feedback and reviews, provdiding a great opportunity for growth. I have to agree with you in that it could create a toxic work environment, but I don't see that happening, and there doesn't seem to be much stress or strain around the process. Sure, there are worries, receiving feedback both negative and positive is not comfortable by any means, but the fundamental purpose is for everyone to get better, do better, and to have people rewarded for doing well!
Whole review process is designed to help managers avoid making tough decisions like firing bad apples.
In Microsoft, I got one year underachieving mark, and that made huge dent on my career. It took open-minded manager (who was recent external hire) to offer me a spot in new group. After that, I did really great, got promotion and enjoy the work.
Now, tell me, how giving me bad mark helped Microsoft? It kept me in miserable state for a year and half, forced me to work with people who already said that I am failure, and I surely didn't produce much at that time.
However, next year, I (same person, working same job), got middle-of-the-road review, and was officially allowed to look for a position elsewhere... But no hiring manager will talk to me. Whenever you apply for a position inside Microsoft, first question hiring manager asks is: What are your last three/four/five review scores? As soon as any of those is 4 (in today's system), they will stop talking to you. You cannot get even informationals... Some jerks don't even want to answer your emails anymore...
Dolphin, I know you are all smart and shiny, but axe is waiting for you too... Yank-and-rank...
The bad mark kept you at the company where you're currently happy and productive. If the company had just fired you they would have lost a soon-to-be happy and productive employee.
The overhead of hiring/firing people in a huge company is non-trivial. Even taking your less productive 1.5 years into account your employment is probably still a net gain for the company.
Does anyone know the rationale for blocking internal transfers? If somebody is unhirable by all teams but one, why are they not fired? If a manager might need a sacrificial goat, why would he not hire a proven low performer?
However, those who call out VP orders are weak managers anyway, so you do not want to go work for them. A manager who hired me actually was impressed by me enough to go to director and bat for me to give me a chance to interview...
- Avoid "manager shopping", wherein a low performing employee transfers from group to group until he finds one that doesn't recognize his lack of competence. Similarly, communicate to the low-ranked employee that his only path to redemption is with his current group.
- Encourage effort from employees who are dissatisfied with their current group. Continue to perform or you won't be able to switch.
- Discourage managers from handing out worse reviews to team members whom they'd just like to see leave the group, as opposed to genuinely poor performers.
But I'd love to hear the real reasons.
True, but that can also be gamed in a classic case of kill the curve wrecker. Let's say Alice and Bob are excellent programmers, Charles through Henry are mediocre, and Isabella and Jerome are terrible. Everyone can go into the performance reviews and state their honest opinions, resulting in raises for Alice and Bob and a pink slip for Jerome.
On the other hand, Charles and Dana can get together with Jerome and Isabella. They agree to make each other look great and make Alice and Bob look terrible. If it works, then Charles and Dana get raises and Jerome and Isabella don't need to worry about their jobs. In fact, working together to throw Alice and Bob under the bus comes out to a happy ending for 80% of the department, so it shouldn't be to hard to get Erin through Henry in on the scheme.
Of course, once Alice and Bob are canned, it's a little awkward for Charles and Dana, since they're the new top of the chain. However, the rest of the department already knows that they're willing to deal. Charles and Dana agree to talk up Erin and Frank, so they wealth gets spread around. As for who gets the bottom ranks, just bad mouth Zach and Yolanda, the new hires that replaced Alice and Bob. This prevents needing to trust new members to the conspiracy while everyone gets to keep their job without needing to expend any effort to improve their skills. And, as I said, it's a happier ending for 80% of the original employees.