Calibrations Have a Context-Collapse Problem

excellent write up

advice ultimately boils down to work harder in judging talent.

everyone wants a single word answer oh sally is great, john is okay.

the truth it’s hard work to right level people.

no one gets it right.

systems get co-opted by ruthless people for personal gain.

only hard and consistent work by leadership can reduce, but not eliminate the harm

This kind of thing is why I hate working for larger corporations.

There’s a tipping point where an organization grows large enough that you can no longer trust your colleagues.

It’s a weird inversion where managers advocate for employees that act favorably towards them when everyone else in the trenches know they are awful or incompetent.

> In theory, calibration is supposed to be the sanity check that keeps us from grading on a curve, but too often it’s just performance review theater.

Performance reviews' primary value to a business is to defend against lawsuits.

“Don’t blame the players, change the game.”

I get the point that the author is making, that any given employee's work is more complex and difficult than you might guess from a short summary, but... Well, that's the case for everybody? At the end of the day the company still needs a way to judge how valuable any given employee was.

The article complains that managers end up competing on who plays the calibration game better, yet a lot of suggestions at the end boil down to "managers should play the calibration game harder".

I'm not sure there's a systemic solution to this.