The Performance Review

You had a good year. You know it. Your manager knows it. Everyone on your team knows it.

Your performance review says “meets expectations.”

Not because you met expectations. Because “exceeds expectations” requires paperwork. Justification. A budget conversation. “Meets expectations” is the path of least resistance for your manager, who has sixteen of these to write and no incentive to fight for your rating.

The performance review doesn’t measure performance. It measures how much your manager wants to deal with the system. Most don’t. So everyone “meets expectations” and the people doing the best work get the same rating as the people doing the least.

Then they use the ratings to decide layoffs.