I would like to make your point clearer because I think there isn't sufficient visibility of this problem in our community.
The problem here is 'stack ranking' or 'curve fitting'. The assumption behind this model is that the quality of workers you have will mirror a bell curve ( for example, 10% will be poor, 80% will be average and 10% will be excellent ). The management tries to identify these individuals and assign them ratings based on this assumption. Your promotion, bonus and pay hike is based on these ratings. The problem with this approach is that no matter how well you perform there are only 10% 'very high' ratings available. This means that if someone else succeeds, then the chances for your success has diminished. This creates an incentive for you to sabotage others at work and pitches team mates against one another.
I worked at a place that stack-ranked, and we didn't have this problem. It was typically pretty clear and well-accepted (by both leadership and peers) that high performers were in fact the best people.
In a big enough company, you can't sabotage other people (because you might not work closely with them) and it's pretty transparent when you do so.
The problems I saw were threefold:
1) Bad Managers - Far and away #1. The example of a manager leaving the ratings meeting comes to mind. Conversely, a manager who just has it out for you: that's the sabotage that I saw on more than one occasion (but that's not exclusive to stack ranking). [Edit: also worth noting that word got around and bad managers were avoided, so the system eventually would self-correct.]
3) Comparing Stretch Roles - Pure performance is tough. I never thought we gave enough credence to great people doing good in tough roles vs. good people doing great in easy roles.
3) Comparing Different Impact - We got to the point where we were trying to compare developers with business analysts. The former would have outcomes like "developed 75 test cases" and the latter would be "convinced the CEO to invest $1M". It didn't help that the business managers were better at quantifying outcomes than IT managers. (See #1.)
You can easily sabotage people in large companies, probably more easily than in small. Just don't offer support when you could. Start gossiping. Gang up with one or more other people and make it seem like the other isn't a team player.
I would go as far to say it is easier to do in a large place as you have more of a buffer between you and actual work. So then you have more time to concentrate on politics.
Those actions are the same at every level of company. I think it's harder at big companies because you don't have the opportunity to offer (or withhold) support or create perceptions about people you literally might never come in contact with.
If you're doing that to someone on your team, (good) managers will notice the disconnect.
Look, is it possible? Of course: in every environment. The person who's going to be unethical and sabotage others is going to do so regardless of whether stack-ranking is involved.
> The person who's going to be unethical and sabotage others is going to do so regardless of whether stack-ranking is involved.
The trick is not to think about people as purely ethical or unethical. Imagine, if you would be willing to tell a small child, right before an arithmetic exam, 1 + 1 = 3 for $10 billion. Will you do it ? The harm is probably very low ( someone is probably going to correct the child anyway ) but you get to make $10 billion. Clearly the good it does to you far outweighs the bad it does to the child. You may not be evil in this case, and different people have different thresholds for it. There is no one so ethical that they would never lie to a child at any price. This premium increases with higher and higher crimes. Also the premium decreses the more desperate you are.
People with higher premiums for same level of desperation are better than others.
Stack ranking incentivizes people to stab each other in the back. Some people will take the incentive. It does not necessarily mean they are unethical.
It's definitely possible and it's happened to me more than I'd like to admit. I feel a lot of it stems from folks not stepping in and admitting theirs or others' faults.
I did a second tour a baml and did some of their release management. We hired a new guy who was technical and smart, but never listened to training since he was busy texting all the time. So, when he typo'd and all builds started failing, the fault was put on my shoulders and didn't want to admit fault. My manager wouldn't listen to what actually happened. I think I was out of there maybe two months later after they chose not to renew my contract (which thankfully force broke some golden cuffs). The guy who messed up is still there, I think. tl;dr baml sucks.
Another time at a medium sized company, there was a new ~really cool~ NOC being built that everyone wanted to check out. My boss took everyone up, but a locked door was in the way and I was given permission to open it with a CC. A week later, two other guys on the team did the same thing, got caught by security, and almost got fired by the CTO directly. My boss, at no point, stepped up and admitted he did the same. When talks of firing started, I made it very, very clear to him that if those two got fired, I'd make sure that both of us would be fired, too. Nobody was fired, so it might have actually worked, but it's incredibly shameful that of five others involve, nobody stepped in to add correction.
That same place also created artificial competition by only having one fulltime opening for the 6 contractors. Lots and lots of subtle backstabbing as a result. When they gave me the position over the other guys who'd been there for a lot longer, things became very oddly hostile.
I have more stories like this, and yes, it happens at big, large and medium companies, but it's so much easier to do it at bigger companies.
You can easily find teams of 5-10 in any company with no duds in, but the nature of stack ranking is that every year someone is going to have to take one for the team. If you don't know who the sacrificial goat is, it's probably you.
Yes, but you're not stack ranking in only teams of 10. You're stack-ranking 10 teams of ten. Out of 100 people, I can probably find 10% who are duds vs. their peers, but they might you might have teams with 2+ low performers.
You take a high performing team and rank its members. You take a low performing team and rank its members. When the numbers go to the next level up, the worst person in the good team and the worst person in the bad team look the same to the system - even if the worst person in the good team is better than the best person in the bad team! This is how the system works in practice. Good people get shafted because they sought to work with other good people.
So in a vacuum, yes people probably perform on a bell curve. But that bell curve is self-aware and will start sabotaging itself if you incentivize it to.
The problem here is 'stack ranking' or 'curve fitting'. The assumption behind this model is that the quality of workers you have will mirror a bell curve ( for example, 10% will be poor, 80% will be average and 10% will be excellent ). The management tries to identify these individuals and assign them ratings based on this assumption. Your promotion, bonus and pay hike is based on these ratings. The problem with this approach is that no matter how well you perform there are only 10% 'very high' ratings available. This means that if someone else succeeds, then the chances for your success has diminished. This creates an incentive for you to sabotage others at work and pitches team mates against one another.