Sounds like every corp.

Performance management systems have always been rigged. Certainly at the last company that both my wife and I worked for. She had to manage a small staff, and come review time, she rated one deserving employee with a 4 out of 5 overall. HR called her in and said, "You can't give anyone a four, we don't do that here." They changed the scores and the employee got a 3 like everyone else. Complete bullshit.

“We don’t give anyone 5 stars here.”

This is absolutely a thing they do at the tech company I work at too. There's hard limits on how many people can be rated anything 4 stars and up. Managers have to go to "calibration meetings" where they argue, in front of HR, with other managers about why their employee deserves one of the spots in the 4 (or more) stars club.

Irritatingly commonplace.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It was highly unpopular internally and the company officially abandoned it in late 2013, before long-time 'softie Satya Nadella took over in early 2014.

"What we tell the employees is absolute crap," one person involved with this year's review process told Insider.

"The tick marks are not meant to be ratings or labels — but instead a way for managers to determine impact and recommend rewards consistently across the company."

The manager who compared the process to stack ranking said that in practice, moving people to lower scores winds up being a necessity.

"If the employee delivered slightly lower impact than expected, their rewards will align below the middle of the opportunity range."

Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan at the time instructed managers to give fewer employees "exceptional rewards," meaning a high performance rating that leads to higher pay and bonuses.

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