I spent a fair portion of my adult life working for large tech companies. In all my interactions with peers, no other topic caused as much cynicism and angst as the question of performance management — that is, the labyrinthine processes the companies followed for deciding who to fire and who to reward for exemplary work.

Much of this anxiety arose from the belief that Big Tech wanted to foster a cutthroat environment where you’re always compelled to do your best. I don’t think that’s true: in rapidly growing companies with easy access to funding, there is no intrinsic incentive to fire mediocre staff. The process is stressful to managers, legally risky, and harmful to morale. This tendency to accumulate slack is why profitable tech companies panic and go through overdue layoffs whenever the economic outlook turns for the worse.

The actual reason for performance management is that whether they know it or not, your employees are sticklers for fairness. The exact dollar figure on your paycheck matters a lot less than knowing there’s another person who does less and somehow earns more. As a manager, in every other 1:1, you hear your subordinates comparing themselves to others and demanding explanations for any perceived slights. Harboring low performers has corrosive effects on team dynamics — doubly so in places that attract talent through the mythos of only hiring the best.

For a long time, the prevailing corporate approach was to let the manager decide. After all, they had the expertise and the familiarity with the problem space, so it was believed that they’re best equipped to dole out punishment and rewards. But this led to problems: some teams developed a reputation for leniency, and others for being too harsh. More insidiously, the setup allowed rumors to spread: a manager could be accused of giving preferential treatment to their buddies or love interests, and every company sooner or later developed such lore.

All this changed with Google. In its early years, the company sought to do things differently, and performance management was no exception. It converged on a peer-based system where your performance is evaluated not by your boss, but by a selection of your peers. This promised greater fairness and improved transparency. Over the years, the model spread like a wildfire to other tech companies — and sometimes beyond.

The model imposed considerable burden across the company: once or twice a year, the entire business would grind to a halt as every employee was writing self-assessments and peer feedback, and then a significant proportion of senior staff was serving on committees. But the benefits seemed obvious — and well worth the price.

Except, the benefits never really materialized. The problem is that every employee is judged by their ability to get work done — and in most roles, this depends on being able to get along with others, including strangers with different sensibilities and unfamiliar backgrounds. Providing honest, critical feedback is a significant social risk. It doesn’t help that the burden of the process prompts most to put the bare minimum of effort into individual reviews; a handful of platitudes is usually enough.

In the end, the feedback for most employees is overwhelmingly positive — and uniformly bland. The usual exceptions are the absolute worst performers who wouldn’t survive under any other performance management regime; as well as a handful of unlucky folks who deliver solid results but lack social grace and self-promotion skills.

This outcome puts the organization in an unenviable position. To fix this, the managers are tasked with “interpreting” the feedback to arrive at some sort of a normalized ranking that can be used as a basis for firings, promotions, and bonuses. This happens behind the scenes in stuffy multi-hour meetings where the data is massaged until it fits on some reasonable curve. The illusion of a peer-driven system is maintained — but in reality, for layoffs and compensation, the manager almost always makes the call.

To be fair, the promotion process can be different: in many places, it’s delegated to an independent committee of senior employees. The panel is unlikely to promote if the manager doesn’t support the bid, but having your manager’s blessing doesn’t guarantee success. The goal is to maintain a consistently high bar, but this comes at a price. The committee is tasked with deciphering voluminous but sloppy feedback without the benefit of knowing the employee or understanding their work. In the end, they regularly deliver random, unsatisfying verdicts. “You’re doing great, we just need to structure your packet differently for the next cycle” is a common utterance when delivering the bad news.

In the end, the internal perception of this Google-originating process isn’t necessarily any better than that of what it sought to replace. At a great organizational cost, it traded the accusations of manager-level favoritism for grander conspiracy theories — sinister corporate agendas divined from the words of secretive, amorphous committees.

The promise of a more egalitarian performance management process is a part of the mythos of Big Tech; but it’s also a fascinating study of painting oneself into a corner with no clear way out.