Where I work we are big on peer review. So in theory helping others should have value. It's still not perfect. For example, a junior may not be able to asses

Where I work we are big on peer review. So in theory helping others should have value. It's still not perfect. For example, a junior may not be able to asses the value of your help, or anything else for that matter. People will still tend to rank their friends higher. While your boss doesn't rank you whether he promotes your work to others has a big influence on how they view you. In a previous company we had a better mix of peer reviews and input from technical leads (that were not your bosses). This was by far the best system I've seen to date for a company of that size. In small companies there is typically good visibility into what everyone is doing. If you have good management then things tend to work very well. If you have bad management it can be worse than large companies. One thing I've come to learn is that this sort of stuff, call it culture, has to be a priority for the company's leadership, they have to keep inspecting it and fixing it. They need to talk to people and understand their concerns. Otherwise it always drifts the wrong way. The Google system from what I read here sounds terrible. EDIT: Having people try to optimize to play the system, just like the article describes, is inevitable so you must ensure the incentives are aligned. Make sure you find ways to look at the stuff that really matters and make sure you're not antagonizing your employees with your review system.