My first performance review was around 2013 or so on my first job, after not doing any significant work for the first few months I was worried I was asking my m

My first performance review was around 2013 or so on my first job, after not doing any significant work for the first few months I was worried I was asking my manager too many questions. I was told I was doing great. I then got a 25% raise next month without anyone communicating anything else to me (not a lot of money but the percentage is still significant at that point). Since then, and despite not being the best worker in any group I've been in, I've have had good to stellar reviews that resulted in no actionable items and no salary adjustments. This whole experience does lead me to believe that performance reviews are very hard to get right (ie. to make them actually useful).