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This sadly isn't surprising since it's been happening in one form or another at least since Jack Welsh, and probably earlier. He was probably just the first on

This sadly isn't surprising since it's been happening in one form or another at least since Jack Welsh, and probably earlier. He was probably just the first one to give it a name. It's never been any secret at places I've worked that there's a team bonus "budget" - if you give one of your reports a higher bonus, that money comes out of the pocket(s) of your other reports. It all results in the same behavior - you don't have to be good, you just have to be better than everyone else on your team. A smart engineer knows how to find that team.

twiddling 5y ago
As a people manager, I have encountered this issue of managing "to the curve". Regardless of the composition of the team and the fact that they could be all high performers, I have had to make decisions that fit to a curve which senior mgmt is imposing. As for Jack Welsh, he was on record that his methods were really for organizations in trouble to rectify their issues in the short term. Unfortunately many companies run with it as their standard practice.