The point is that if you can game the system, and the system cannot determine that it is being gamed, then it's a bad system. Who watches the watchmen? In a la

The point is that if you can game the system, and the system cannot determine that it is being gamed, then it's a bad system. Who watches the watchmen? In a large-enough organization, the stack ranking system is set by some executive high up the mountain. The low-level line managers and group managers are incentivized to work together to get the budget (for puffer employees) to help them keep their proven performers. Finance doesn't care as long as (a) the bottom-line improvements from firing puffers keep getting realized and (b) management keeps being able to pay puffers below-market salaries. Puffers themselves shouldn't care in this day and age, taking the opportunity to take the puffer paycheck as a 100% remote position with no actual responsibility, while working full-time somewhere else that actually appreciates them, so puffers basically get a free paycheck out of it for nothing. It doesn't matter if it's a good system in theory. It only matters if it works in practice. There's an old joke about economists - they treat the real world as a special case.