It's weird I think. From the employee end, the contract is: you take my time and expertise and give me money/benefits/etc. Yet performance review rating syste

It's weird I think. From the employee end, the contract is: you take my time and expertise and give me money/benefits/etc. Yet performance review rating systems place, "did the job well and met all professional obligations," somewhere in the middle-to-low end of their, "scales." So even if you, employee, come in as a highly experienced individual with plenty of skills and you perform all of your duties and fulfill your contractual obligations to the letter: it's not enough. Just more capitalism at work. The effect this has on human organization of labour is hilarious sometimes. It seems to me that when your performance review scale is based around these unrealistic expectations then workers have to readjust the way they see their roles. It's not enough to do a good job! One must exceed expectations to be treated with respect. And when we start dangling carrots like that people will find many clever ways to get it with as little effort as possible. Hop around teams to find the lowest-performing team in order to stand out. Sounds great from the organization's perspective: you're spreading your experience around and lifting up all boats! Except that knowledge transfer almost never happens and team churn is highly disruptive on software projects. So things end up in constant state of technical debt. Sabotage your co-workers and steal recognition for their work/ideas/etc! Hoard your domain knowledge and prevent others from getting in on your work so that you stand out come review season! Make sure you're good friends with the team lead so that you get all of the preferred projects! All kinds of fun behaviours arise.