I hadn't seen your previous reply, I don't always follow up on my own posts :) I wouldn't argue there is subjectivity in reward, there always will be. I don't w

I hadn't seen your previous reply, I don't always follow up on my own posts :) I wouldn't argue there is subjectivity in reward, there always will be. I don't work in Windows but I know a few folks that do. I haven't heard any stories of people feeling they got shafted and some doofus got a reward, but I am sure it happens, and I am sure it is not unique to Microsoft in any way. My argument is with people that claim it is the norm and they base that on their own (non-verifiable) experience, or worse on some troll blog like miniMSFT. As for comments about seeing who got rewards based on title change, a title change doesn't always mean a large pay raise, and there are hidden rewards like gold star bonuses and HiPo groups that have little/no outward evidence, unless the recipient starts talking about them (which they tell them not to do), so I would say you probably aren't seeing accurate signaling based on job titles alone. The fact that some of the best rewards are secret is one of my beefs with the system. Also, to clarify, I am not a fan of Microsoft's system, but when I hear stories of people who claim it leads to internecine wars, well that just isn't my experience in the last 8 years, or the experience of anyone I have talked to personally. Ultimately there has to be some kind of ranking system as there is a fixed pool of rewards. The only alternative I could see would be exactly even sharing amongst a team. You could argue for that, but even as someone that has socialist sympathies I don't think it would work or be fair. There are people on my team that produce more than me, whether it be through being smarter, working longer hours, whatever. To say I should get the same reward as them is just wrong. So if we agree there has to be ranking, well there's your stack ranking. You could argue with the curve fitting, but your claim that 1 in a group of 10 would get no bonus is just false. Curve fitting doesn't happen on a per team basis. It's more like 10 in a group of 100 or 100 in a group of 1000. There is nothing saying that an entire team couldn't end up in the top 10% of rewards. It may well be the case that on your team of 10 superstars one doesn't get the reward they feel they deserve, but that is because someone else in the calibration meeting was deemed more worthy, your teams ranking isn't done in isolation and in a team with 10 superstars there can be other superstars in the general vicinity, even more than 10. To claim that the system results in people plotting against the ones they are ranked against in order to sabotage them just sounds like conspiracy theory thinking. In my experience it results in people upping their game, or leaving if they feel they are unappreciated. Both are reasonable responses, some attempt at sabotage is not.