I agree about the uselessness of performance reviews. I've seen several attempts at introducing a performance review process, and the results are always the sam

I agree about the uselessness of performance reviews. I've seen several attempts at introducing a performance review process, and the results are always the same: everybody finds out what they already knew intuitively, nobody gets a meaningful raise that they wouldn't have gotten without the review anyway, and bottom performers who haven't already been weeded out will not be weeded out as a result of the review. I would say that there's no reason for a business to have performance reviews, but i've seen them used as an instrument to postpone raises with the argument "we're setting a baseline now to adjust compensation next year". So, they are useful as a cost reduction instrument, provided your people don't walk out in disgust.