>A typical, politically-inept programmer will say, "the low performers are Alice, Bob, and Charlie", just because he's asked. You don't have to offer him anythi

>A typical, politically-inept programmer will say, "the low performers are Alice, Bob, and Charlie", just because he's asked. You don't have to offer him anything. He ends up losing in the deal for two reasons. First, if people find out that he's a snitch who tried to endear himself to management by selling others out, then everyone will hate him. That's just human nature. Second, low performers can be good for your job security because (a) you don't have to outrun the bear if layoffs or stack-ranking come-- you just have to outrun the other guy; and (b) they can anchor compensation favorably. The fact that a mediocre investment banker gets $500,000 per year means that a good one makes millions. That's how you play a large, rich organization that isn't going to die because of a few passive low-performers. You want to move against the active low performers (i.e. those who create problems for other people) and the politically dangerous, but it's generally good to protect people who are benignly below-average because their making average wages puts a case forward for you (as an average or better performer) to make above-average wages. I don't think that most people will argue with this. but... I don't think it makes as much of a difference as you think it does to industry wages as a whole. The average person at McDonalds is better at playing politics than your average person in my industry, but we're still on the good side of a 10x wage differential. Clearly, there are factors that don't have to do with political skill at work here, and those factors have effects that can completely swamp the effects of political skill.