Great article. The ways in which performance reviews are misused are legion. IBM used to have a stack rating system based on things they called Personal Business Commitments. At the beginning of the year (in practice around March), you were expected to know exactly what you would achieve in the year and get agreement on these from your manager. Then at the end of the year (in practice around October) your performance against each was assessed. Of course, the smart thing to do was to make commitments that depended only on you and that were unlikely to get derailed. This of course worked against the overall business as, for example, you would not commit to delivering a product when that delivery depended on other people. No account was taken of teamwork, innovation, or anything that would actually help the company. All told, the time taken to create your PBCs and assess your performance against them was probably about a week, not to mention the time taken by your manager to review at the start and end. So a waste of time that actually detracted from the aims of the company. And don't get me started on the proximity bias that meant people physically closer to their boss would get higher ratings...