Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock

When lots of other companies are abandoning ratings altogether, why do we stick with the system? I think it’s about fairness. Ratings are tools, simplifying devices to help managers make decisions about pay and promotion. As an employee, I want to be treated fairly. I don’t mind someone being paid more than me if they are contributing more. But if we’re doing the same work and they’re being paid way more, I’ll be mighty unhappy. A just rating system means I don’t have to worry about that. It also means that if someone does exceptional work, they’ll be seen not just by their manager, but by lots of managers in the calibration meeting, who together create and promulgate a consistent standard across the company. Ratings also make it easier for people to move across the company. As a manager, I can trust that someone who “strongly exceeds expectations” does great work, whether her last job was working on Chrome or in Sales. As an employee, I can have confidence that people are being promoted based on merit, not politics. For a small team, you don’t need this infrastructure—you know everyone. But once you have more than a few hundred people, employees are more comfortable trusting a reliable system than individual managers. Not because managers are necessarily bad or biased, but because a rating process that includes calibration actively weeds out badness and bias.