Our New Performance Rating System At Work

... is hopelessly complicated. All performance rating systems boil down to this simple task: reward people according to how much you want to keep them. Peyton Manning gets millions. The second-string left guard gets league minimum. That's it. That's all there is to it. Where I work, we're developing a system that uses numerical ratings in several personal development areas which are then averaged to create an overall score which is then used to discover your zone on a graph of score vs. salary which then tells the manager what table to use for calculating raises and bonuses.

Here is a perfect metaphor for our new system.

We're accomplishing incredibly simple things through massively complex means in a language none of us understand.