> If managers provide detailed feedback about what went right and what went wrong
I'll let you in on a management secret: most of the time managers can't articulate this even to themselves unless they are talking about the few people in their organization that truly, quantifiably kick ass. They're human, they live by perceptions. The only limiting factor that grounds those perceptions is whether you're solving the hard problems your manager's manager wants to see solved. You could say this is biased (and it is), but bias is not uniformly bad, woke corporate edicts notwithstanding.
Before I get lynched over the previews sentence, let me explain exactly what I mean by it. For the record, I don't mean any kind of bias based on unchangeable traits. Simply put that has no place in a professional environment. However, _any_ manager worth their pay will be biased in favor of an employee who makes the impossible possible. Most of immediate peers would even view this as "fair". But even slightly remote peers (perhaps another, nearby team), would not have much, if any, visibility into why this "bias" exists. Worse, even immediate peers who are angling for greater rewards (often without merit - their mom just told them they always get a trophy when they were a kid) will perceive the situation as deeply "unfair".
TL;DR: hot takes are not helpful, it's a difficult landscape to navigate. My opinion on this is not particularly strong because I don't see it making much of a difference. Kickass people will still get disproportionate rewards, and whiners will get pissed off and leave. It's the potential strife that I find objectionable.
My job is hard enough. I don't need to worry about my manager's job.
If I can be asked why X was implemented like this,or why a particular decision was made when implementing a feature. A manager should sure as hell be ready to answer why Bob from ProductZ team is getting paid more than me.
I have no sympathy for managers and their human biases. Everyone does their job with human biases.
> Kickass people will still get disproportionate rewards
And, they should! You're very focused on the 1% of the kick-ass people. This isn't about them, this is about the other 99%.
> You're very focused on the 1% of the kick-ass people
Quite frankly, most of the rest don't matter one way or the other. And it's usually more like 10%, not 1%. Perhaps your job is so hard because you're expending effort on things that don't matter to your manager's manager (and therefore to your manager as well). There's a second derivative to this. If you want a decent longer term trajectory, make sure to pick the manager who ensures that his/her teams work on things that matter to _his_ manager's manager. You could easily bust your ass for a decade for zero reward if you don't keep this in mind. Or you could go work in a small company where none of this applies at all.
> My job is hard enough. I don't need to worry about my manager's job.
Once you second guess your manager's decisions (pay, raises and promotions) I think it's fair game to at least understand what those decisions really entail...
Agreed. This really sucks about the company.
> If that's the case, you're _way_ more mature than most people.
I don't think so. If managers provide detailed feedback about what went right and what went wrong the correct expectations will be set.