It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything.
A lot of north american modern management theory seems to think that praising your employees is the best way to get them to perform. By telling someone who's good but not great a "You got exceed expectations!!" they'll feel like they are valued.
> It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything.
It's actually the opposite. The ratings themselves are associated with multipliers for your annual bonus and stock grants. IIRC, the full spectrum of ratings and multipliers was:
Meets None (0.0) -> Meets Some (0.5) -> Meets Most (0.85) -> Meets (1.0) -> Exceeds (1.25) -> Greatly Exceeds (2.0) -> and Redefines (3.0)
Ignoring the company multiplier, which was always a value slightly greater than 1.0 when I was there (that may not be true now), for a Senior Engineer (L5) with a $175k salary, 15% bonus target, and annual stock grant of $110k vesting over 4 years , the value of the rating to them at each exceeds level would be:
Exceeds: ~$12k / year
Greatly Exceeds: ~$53k / year
Redefines: ~$107k / year
The top 2 buckets only account for about 8% or so of employees, but the number for Exceeds was around 20% of employees during my time.
It's a way to correct under-leveling rapidly. Google at least aimed to hire at the level of fully demonstrated and sustainable competency; if there was any doubt you'd be hired at the lower level. That can be corrected in a ~year with greatly exceeds or redefines ratings. There was a bit of step function in yearly raises depending on the rating as well but promotion was a substantial raise.
Quite the opposite: getting into the top brackets is directly tied to large pay increases, larger bonuses and stock grants, and puts you in line for promotion.
A lot of north american modern management theory seems to think that praising your employees is the best way to get them to perform. By telling someone who's good but not great a "You got exceed expectations!!" they'll feel like they are valued.