Yup. Our team is only allowed to have one person with "Exceeds standards." One. A bastard form of stack ranking. So the mgr picks based on his gut feelings, and then justifies it with a vague review.

The lucky team member gets a 5% raise, everyone else is usually ranked as "Meets standards" which merits a 2.5% raise. A few people who need time in the penalty box get a 1% raise.

So what happens is your actual performance doesn't matter unless you make the boss look great, or look terrible. He's a non-tech person, so he can't effectively evaluate you on any other criteria.

This leads to employees doing enough work to avoid being fired, or (as is usual with Stack Ranking) sabotaging other workers.

Even 5% is nothing to write home about. Still far under the amount you would get if you switched jobs.

But then you’d have to run the interview gauntlet again, and frankly that’s just so distasteful that I don’t want to.

I'd take 5% in a heart beat. But I'm not willing to run the interview gauntlet, especially as I get older. There's age discrimination, and everyone wants/expects you to be an expert on ephemeral technologies.