My manager straight up told me that my performance was fine but because he had to rank someone the lowest, it was my turn since I was the least experienced on the team. If I had actually been doing a bad job it wouldn't have felt as bad because at least then I would have had some control over the situation.

I moved teams shortly after that and my new manager was pretty surprised to see my last review. He started keeping a list of other developers on the other teams that I was helping so he could help me get ranked higher. That felt super shitty and I left the company right after.

That happened to be right at the same time they did away with the stack ranking. I have no idea if it improved things but it had to be better than what it was. (At least in my part of the company.)

Sure as shit, for three years, it didn't matter how awesome or shitty a job I did, I got the same middle of the road review. One year, I got a paltry bonus and no salary increase. The next was neither and the final year I got a pittance of both. By the second year, I knew what was happening and just completely checked out. I went full "Office Space" and did the exact minimum in order to get my work done and not get put on a pip. Would come in around 11, get my stuff done in a few hours and tell my team I was going to be "WFH" the rest of the day.

Finally left that team and two years since leaving that team, I've had several large bonuses and salary increases.

Stack ranking is some toxic bullshit and managers use it to make themselves look better to their own skip managers. Fucking corporate politics man, it ruins everything.

I would imagine that nearly every change in performance review structure at nearly every company is unpopular:

People who were let go (or who left voluntarily of low bonuses/raises/refreshes) aren't there to complain!

Everyone who is left, who knew how to game the system (or was so good they didn't need to) now has to optimize to a completely new metric.