And sadly most of this is not unique to Amazon. Almost every company I have worked at over the past 15 years or so claims "we don't do stack ranking" but they do calibration and then effectively force managers to change ratings to fit the "expected distribution." It has the same effect as a stack ranking, except it's less transparent and even more open to manipulation. If you have a manager who is good at playing the game, you're a lucky one. If you don't, you're going to have a bad time. Maybe not this round, but soon.