At Google, which I'm pretty confident the parent comment was describing, promotion is supposed to be recognition that you've already been consistently performing at that level for a long time. So someone newly promoted is not actually up-leveled, they're just no longer down-leveled.

I’m aware, point stands. If you meet somebody for the first time the L* sets an expectation. You need to grow into it.

Not in this case, here, my claim is the role was very clearly grown into, and the rating reflected the fact that these decisions are mostly tenure-based, + or - 2 or 3 years, and the rating was always going to be average even if I cured cancer, as was explicitly spelled out later. That disincentives putting in effort because it doesn't matter. Creates an uncomfortable nihilist atmosphere that can be suffocatingly depressive

Yeah...in at least one part of Google, as recently as last year, getting a rating higher than "meets expectations" in the second perf cycle after promo required a VP to approve an exception. Part of why I left.

> I don’t see how giving an up-leveled employee time to adjust to a new responsibility scope is a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing, but the parent you are replying to never said otherwise. They were talking about a fake performance rating that is given for political reasons.

Anyone who thinks that performance ratings aren’t dog and pony shows have drunk the corporate Kool-Aid. Either you have a manager that likes you and will play the game to give you the best politically feasable ratings because it’s the tool they have as middle management to keep you around or you will toil to meet whatever arbitrary expectations someone with authority but no power has and you should run.

Yeah, first after a promo is “fake” in the sense it is purposefully low pressure.