MM is a warning—it means you need to improve or you'll likely be put on a PIP.
I despise this, the dissonance between a positivity-sounding "meets most" with the actual meaning being "pretty bad" is what I expect from the North Korean regime, or Russia. It's a disgusting type of newspeak/corporatespeak which, admittedly irrationally, boils my blood.
The idea is they consider themselves to have a very high bar (which I think is largely accurate). They say you “meet most expectations” which means you hit the marks on all but 1 or 2 criteria. It’s not that you’re not good at your job, it’s that that’s not good enough for them.
Of course anyone receiving a MM is having a very shitty day despite that. They could use more direct language but I’m not sure it would have any practical difference.
It doesn't matter how much friendly-sounding bullshit you slather on if that's what's happening.
relevant to the overarching topic: https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-05-24
The kind of newspeak I've heard from multiple friends and former coworkers that ended up at FB/Meta at some point. Well, the ones that didn't fall into the cult of Mark.
It might be because I'm getting older but this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to puke. The co-optation of language to exude an aura of friendliness is absolutely disgusting.