You can replace almost all performance reviews (and grading in school) with “these people would be fired/fail before you” and anything else is just playing pretend.

That seems a little extreme. I have seen performance reviews used correctly to help engineers to improve on areas that they were lacking. And it works. Some people needs to improve communication skills, or have some blind technical spot. Doing that makes them way better, and I have seen people getting better jobs after improving (inside and outside the company).

But I agree that any tool used wrongly can be replaced by something simpler that cuts to the chase and delivers on what management is really interested in. And in this case has nothing to do with improving employees performance.

Do performance reviews work better than just constructive feedback in 1:1s though?

Reviews seem to be a pathway for the company to get rid of people rather than to help them grow. As a growth pathway, it is very ineffective. Other efforts work better imo - mentoring, 1:1s, 360 degree feedback, learning budgets, workshops, introducing a culture more appreciative of learning, and so on. They can cost less in total work hours spent than performance review weeks too.

For my org the performance review should not be surprising for the employees. Through 1:1 and continuous feedback they should exactly know where they are. This should be the opportunity to formalize the feedback and set goals for the next cycle.

Then they seem kind of superfluous to 1:1s, right? Without 1:1s, performance reviews alone would not be very effective for employee growth. With 1:1s, they are more of a formality - not adding anything new to the conversation.

It's so the middle managers can see that the line managers have done some due diligence. This is to prevent the case where line managers "don't have a good feeling" about an employee but can't point to specific items that have been communicated to the employee. In an ideal world with great line managers you wouldn't need a performance review, it would be handled in 1:1s. That's not our world and we need rigid formal systems to increase the likelihood that basic steps are followed, on average across many managers and employees.

I don’t know… In my experience, managers’ bias can sneak into performance reviews. Sometimes that puts a spotlight on the manager and has consequences, but not always.

Who said anything about grades?

That's basically stack ranking. You can stack rank employees from critical to least important, as well as entire departments. But like with all management systems, it too can be gamed.

People put their friends ahead of others, or they might fire one half of a married couple over a worse employee that's the single wage earner. At a defense contractor I once worked at, we talked about it being highly dangerous to be married to another employee.

I can't see why this is different from married couples in general apart from putting all eggs in one basket.

“ Your performance is measure against that expectations.”

Sure - but it appears that those expectations just changed.

You assume management is competent. Near 99% of them have no management qualification like MBA. Vast majority got it through "experience". Vast majority don't know how to work with VBA excel to even automate those management spreadsheet. They have never taken any HR degrees modules to even know any theory of human resources.

MBAs are more about hustle and networking than about actual management skills.

90% of the folks reading this comment could pick up the management skills via one week's worth of Udemy courses.

"A degree in business is, in most cases, a degree in nothing"