I think the actually-interesting thing that changed is that there's no longer a fan-in of review data, followed by some sort of central number-crunching. Instead, it's effectively a feudal system: every "lord" is empowered to give their "vassals" whatever raises/promotions/bonuses they like.

This is a system that actually works well, if you've got good and generous "lords" that want to keep their "vassals" happy and productive and generally use "do it yourself" as an opportunity to do away with bureaucracy, rather than make more. Whatever benefit Adobe is seeing from the change is probably because they managed to hire some really good managers (somehow), and are finally letting them loose to do their jobs.

Of course, a bad feudal lord is a lot worse than an impersonal rank-and-yank system. At least rank-and-yank is predictable enough to be gamed.

Very nicely put between-the-lines interpretation :)

One small nitpick:

> a bad feudal lord is a lot worse than an impersonal rank-and-yank system. At least rank-and-yank is predictable enough to be gamed.

If you have a bad lord (eh, manager) and your company uses a rank-and-yank system, then it'll be your boss gaming it not you.

-Reviews- eh 'working' in general - only works well if you have a good well-meaning boss?

Except when behind closed doors they fiddle the figures

The 'feudal' approach replaces bureaucracy with favor-peddling and sycophancy in my book.