The language here is so imprecise that if someone had intentions to treat someone unequally, they’ll do that anyways whether they have a framework in place or not.

This is just a bunch of corporate malarkey, let’s be brutally nakedly honest here. The fact is that this is just a more SV version of corporate bullshit with emojis - same exact thing you find in an old corporation like GE or IBM, just dressed up differently.

Absolutely, bad managers can still be bad managers, even with a framework like this.

But it can help big companies in two ways:

1. You can assess bad managers against the framework, show how they are not delivering it, and remove an excuse that they “didn’t realise”.

2. Help good managers see what’s required in common situations.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you that this is often corporate malarkey. Typically, the company doesn’t live up to the framework - it’s merely wallpapering for their own biases, which still come through anyway. But I understand why they try, and it sometimes works better than others. Not doing anything would probably be even worse. And all other solutions have their own problems. At enterprise level, there is no universal solution.

> For what it’s worth, I agree with you that this is often corporate malarkey. Typically, the company doesn’t live up to the framework - it’s merely wallpapering for their own biases, which still come through anyway. But I understand why they try, and it sometimes works better than others. Not doing anything would probably be even worse. And all other solutions have their own problems. At enterprise level, there is no universal solution.

I laughed out loud, just like real life Dilbert. I can imagine how these meetings would go. I think we gotta take this bullshit lightly and not get too caught up in its utility (there is none, even though you’re trying and I can empathize). Just act like it’s all great, do work, go home. I presume most people know it’s bullshit but still roll with it. I pity those who don’t. Gotta love enterprise life and it’s depressing if we don’t take it lightly. Office Space reminded us in a hysterical way.

Even your most successful solutions will be inspiration for somebody else's "enterprises are screwed up" cartoons. Enterprises are just too complex, so that good solutions appear stupid to most people since they don't have all the information necessary to understand why that decision was made. But, of course, there are also a lot of stupid solutions because of bad reasons.

I have been part of such initiatives in other organizations. The language is deliberately imprecise to give managers room to maneuver. It is also set to unattainable standards to make it easy to justify why someone is not getting promoted.

Appraisals are always highly subjective and frameworks like these are simply ways for the company to build a narrative of meritocracy and fairness. It's arguable how well it works though, because people generally see through such charades. But for some reason it's taboo to admit the inherent subjectivity in this process.

I've been pulled into meetings with people trying to write these things, and I can honestly say that they always seem sincere about trying to make the company a better place. It's not an excuse for cynical "hah, this load of bullshit will fool everyone". What's more, they're smart enough to know exactly how many people will see it that way.

Doing this kind of thing can't be the only thing do as a company to improve culture, just like a coding style document won't magically improve a codebase.

But, as part of a wider attempt to make things better, it can be useful.

In a lot of organizations, the language in the descriptions doesn't matter. Over time it becomes a fact that a contributor at a certain job with a certain experience should be a given level. That's it.

> The downside is everyone becomes a cog in the machine, with nobody being treated like an individual with their own strengths, weaknesses, needs, fears, and aspirations.

Being treated as a fungible human resource is as much a corporate culture issue, as it is a management issue. The creation of explicit levels and expectations is immaterial here. I’d argue the lack of levels, removes rewards and further dehumanizes individuals by literally treating them all the same.

Everybody is not being treated the same, there are ~20 criteria listed for SWE and you can have any of them be strengths or weaknesses! Everybody is unique-ish and established criteria allow a good balance between uniqueness and fairness.