Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work.
In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't like me because I'm gay and used the performance review process, and eventually put me on an action plan and forced me to quit.
Most of the big tech companies will put you on something called a PIP, which is a "Performance Improvement Plan". It basically means they are preparing to fire you, but they give you an option: quit now, and you can have some severance, or you could try and stay and complete the PIP, but still run the risk of being fired for any reason, and in that case, you get no severance. It's exactly what happened to me, and I decided it wasn't worth the stress to try and stay and fight it so I just quit.
It was the most demoralizing experience ever, and really showed me that these processes are in place so managers can just get rid of people they don't want or like.
In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't like me because I'm gay and used the performance review process, and eventually put me on an action plan and forced me to quit.
Most of the big tech companies will put you on something called a PIP, which is a "Performance Improvement Plan". It basically means they are preparing to fire you, but they give you an option: quit now, and you can have some severance, or you could try and stay and complete the PIP, but still run the risk of being fired for any reason, and in that case, you get no severance. It's exactly what happened to me, and I decided it wasn't worth the stress to try and stay and fight it so I just quit.
It was the most demoralizing experience ever, and really showed me that these processes are in place so managers can just get rid of people they don't want or like.