Can't speak for other departments but in MST the entire review process is unfair. Each title on each team is directly compared head to head. This makes no sense since there it little overlap between tasks and responsibilities. The engineers with more visibility across teams get higher marks than those that don't. Technical skills and peer feedback are a backseat to showing up as "important" on other technical leads radar. Good feedback from peers is not mentioned if a single negative feedback comes back, not matter how trivial or insignificant. Perceived performance is greater than actual performance.
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The reason visibility matters is because the folks sitting on the perf review committee have never been to the lab in years. All they see are emails and faces in meetings and they will evaluate accordingly. I have seen dirs who do not even have badge access to the lab. No Kidding !
Guy who is "visible" is usually the engineer who spends a lot of time writing excruciatingly detailed, self-aggrandizing emails, and sucking up in person. Engineers who spend a lot of time on writing excruciatingly detailed, self-aggrandizing emails and sucking up in person are not working when engaged in those activities. Therefore they are not doing enough work. Ideal way to grade these people would be to gather up all emails sent by reports; sort them into piles by sender; and throw them down a flight of stairs. The piles that land at the bottom get the lowest grade--1. The piles that land near the top get at least 5. The rest are sorted accordingly. I like this policy, because unlike the current subjective policy t's totally neutral, and depends on physical forces (gravity) instead of economics (--and JANA "experts.") We should lobby to make it official!
For me guy who is visible is also the guy whose most helpful... Doesn't matter how competent you are if u asshole to work with