You are not speaking to all paygrades. Just had this discussion with my manager. As a non-exempt, I do not have a higher paygrade available to me at my current site: they have tried to promote people to 57 but it has been disapproved every time for years (other sites do, but still very limited): out of the 60ish SNEs in my group, there are four 57s, and they all transferred here as 57s. Also, non exempts only have 2 possibilities for stock: go (SSL3) or no-go (SSL5); and the same applies for lower grade exempts.
Even if managers were to rotate through handing out EE or O at focal to different employees every year (which isn't meritocracy) over a 4 year period, they're still limited to about 10% per year, so 40% in a rolling 4-year period. That means 60% have a "history" of being average performers.
What really stinks is Intel is touting this offer as a performance issue. That is either lying to the employees or lying to the shareholders. I, like most, have high expectations to meet every day. If I am not meeting those expectations, I will not be surprised at focal when I receive the cleverly worded "Below Expectation" rating. But now if I am meeting expectations, I'm not really meeting the hidden expectation of exceeding expectations.
I took this job because of the benefits it provided long term, and have stuck with it hoping to get to retirement (which is now less than a decade away). This is not the company I signed on to...