[fatnoah]

> It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything.

It's actually the opposite. The ratings themselves are associated with multipliers for your annual bonus and stock grants. IIRC, the full spectrum of ratings and multipliers was:

Meets None (0.0) -> Meets Some (0.5) -> Meets Most (0.85) -> Meets (1.0) -> Exceeds (1.25) -> Greatly Exceeds (2.0) -> and Redefines (3.0)

Ignoring the company multiplier, which was always a value slightly greater than 1.0 when I was there (that may not be true now), for a Senior Engineer (L5) with a $175k salary, 15% bonus target, and annual stock grant of $110k vesting over 4 years , the value of the rating to them at each exceeds level would be:

  Exceeds: ~$12k / year 
  Greatly Exceeds:  ~$53k / year
  Redefines: ~$107k / year

The top 2 buckets only account for about 8% or so of employees, but the number for Exceeds was around 20% of employees during my time.