Because intrinsic pleasures of the job are more important to you than your compensation package, you initially find dealing with "lousy coworkers" demotivating. But you endeavour to make the best of a bad situation by finding out how to help your coworkers become better at their jobs. You end up developing a far deeper satisfaction in your work than you'd previously thought possible.
But your compensation still depends on having some "provably lousy coworkers", or worse, if they're all gone some people who are good will perforce get labeled as lousy.
The quiet ones, the different ones disabled, gay, female etc who wont push back look for the ones who where bullied at school. If you team is lucky you might have some terminally ill people you can dump at the base of the stack - this sounds worse than it is as there was medical retirement available for these poor devils.
That isn't true all the time. Goldman Sachs uses an even "worse" review process. It's called a 360 review: your employees that report under you, co-workers at the same management level and your managers all rate you. The reviews are bell curved and the worst performers are asked to leave. It just so happens that Goldman Sachs has some of the smartest and people on Wall Street. I think it says a lot because a ton of "failed" Wall Streeters leave and completely destroy the perspective industry they go into afterwards. I don't think this type of system encourages crappy workers, but it does encourage a very ruthless company culture - which might not be the best to encourage collaboration.
I think it depends on the kind of worker you want to create. With engineering and development, it's an inherently creative process, and creativity needs collaboration to prosper. I don't know enough about Wall Street, but it seems to me that a ruthless employee works better there since you're competing with other companies at almost the same thing.
Because intrinsic pleasures of the job are more important to you than your compensation package, you initially find dealing with "lousy coworkers" demotivating. But you endeavour to make the best of a bad situation by finding out how to help your coworkers become better at their jobs. You end up developing a far deeper satisfaction in your work than you'd previously thought possible.
Did I guess right?