When I went to work for Electronic Data Systems in 1985, my first manager told me that if there were any surprises in a performance review, the manager was doing a poor job. 20 years later, the corporate culture had declined to the point that people were being blindsided in punitive reviews and managers were forced to put a percentage of their people into four boxes that ranged from unsatisfactory to exemplary, no matter how they had all performed. Thank God I was kicked out (with a very sweet good-bye kiss, I must say) before it got to the point that things reached under HP, with salary cuts being handed out just because they could.