It sounds like "performance" is Uber code for "political clout".
Sexually-harassing manager who HR is too afraid to discipline meaningfully? High performer.
Manager who illegally threatens an employee to protect his manager? High performer.
Productive engineer who they never found a substantive reason to criticize? Not a high performer.
The ones who made the political maneuvers to garner political power within the organization are the "high performers". Fowler, on the other hand, worked hard, but didn't play the political game. She also reported a lot of people to HR, which probably earned her a lot of political enemies. Remember those "undocumented performance problems"?
(But I discount this interpretation a tiny bit because it relies on a person's account of their own performance. I think that her post is credible (she sure staked a lot on it), but I'm wary of all first-person performance claims. Nothing specific to her, just human nature.)
Sexually-harassing manager who HR is too afraid to discipline meaningfully? High performer.
Manager who illegally threatens an employee to protect his manager? High performer.
Productive engineer who they never found a substantive reason to criticize? Not a high performer.
The ones who made the political maneuvers to garner political power within the organization are the "high performers". Fowler, on the other hand, worked hard, but didn't play the political game. She also reported a lot of people to HR, which probably earned her a lot of political enemies. Remember those "undocumented performance problems"?
(But I discount this interpretation a tiny bit because it relies on a person's account of their own performance. I think that her post is credible (she sure staked a lot on it), but I'm wary of all first-person performance claims. Nothing specific to her, just human nature.)