Yeah, this change is easily worth something on the order of $20k this year and then $10k per year for the three following years for every engineer who wouldn't have otherwise achieved this rating. It's huge.

Interestingly, I assume they're doing this because it means they can skip the performance cycle entirely. That's a good way to save process. It's gonna harm some people who were on track to do better than exceeds, though. (On average it should help people.)