Re: not neccessarily very good at brown-nosing...
To add a counterpoint to this; in the past I have included ambition as a factor during a year-end review. It was a senior bod (director-level) who'd had a burnout, and after a 6 month leave of absence was assigned to my (junior) team as part of his rehabilitation. He kept his director salary (at least 3x more than anybody else in the team), and liked the pay/expectations ratio so much he was quite happy to stay. He was highly competent and good at what he did, but I wanted him to aspire to moving out and up in order to justify his salary. Nearly a decade on I still feel this was a legitimate approach.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
