I like Perf. I've worked at a lot of big companies, and promotions were correlated to whether or not they thought you would quit or not. Perf is a lot of work, but it seems perfectly capable of promoting the best employees. Everyone with a title above or equal to Senior Software Engineer has seemed worthy, which has not been the case at other companies.

I think your problem is: you can't work at Google if you want ego-inflating titles for doing nothing. When I was at Bank of America, the lowest title you could have (if you weren't hired straight out of college, that is) was "Vice President". It inflated your ego but meant nothing.