As the head of Waze, the author was the one responsible for setting the OKRs that people were judged against. He also had final say in promotions. If people were getting promoted for the wrong things, it was directly their fault.

>They were fantastic but caused a huge divide between the people that abused them and the people that worked their butts off.

Who was forcing these people to "work their butts off"? There are some people who seem to always feel that nothing is good enough and who put in unreasonable amounts of hours. If that's demanded by management (say, by a CEO who things that working weekends is OK), that's a cultural problem. On the other hand, there's a uniquely American problem with fetishizing long hours and no perks. People in general aren't "abusing" perks, they're taking advantage of them. If people are having to "work their butts off" on a regular basis, then teams need to be better at setting cadence and expectations. Once in a great while some crunch time will happen, but in general people shouldn't be having to work more than 40 hours.