5 ms·

Imagine this: Joe, your best performer, has a bad year. He ran into personal issues (divorce, death in the family, illness, etc). Joe was on a steady streak, th

by kabdib 10y ago

Imagine this: Joe, your best performer, has a bad year. He ran into personal issues (divorce, death in the family, illness, etc). Joe was on a steady streak, then his performance cratered for a while. It's nothing permanent. Do you fire him? Ballmer's organization would. I've seen it. In Ballmer's organization, groups deliberately used head count to hire low-performers, who would then be put on the chopping block in review cycles. The horse-trading games in review meetings were brutal. People wrote self-reviews, but they didn't mean anything because it was all decided ahead of time. It was all a big kabuki dance pretending that the company could measure people accurately, even across widely separated groups (an SDE II in the Xbox group was not the same as an SDE II in Windows, believe me). Oh, and God help you if you get into one of these situations: Say you're a seasoned veteran, a senior engineer, and your boss got out of school three years ago and has no idea how to defend you in stack ranking. Or your manager is an over-the-hill engineer who doesn't want to manage but was forced into it, and doesn't even buy you equipment, much less give a crap about you in a stressful meeting he doesn't want to attend in the first place. Or you're reporting to a political climber, who will throw you under the bus just to be a "yes man" to someone else in political power. One year I was a "ten percenter" and in peril of losing my job. Two years later I was getting promotions and on the partner track. Go figure. We can't pretend that reviews are even remotely accurate given this scale of noise. I think that deciding pay scale / ranking and deciding who should be let go should be a different set of criteria, and probably a different review cycle. Not totally unlinked, but not utterly congruent, either. This would also handle the "high paid asshole" who is productive, but totally toxic and doing damage far in excess of his pay.

InclinedPlane 10y ago
Yup, I was there around that time and it sucked. But this is only the seed kernel of the rot that happens. I think there's a PG essay somewhere about "front of mind" and how it impacts what you do. As a founder if you're thinking all the time about funding it blocks you from thinking about building stuff. The same sort of dynamic exists with job security. If you perceive that it's actually pretty difficult to lose your job, if you perceive that lots of people at various levels know your value to the company and are willing to go to bat for you, that helps a lot. It helps even more to push those issues out of the front of your mind, so that day to day you tend to worry mostly about making stuff and solving problems, things you are intrinsically motivated to do. What happens when the working environment becomes more cutthroat is that those issues bubble up and become more front of mind for more people. People think about how to work the system, people evaluate everything that happens based on how it will advantage or disadvantage them in reviews. People who spend most of their time working or gaming the system find that spending their time that way is fruitful. Folks who are intrinsically motivated see these changes happen and they perceive the quality of their working environment diminish. The most talented among them often find out that it is easy for them to find work elsewhere, and they do so. And this begins a cascade process of brain drain. One of the prime motivators for intrinsically motivated and talented technical people at a workplace is being able to work alongside other talented and interesting technical people. Every talented person that leaves reduces the quality of the working environment for the remaining folks, and makes them more likely to leave. Meanwhile, as good folks leave it becomes more and more difficult to execute on challenging projects. The talent pool has been diminished and the people with the most experience have also left. It doesn't take long for the "corporate culture" and working environment to change dramatically from one where people spend most of their efforts on "getting stuff done", people enjoy their work, and lots of big, challenging projects continually get done with a high degree of quality to one where people tend to think about their motivations mostly in terms of a paycheck, are constantly searching for a way out, and there's a downward spiraling level of quality and achievement in terms of projects.
bsder 10y ago
Ranking and firing should both occur at review time, but "Should we fire somebody" is an independent metric from ranking. The lazy are the easiest. Fire them. They are also the rarest. The malicious are also easy. Fire them NOW. If I catch you sabotaging somebody or gaming metrics in a way that causes problems, you're gone immediately. I will invoke "at will employment", get rid of you immediately, and I won't tell anybody why so I can avoid the legal nightmare. Fortunately, they are also quite rare. The next layer are the underperformers. The question here is generally: "Why are they underperforming?" This generally requires a good look in the mirror as well as a look at the employee. It may be employee issues: divorce, health, etc. At which point you have to judge some level of future expectation with past expectation to balance current performance. You may not decide to get rid of someone like this right away. However, a LOT of the time, the issue is on the company side. Did this person get hired too high in the chain and now sticks out? (Happens when hiring goes from scarcity to glut) Does this person need extra training? (Got moved to somewhere they don't really belong because of "reasons"). Does this person need extra resources? Are you simply expecting something too far out of line? At this point you need to come to grips with the fact that you are dismissing this person because the COMPANY doesn't wish to expend the money/time/effort to fix the problem. And too many people underestimate the amount of resource they're going to lose to try to get a replacement. Having chosen to train certain employees rather than fire them and hire a replacement has given me some of my best performers and most faithful workers over the years. It's also given me a couple of my biggest bombs--but I'll take the ratio for now. If I really decide I can't expend the resource, I will fire you, but I'll probably give you a nice recommendation as well as some extra time and help to find your next job. I have also recommended firing people who were above average performers simply because I judged them to be too much of a drag on everybody else. I'm happy to take criticism all day long--I've got a really thick skin. But other people don't necessarily, and I do have to think of the other members of my team. Too much friction, and I'm going to get rid of the abrasive. Sorry, that's life.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  IMHO the "lazy" and the "malicious" are the ones making policy. They certainly aren't going to be fired, so - again IMHO - this policy is a non-starter.
Analemma_ 10y ago
In addition to this, I would add a "proof is in the pudding" argument if the arguee is still not convinced: Microsoft got rid of stack ranking in 2013. Their stock has almost doubled since then and now everyone's talking about the "Microsoft renaissance". Correlation isn't causation, but it's hard to argue that stack ranking is a good thing after a turnaround like that.
- bitwize 10y ago
  I think Microsoft's depressed stock value and stack ranking are both symptoms of the fact that Ballmer was a clown.
  - manicdee 10y ago
    And one of his biggest clown tricks, bigger than "Developers Developers Developers" or throwing chairs, was messed up HR policies.
    - nojvek 10y ago
      Microsoft my hire PR folks but under Ballmer, office would never appear on ios and Android. I was there when a clean built application was rejected only to be approved by Satya governance. We would not have seen open .NET, open vscode, Typescript, Ubuntu subsystem, Powershell. Even in the cloud, Linux would have never made to Azure. Ballmer saw Linux as threat, Satya saw it as a platform to build things on. It was a night and day difference when the shift happened. Every team built their own hacked version of Jquery and suddenly we could just use a pre-built one. Code was cleaner, teams moved faster. Open-source was encouraged. No stack rank. Stock doubling is not a coincidence. Ballmer just didn't understand developers.
    - bitwize 10y ago
      Messed up HR policies, squandering opportunities to enter the phone market, doubling down on an unwinnable war against open source... His management gaffes are many and varied.
- barfbuttface 10y ago
pilsetnieks 10y ago
Well, what if you countered it with a lucite slab?
pasbesoin 10y ago
When I observed my management "re-interpreting" their goals and results to paint themselves "green" across the board -- with the obligatory yellow or two, to make the results look "realistic" -- I lost the last of my respect for that company's performance review process. And, about that time, the last of my respect for such processes, overall, as well as for HR being anything other than a mouthpiece of the extant power and its self-serving goals. To my embarrassment, I'd gone against my intuition and continued to try to work with the process. Performance reviews are your time to observe the company's actions. If they don't treat you well, get out. Simple as that. Maybe, in some cases, a manager is genuinely seeking an employee's improvement and continued tenure. And goodness knows, I'd like to think their are institutions, not to mention a prevailing attitude, seeking to improve and empower their staff. But, "Office Space" is real. Get used to it. Think for yourself.
- najajomo 10y ago
  > When I observed my management "re-interpreting" their goals .. Wow, you actually know what your management goals are, instead of having to find out by reading in the trade papers that the company is now totally X Y Z focused, X Y and Z being whatever the tech flavour of the month is :)
  - pasbesoin 10y ago
    Immediate management. Those "Mind the Gap" type people? Yeah, I could guess pretty well. But it wasn't what was coming out of their mouths, often. Good point, though.

by kabdib 10y ago

InclinedPlane 10y ago

Yup, I was there around that time and it sucked. But this is only the seed kernel of the rot that happens. I think there's a PG essay somewhere about "front of mind" and how it impacts what you do. As a founder if you're thinking all the time about funding it blocks you from thinking about building stuff. The same sort of dynamic exists with job security. If you perceive that it's actually pretty difficult to lose your job, if you perceive that lots of people at various levels know your value to the company and are willing to go to bat for you, that helps a lot. It helps even more to push those issues out of the front of your mind, so that day to day you tend to worry mostly about making stuff and solving problems, things you are intrinsically motivated to do. What happens when the working environment becomes more cutthroat is that those issues bubble up and become more front of mind for more people. People think about how to work the system, people evaluate everything that happens based on how it will advantage or disadvantage them in reviews. People who spend most of their time working or gaming the system find that spending their time that way is fruitful. Folks who are intrinsically motivated see these changes happen and they perceive the quality of their working environment diminish. The most talented among them often find out that it is easy for them to find work elsewhere, and they do so. And this begins a cascade process of brain drain. One of the prime motivators for intrinsically motivated and talented technical people at a workplace is being able to work alongside other talented and interesting technical people. Every talented person that leaves reduces the quality of the working environment for the remaining folks, and makes them more likely to leave. Meanwhile, as good folks leave it becomes more and more difficult to execute on challenging projects. The talent pool has been diminished and the people with the most experience have also left. It doesn't take long for the "corporate culture" and working environment to change dramatically from one where people spend most of their efforts on "getting stuff done", people enjoy their work, and lots of big, challenging projects continually get done with a high degree of quality to one where people tend to think about their motivations mostly in terms of a paycheck, are constantly searching for a way out, and there's a downward spiraling level of quality and achievement in terms of projects.

bsder 10y ago

Ranking and firing should both occur at review time, but "Should we fire somebody" is an independent metric from ranking. The lazy are the easiest. Fire them. They are also the rarest. The malicious are also easy. Fire them NOW. If I catch you sabotaging somebody or gaming metrics in a way that causes problems, you're gone immediately. I will invoke "at will employment", get rid of you immediately, and I won't tell anybody why so I can avoid the legal nightmare. Fortunately, they are also quite rare. The next layer are the underperformers. The question here is generally: "Why are they underperforming?" This generally requires a good look in the mirror as well as a look at the employee. It may be employee issues: divorce, health, etc. At which point you have to judge some level of future expectation with past expectation to balance current performance. You may not decide to get rid of someone like this right away. However, a LOT of the time, the issue is on the company side. Did this person get hired too high in the chain and now sticks out? (Happens when hiring goes from scarcity to glut) Does this person need extra training? (Got moved to somewhere they don't really belong because of "reasons"). Does this person need extra resources? Are you simply expecting something too far out of line? At this point you need to come to grips with the fact that you are dismissing this person because the COMPANY doesn't wish to expend the money/time/effort to fix the problem. And too many people underestimate the amount of resource they're going to lose to try to get a replacement. Having chosen to train certain employees rather than fire them and hire a replacement has given me some of my best performers and most faithful workers over the years. It's also given me a couple of my biggest bombs--but I'll take the ratio for now. If I really decide I can't expend the resource, I will fire you, but I'll probably give you a nice recommendation as well as some extra time and help to find your next job. I have also recommended firing people who were above average performers simply because I judged them to be too much of a drag on everybody else. I'm happy to take criticism all day long--I've got a really thick skin. But other people don't necessarily, and I do have to think of the other members of my team. Too much friction, and I'm going to get rid of the abrasive. Sorry, that's life.

chadgeidel 10y ago
IMHO the "lazy" and the "malicious" are the ones making policy. They certainly aren't going to be fired, so - again IMHO - this policy is a non-starter.

Analemma_ 10y ago

In addition to this, I would add a "proof is in the pudding" argument if the arguee is still not convinced: Microsoft got rid of stack ranking in 2013. Their stock has almost doubled since then and now everyone's talking about the "Microsoft renaissance". Correlation isn't causation, but it's hard to argue that stack ranking is a good thing after a turnaround like that.

bitwize 10y ago
I think Microsoft's depressed stock value and stack ranking are both symptoms of the fact that Ballmer was a clown.
- manicdee 10y ago
  And one of his biggest clown tricks, bigger than "Developers Developers Developers" or throwing chairs, was messed up HR policies.
  - nojvek 10y ago
    Microsoft my hire PR folks but under Ballmer, office would never appear on ios and Android. I was there when a clean built application was rejected only to be approved by Satya governance. We would not have seen open .NET, open vscode, Typescript, Ubuntu subsystem, Powershell. Even in the cloud, Linux would have never made to Azure. Ballmer saw Linux as threat, Satya saw it as a platform to build things on. It was a night and day difference when the shift happened. Every team built their own hacked version of Jquery and suddenly we could just use a pre-built one. Code was cleaner, teams moved faster. Open-source was encouraged. No stack rank. Stock doubling is not a coincidence. Ballmer just didn't understand developers.
  - bitwize 10y ago
    Messed up HR policies, squandering opportunities to enter the phone market, doubling down on an unwinnable war against open source... His management gaffes are many and varied.
barfbuttface 10y ago

pilsetnieks 10y ago

Well, what if you countered it with a lucite slab?

pasbesoin 10y ago

When I observed my management "re-interpreting" their goals and results to paint themselves "green" across the board -- with the obligatory yellow or two, to make the results look "realistic" -- I lost the last of my respect for that company's performance review process. And, about that time, the last of my respect for such processes, overall, as well as for HR being anything other than a mouthpiece of the extant power and its self-serving goals. To my embarrassment, I'd gone against my intuition and continued to try to work with the process. Performance reviews are your time to observe the company's actions. If they don't treat you well, get out. Simple as that. Maybe, in some cases, a manager is genuinely seeking an employee's improvement and continued tenure. And goodness knows, I'd like to think their are institutions, not to mention a prevailing attitude, seeking to improve and empower their staff. But, "Office Space" is real. Get used to it. Think for yourself.

najajomo 10y ago
> When I observed my management "re-interpreting" their goals .. Wow, you actually know what your management goals are, instead of having to find out by reading in the trade papers that the company is now totally X Y Z focused, X Y and Z being whatever the tech flavour of the month is :)
- pasbesoin 10y ago
  Immediate management. Those "Mind the Gap" type people? Yeah, I could guess pretty well. But it wasn't what was coming out of their mouths, often. Good point, though.