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If you rate employees using objective metrics, then you can avoid sexism. The problem with stack ranking is, as the article said, it forces managers to use subj

If you rate employees using objective metrics, then you can avoid sexism. The problem with stack ranking is, as the article said, it forces managers to use subjective measurements to rank employees because they're forced to put the employees in a particular order (instead of saying two employees performed the same). Once you start using subjective measurements, it's almost impossible to avoid having biases creep in.

SamReidHughes 9y ago
The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success.
- eridius 9y ago
  But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time, and are they producing code that's up to the quality standards of the team (which could be measured by tracking whether they're introducing new bugs).
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    You can do that, and it sounds like a good idea as a backstop for subjective evaluations, but if this metric becomes important to the process, then people fight over estimates and game the bug tracker.
  - gaius 9y ago
    But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time No you can't, unless you have a method for dividing a project up into blocks of exactly equal difficulty. The person who takes more time to do genuinely difficult things is probably closing fewer JIRAs than the one quickly cranking through easy ones, which would score more highly on that metric, but which is the more valuable to your organisation?
    - eridius 9y ago
      The metric isn't "number of completed tasks". That would be a terrible metric. The metric is "amount of valuable work completed", which is a combination of number of tasks and how much work (and value) each task is. The manager who assigns tasks should have an understanding of the expected amount of work for each task and the expected difficulty.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    Except you can't even do this unless you're managing a team of contractors who never communicate with each other or the rest of the company. Otherwise how do you propose to rate the person who is often behind on their own tasks but boosts the productivity of the rest of the team?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    You wouldn't. That's why people use, or include, subjective evaluation.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Subjective measures are, inherently, “not directly tied to their contribution to company success”.
      - ewjordan 9y ago
        "Makes people on the team uncomfortable by being argumentative", "is condescending during code reviews", "strongly supports team members via mentorship", and "defuses technical disagreements effectively and without bad feelings" are all highly positive and negative contributions to company success, but are inherently subjective since they require evaluations of soft interpersonal skills, not technical mastery. I can't imagine that you'd want to ignore such factors (employees will quit if you let toxic people stay around unchecked), but absent extreme situations where HR complaints are filed, they are also incredibly difficult to measure other than by listening to peer opinions. Usually from the point of view of the problematic person, everyone else is the asshole. At some point the evaluation has to boil down to a judgement call, rather than an objective measurement. This process is always fraught, for instance when the bosses are the assholes themselves or support them (ahem, Travis), but I don't love the idea of just not considering interpersonal factors when evaluating performance. Bad behavior shouldn't have to rise to the level of an HR complaints before consequences are faced, and good behavior should be rewarded.
  - ravenstine 9y ago

SamReidHughes 9y ago

The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success.

eridius 9y ago
But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time, and are they producing code that's up to the quality standards of the team (which could be measured by tracking whether they're introducing new bugs).
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  You can do that, and it sounds like a good idea as a backstop for subjective evaluations, but if this metric becomes important to the process, then people fight over estimates and game the bug tracker.
- gaius 9y ago
  But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time No you can't, unless you have a method for dividing a project up into blocks of exactly equal difficulty. The person who takes more time to do genuinely difficult things is probably closing fewer JIRAs than the one quickly cranking through easy ones, which would score more highly on that metric, but which is the more valuable to your organisation?
  - eridius 9y ago
    The metric isn't "number of completed tasks". That would be a terrible metric. The metric is "amount of valuable work completed", which is a combination of number of tasks and how much work (and value) each task is. The manager who assigns tasks should have an understanding of the expected amount of work for each task and the expected difficulty.
- jschwartzi 9y ago
  Except you can't even do this unless you're managing a team of contractors who never communicate with each other or the rest of the company. Otherwise how do you propose to rate the person who is often behind on their own tasks but boosts the productivity of the rest of the team?
dragonwriter 9y ago
> The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  You wouldn't. That's why people use, or include, subjective evaluation.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Subjective measures are, inherently, “not directly tied to their contribution to company success”.
    - ewjordan 9y ago
      "Makes people on the team uncomfortable by being argumentative", "is condescending during code reviews", "strongly supports team members via mentorship", and "defuses technical disagreements effectively and without bad feelings" are all highly positive and negative contributions to company success, but are inherently subjective since they require evaluations of soft interpersonal skills, not technical mastery. I can't imagine that you'd want to ignore such factors (employees will quit if you let toxic people stay around unchecked), but absent extreme situations where HR complaints are filed, they are also incredibly difficult to measure other than by listening to peer opinions. Usually from the point of view of the problematic person, everyone else is the asshole. At some point the evaluation has to boil down to a judgement call, rather than an objective measurement. This process is always fraught, for instance when the bosses are the assholes themselves or support them (ahem, Travis), but I don't love the idea of just not considering interpersonal factors when evaluating performance. Bad behavior shouldn't have to rise to the level of an HR complaints before consequences are faced, and good behavior should be rewarded.
- ravenstine 9y ago