3 ms·

I've been through my fair share of forced rankings on both sides of the barrier. Despite of all my skepticism, the whole experience was pretty reasonable: - in

I've been through my fair share of forced rankings on both sides of the barrier. Despite of all my skepticism, the whole experience was pretty reasonable: - in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Everybody understands that in a team of five engineers all five can be good and smart - on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers. - a department head may claim that all his one hundred people are brilliant, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - usually there is a surprising consensus about who belongs to where. Yes, there are occasional clashes between the managers about whose guy is "brilliant" and whose is "exceptionally brilliant", but I've never ever seen a smart person being force ranked into a "bad" bucket

whatshisface 8y ago
>the whole experience was pretty reasonable: in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Any set of rules can appear reasonable in practice when people ignore the rules when their results would be unreasonable.
vonmoltke 8y ago
> - in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Everybody understands that in a team of five engineers all five can be good and smart Not at a couple of the companies I have worked for. Small teams were still expected to have average ratings that were close to the company-wide average.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Same here. You can’t have a team with only “outstanding” score. You have to fit your team into the standard distribution. Even if one team is much better than the other, their average still has to be the same.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Unless you then proceed to rank the teams and use a team modifier, that's pretty irrational.
ip26 8y ago
Reportedly, it's when you also fire the bottom 10% on the spot and repeat the process every 12 or perhaps 6 months that it becomes pathological.
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
> on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers. That's the theory. In practice, what happens is that underpeformers who are good at puffing up their accomplishments or people who maintain good relationships with managers get ranked higher than people who are performing at an average level but are working on unexciting projects or are less capable of selling themselves (e.g. introverts or shy people).
marcosdumay 8y ago
> on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers The law of large numbers only works when the sample is unbiased. If the stack ranking was working as intended to any degree or the hiring procedures have any quality, no team will be composed of random people. So, if that statement holds for your company (I doubt it), then both hiring managers are completely incompetent, and the rank process is completely ineffective.

whatshisface 8y ago

>the whole experience was pretty reasonable: in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Any set of rules can appear reasonable in practice when people ignore the rules when their results would be unreasonable.

vonmoltke 8y ago

> - in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Everybody understands that in a team of five engineers all five can be good and smart Not at a couple of the companies I have worked for. Small teams were still expected to have average ratings that were close to the company-wide average.

maxxxxx 8y ago
Same here. You can’t have a team with only “outstanding” score. You have to fit your team into the standard distribution. Even if one team is much better than the other, their average still has to be the same.
- ip26 8y ago
  Unless you then proceed to rank the teams and use a team modifier, that's pretty irrational.

ip26 8y ago

Reportedly, it's when you also fire the bottom 10% on the spot and repeat the process every 12 or perhaps 6 months that it becomes pathological.

ThrowawayR2 8y ago

> on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers. That's the theory. In practice, what happens is that underpeformers who are good at puffing up their accomplishments or people who maintain good relationships with managers get ranked higher than people who are performing at an average level but are working on unexciting projects or are less capable of selling themselves (e.g. introverts or shy people).

marcosdumay 8y ago

> on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers The law of large numbers only works when the sample is unbiased. If the stack ranking was working as intended to any degree or the hiring procedures have any quality, no team will be composed of random people. So, if that statement holds for your company (I doubt it), then both hiring managers are completely incompetent, and the rank process is completely ineffective.