23 ms·

This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a

This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn't foster the type of environment I wanted to work at, which is collaborative. I heard from my friends at Facebook that the environment there is equally crazy. Everyone knows that the performance reviews are based on lazy stats, so they game the stats. Every time someone requests a meeting, they are expected to give a "thank you" which is one of the measures for performance. Also, things like the number of reviews commented on could be easily gamed by adding a "+1!" as a comment which sounds like another undesirable place to work at. Maybe current Facebook employees can comment, however.

giantg2 6y ago
I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  I'm stupid in this way, too.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    How's your career? Did this have an impact? Mine is ruined and this might have contributed a little. I'll never be more than an intermediate developer and I'm worried about being fired/laid off.
    - castlecrasher2 6y ago
      >I'll never be more than an intermediate developer Do you mean this at your specific company? I felt the same way in my last company because there was definitely nowhere to go up, but I've since moved on and am in a more senior role.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I'm in my 30 with a family and find that I am much slower at learning new stacks now. I was a FileNet developer and then a Neoxam developer. There aren't many opportunities for me. I'm also just tired of the bullshit and and mind games that management plays. My current plan is to gamble in the stock market and 'retire' whenever I can't take it anymore or get fired. I would love to retire to run a small farm and/or work a retail job like Lowes.
        PopeDotNinja 6y ago
        Wanna go 50%/50% on a farm? We can be nerd neighbors.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Haha sure. I'll need to at least triple my money before I can even think about this as more than a dream.
        perl4ever 6y ago
        If you don't like the industry you're in, programming culture, or the software stack you're used to, one way to break out of it is to get a low level office job in the sort of place you want to work and figure out how to solve problems with technology among people who don't normally have developers at their beck and call. This is also, I think, how you find a job that is very stable and secure - focusing first and foremost on something other than technology until they can't imagine hiring someone off the street to replace you who doesn't know the business.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Thanks! I've sort of considered moving into a business role and becoming a business analyst. Seems like a huge pay cut (that I can't afford) and years of wasted effort. I actually have a business administration minor and trade options and equities, so I have a better understanding of finance and the business than most people I work with in IT. I work for a large financial company and my previous team was amazed that I passed my CFA Foundations class without studying (it's not difficult like the CFA level 2 or anything). Maybe I'll reconsider becoming a business person.
    - t-writescode 6y ago
      Don’t believe that about yourself for a second. I regularly scored low marks at a previous company of mine; and, even during one review, I got a ‘you improved a lot! But your coworkers improved even more, so you’re getting a [low rank] again.’ I’ve since moved on to different positions at different companies and am doing plenty fine. I’m even the senior member on a new team I’m joining now. A few bad years or even many bad years don’t end your career :)
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I once had a manager give me an FDN rating and when I asked what I can do to improve she told me "just keep doing what you're doing".
        opportune 6y ago
        I’ve been told this several times when I’ve asked what I could do to get a higher rating or promotion. It always meant that there was some tenure element to the rankings. I think from the manager’s perspective they are being both honest and reassuring, but from the report’s perspective, it’s very frustrating knowing your progress is being limited, and hard work wasted, due to some bureaucratic limitation. And knowing that in practice it’s possible for exceptions to be made and it’s possible your manager isn’t advocating strongly enough for you.
        giantg2 6y ago
        At my company it wasn't a tenure thing, although I think that played an informal role as to why I was picked vs someone else. When a manager picks someone for the highest rating some departments require the manager to also pick someone as an FDN to "balance it out". In this case I know the guy that got the high rating. As weird as it is to say, and even when the wound was fresh, I was/am happy for him and he deserved it. He's a nice guy and he had nothing to do with the rating I recieved. He's now a manager several levels up.
        opportune 6y ago
    - gowld 6y ago
      Why are you worried about being fired? If you are underpaid for your work, your manager is happy to have you.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I recently switched stacks and I'm not coming up to speed as fast as they would like. I'm also becoming demoralized after being looked over or screwed over for about 4 years.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
      Not that poster, but in my personal experience praising others is good to match with humble by noisy comments about the work you are doing. Whether this works or not depends if you have any psychopathic coworkers, which isn't something you can really know very easily. I also don't think the actions of others really define whether or not you are "intermediate," unless you're only talking about some corporate ladder bullshit.
  - shahbaby 6y ago
    I used to be this stupid too but then I learned that it's better to just play their game, win and then move on, no point in fighting it, just think of it as another part of the job.
    - allenu 6y ago
      This is what I do now after trying and failing at "doing my best work and hoping to get recognized". I'm bad at communicating when I've worked on something challenging, so now I realize I should never give more effort than can be noticed. You may think that's cynical, but this is a business and I'm paid not on what I actually do but what the business perceives me of doing.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Thanks! I might look into trying that mindset.
        jupyternonuser 6y ago
        In another comment you say you find the lying and mindgames to be morally offensive. How do you not find this morally offensive as well?
        giantg2 6y ago
        I read this as not giving any extra effort, which I think would help reduce the reliance of my self image on my work success. I wouldn't be lying and I wouldn't be playing head games.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I want to, but I find the lying and mind games to be morally offensive, especially when they can have such a large impact on a person's wellbeing.
      - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
- natalyarostova 6y ago
  You'll always have people across the industry who want you to go work with them :)
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Thanks, but I'm turning into a miserable, no skills, scrooge so I don't think that will be the case much longer.
- humanlion87 6y ago
  Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    That's me. I don't like visibility. I like to do a good job for the sake of the job without bragging.
    - indymike 6y ago
      That's why having a culture where people share their gratitude for your being helpful, competent and otherwise awesome really matters. The self-promoters always look good, but the best people - and those that make the best leaders - often don't self-promote.
    - velp 6y ago
      I feel this, and it's challenging because visibility is important for advancement. My manager advised me to think of the broadcast emails/posts as ways to boost the people I collaborated with, and that's helped a lot. It doesn't feel like I'm tooting my own horn, people still see the impact of projects I contributed to, and my colleagues are always enthusiastic to work on projects with me because they know they will get good visibility and be "given" they credit they deserve for their contributions. Granted my role is very crossfunctional, but I think it's pretty unusual to be consistently impactful working in your own silo. So boosting my collaborators gets me the visibility benefits, without feeling insincere, and contributes to a work culture that is collaborative and supportive. For context, I lead an analytics team at a FAANG company.
    - cookienapper 6y ago
      The dilemma is this... "Ignorance is bliss" - You can't be worried/stressed about problems you don't know... What if you're consistently doing good work but have zero visibility? Then years down the road, you notice a trend of people around you getting promotions/raises/bounses more often than you? The same people that slack off & lack integrity; to name a few. As a human being with emotions... can you honestly say you won't feel resentful in your moment of realization? I am asking as someone who's been in that situation more times than I care to admit... I do good work for myself and for the sake of doing good work; I take pride in the work I do... but as most of it was never communicated, no one knew about it and just took it's results for granted; I was bypassed for raises, promotions, etc... Was it worth it? I can't give you a answer... it's a very conflicting place to be.
- driverdan 6y ago
  If praising others hurts your position you should find a new employer.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    If only it were that easy for me...
- sjtindell 6y ago
  How can giving praise hurt you?
  - giantg2 6y ago
    If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.
    - sjtindell 6y ago
      Thanks, I haven’t experienced that. How painful. I agree with other posters here when I read about your problem in these comments. Personally I think of my manager and performance review more as symptoms or results of a process, rather than the source of anything. Promoting myself - Github, LinkedIn, trainings and brown bag sessions for my coworkers, program completion emails, those are part of my job just as much as personal learning, architectural planning, and writing code. In fact because I don’t want to fear for my job, they are almost more important. Perhaps it’s not the ideal. But it’s the job description. There are so many pluses to what is essentially a god-level nine to five grind: freedom, intellectual work, lots of money and benefits, etc. I just accept that some of these non-ideal extras are part of my deal. Hope I’m not preaching, trying to help.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Thanks for sharing! I loved giving a brown bag on Raspberry Pi project to my teammates. I know it's not a great work related topic, but installing and using linux and tips on securing it was at least tangentially related. I have to say, I wish I made lots of money.
    - vlz 6y ago
      > someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?
      - 6y ago
duxup 6y ago
It's something that on a casual basis no big deal. But once you ask folks to do it and there's any positive outcome ... it becomes a thing. I've been a part of similar systems and as soon as it is sort of institutionalized, it is a nightmare. It became office politics and groups of mutual admiration clubs, and frankly a lot of folks who maybe needed to up their game in the view of their bosses got in on these sort of mutual admiration clubs. More so than those who didn't, and that really skewed things. The underlying fact is a complement from a coworker might have jack squat to do with ... actually doing anything good, it could even be because of a bad thing, who knows, you just never know. As soon as it isn't 'organic' it becomes kinda horrible.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > It became office politics and groups of mutual admiration clubs Right, the incentive problem is especially hard here, because "compliments" and "praise" by definition involve unverified info, so it's really easy for the whole thing to devolve into a popularity contest, and you can only avoid this by discouraging it. OTOH it might still be possible to reward employees for praise of coworkers that involves some amount of verifiability. It's not that everything is going to be verified after-the-fact, but the possibility has to be real so that everyone's behavior is kept in line.
opportune 6y ago
After experiencing this myself I’m beginning to think the best performance management system is one that is as “holistic” and loosely defined as possible. Probably doesn’t work at scale (since every director will be happy to spend as much of the company’s money as possible to retain employees) but seems to be better than OKR/tenure/stack ranked bullshit, even with the potential confounding variables like nepotism
- toast0 6y ago
  You need to set the directors' budgets somehow. But hopefully there's not so many directors, and company leadership can figure that out. Then let the directors do whatever within that, with light supervision (company CYA of course, but also to make sure things are fair enough within the overall company, etc).
ar_lan 6y ago
Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. School is a prime example, in my opinion - there is so much I "learned" in school that I'll never remember, because I didn't take a proper approach to learning - I just optimized for grades. I had a 4.7 GPA and could hardly tell you a thing about US history or recite a lick of Spanish, because I simply did not care about anything but getting the A so I could get into the college I cared about. In the work environment, I can see a lot of parallels to this. If I'm competing with my coworkers, my incentive is to outwork and outshine them. A common thing I see is when a coworker does a bit of innovative work - it's almost guaranteed some other coworker will intercede before a chance at applause is given to discuss its obvious flaws, the plethora of alternatives out there, etc., leading the developer to feel like their implementation was not good. (For the record, I'm not talking about general criticism - I'm talking about the general pattern of not celebrating someone's achievements and then discussing how to continue improving, but rather a "why did you even do this" mentality).
- biswaroop 6y ago
  > Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. Maybe it's Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    As another example: Agile dev team measuring velocity (story points per sprint) to predict how much work they can do in the future. If velocity gets turned into a target, corners will be cut (less testing, poor code quality) in order to get those story points for that sprint. Code quality suffers and tech debt accumulates, reducing output down the road. On the flip side, as time goes on teams could just progressively estimate a greater number of points to stories of similar difficulty during the planning process. So velocity goes up but actual deliverable features goes down or stays the same.
  - shellum 6y ago
oblio 6y ago
> well known software company named...? :-)
- mark-wagner 6y ago
  Until November 2013 Microsoft used stack ranking.
  - opportune 6y ago
    Doesn’t Microsoft, as well as almost all other large software companies, still do almost the same thing by having a fixed distribution of ratings that needs to be met under some organizational unit? IE under each director of 100 people you have 5 A+, 25 A, 30 B, 30 C, 5 D, 5F?
    - skytrue 6y ago
      Not to mention that there is a fixed budget, and so they can only promote so many people in a given period, as rewards are tied to promotions. That means that even if there are many top performers, they have to determine which ones aren't as "top" as others. This inherently creates a stack. Whoops.
      - skapadia 6y ago
        There is always a fixed budget, so at some level stacking has to occur. Whether that's at the individual level, or team, project, department, business unit, etc. Unfortunately at some level politics / perception / who speaks the loudest always comes into play.
    - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
      When people talk about stack ranking they are often referring to the most toxic part of the classic system, forced firing of the bottom ranked X% (usually around 10% per year)
    - maurys 6y ago
      The only other system I can recall is usually for things like sales. Where you have a fixed salary and commission-driven bonuses based on your numbers that quarter. Of course, sales is easier to compare 1:1. And I've always thought that hard targets would be more stressful than stack-ranking.
jorblumesea 6y ago
It doesn't have to even be the stats game. Just the fact that employees know there's mandatory 10% cuts every year/quarter whatever produces a hostile work environment. Amazon is a fantastic example of this. The PIP culture has produced an environment where everyone is backstabbing each other for promotions and to keep their job. If solid product gets built, it's incidental. People are too concerned about their jobs and employment.
grecy 6y ago
> All it does is create a zero-sum game Which is exactly what the employer wants. It's also why they don't want people talking to each other about their salaries, which is a practice that needs to die.
kache_ 6y ago
The only thing that really matters is your reputation among others. If you want a promotion, start looking for another job or start your own company. The only incentive companies have to give you raises is the changes in the going rate for software engineers. Everyone ends up moving in ~5 years; and if you make a good impression that becomes an opportunity for you. I do a good job because I'm a professional, and care about what my peers think about me. I'm not competing with them, I'm living up to the high standards that they have to me and vice versa. I don't do a good job because of some carrot on a stick tier "promotion" or "raise". Those are easy enough to get by job hopping or having the option of job hopping.
- afterburner 6y ago
  One of the least well understood things is that people can have different motivations to do a good job. But most people assume everyone's motivation is the same as theirs.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
It is easy to see zero-sum as noncooperative but in reality there is more than one winner. In fact, the number of losers is relatively small. One thing you can do to ensure your own position is to find some people you like and trade feedback with them. Everyone not included in the deal will have less feedback and you will be slightly advantaged over them.
- mementomori 6y ago
  That sounds like a good strategy: form an inner circle of peers that don't have conflict of interest (preferably not sharing the same supervisor, etc.) and being vulnerable with selective people should be helpful for fine-tuning strategy, and if not, at least generate a little social power. Previously, I had the tendency to isolate and not open up to anybody, to my own detriment.
strulovich 6y ago
I've been working at Facebook for a while now, and I think the environment is competitive, and you do need to shine in front of endless talent, but doing so doesn't mean numbers. Sadly, many people who don't do well take their feedback to mean that they need more code commits or comments. Some of them might even succeed at gaming the system for a short while due to a bad manager. The truth from my experience is that as long as you drive meaningful impact, and are able to convince you manager and others of it, you will be doing well. Falling back to silly stat numbers is the toolset of people who don't have enough achievements. In a way, good numbers don't mean good performance. But bad performance really does correlate with bad numbers. So people who are unhappy with their ratings will deduce that is the problem. It's aggravated by the fact people with good ratings don't boast about it (which is considered rude). I've noticed similar effects in college with grades. Judging by the vocal people one could assume the majority of the class failed at the exam, since whoever succeed will do well to not rub in their friends' faces) * Personally I do use numbers in reviews, but only as a secondary way to backup my claims for what I did, or why it was important * * If you are convinced that your manager and team only cares about stats, I recommend switching to another team or company when you have the opportunity.
- discordance 6y ago
  By meaningful impact, do you mean how many users you convinced into clicking ads? Or perhaps it was meaningful to create a tool that was used to monitor and manipulate millions of people to vote In a particular way?
  - throwaway4715 6y ago
    If only you'd made a meaningful comment.
- kevinastone 6y ago
  I was an eng manager at Facebook for a number of years and I think you accurately summarized the coding metrics in performance reviews perpetual great debate.
jedberg 6y ago
This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal. Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset, based on a bunch of data they had on what people at other companies got paid for similar work. What we did have was 360 reviews once a year. It was basically a small survey you could fill out about anyone in the company, which they and their manager would see. You could evaluate your boss, your VP, or people who worked for you, or anyone else you worked with anywhere in the company. It was expected that managers do a 360 review for all of their reports, but beyond that you could do as few or as many as you wanted to. It was basically a start/stop/continue kind of thing. It was such a refreshing change from the stack ranking at eBay, which forced good people to get shitty reviews just so they could "fit the bell curve". And as you said, it incentivized you to not praise coworkers and some people even actively sabotaged their coworkers to get a better rank.
- KKKKkkkk1 6y ago
  I'm curious about the 360 reviews. Where I work, peer feedback is solicited by your manager. So your manager can choose the people writing your feedback based on whether the manager wants to reward you or to screw you over. As a byproduct, your peers do not fear any repercussions for bad behavior if they have confidence that their manager has their back. So, for example, people have no qualms about sabotaging the work of other teams. Do the 360 reviews help with this problem?
  - jedberg 6y ago
    I don't think they are related. I think what stops that from happening is open feedback across the company and hiring the right people. No one is really thinking, "man I would totally screw this person if not for the bad review they might give me!". Especially since the reviews only happen once a year. If you do something negative to someone, that person will either directly address it with you or your manager at the time. The reviews are more to address longer term behavior.
fbanon9876 6y ago
I work at FB. Can't speak for other teams, but this does not match the culture I've seen in 3+ years. There is a tool to send thanks, but there are no expectations -- it's just a nice thing to see coworkers appreciate you. I've done reviews and never heard anyone mention the number of "thanks" their report has received. The PSC cycle (bi-annual review) is stressful, which I think is where the "craziness" stems. OTOH, there's not much day to day oversight - employees have an insane amount of freedom - so these 2x / year reviews are the tradeoff. ICs have tons of freedom, then twice a year, have to stand account for how they spent the last 6 months, compared to what other people in the same role and at the same level have done. (It's not stack ranking, it's more like grading on a curve across very different exam questions.) There are mechanisms to provide feedback more frequently than every 6 months. It's agreed that the manager failed at their job if an IC is surprised by how a review ends up. (FB also has 360 reviews every 6 months, offset from PSC by 3 months. These are usually upward reviews, and they are taken very seriously. Results from these determine manager career progression, so it's a chance for ICs to have their voices really well heard.) Gaming the stats does exist, just as it exists everywhere. I think this is probably the only part that I don't strongly disagree with. It's also a hard problem to solve, with significant tradeoffs for different approaches. (And might be the most interesting piece)
- azemetre 6y ago
  How does FB handle people that are strict 9-5'ers? I read a lot of conflicting things on teamblind or glassdoor about a poor WLB. It's hard to tell if this was someone in their early 20s out of school struggling to work with a large company or someone mid 30s that burned out. If you just do your obligations does it look bad? I mean not everyone can be a top performer, especially if there is a curve. Some companies will PIP you out, but I can't quite get the vibe at FB. I'd love to join, I interviewed last year but went thru some personal grief and didn't really prep well then failed the interview. I'd like to time to properly study this year because the process as was very do-able if you put in the effort.
  - strulovich 6y ago
    Sorry to hear it didn't go well for you the last time. I know a bunch of people who passed the interview process only in a later try. I personally do 9-6, take my coffee breaks really seriously, sometimes to later work like reply to messages if I'm in the mood, and never (save for very very rare shitstorms) work on the weekend. Teams vary, I've seen plenty of 9-5ers that make it work (some of them on my team). As you already pointed out, I also think younger people tend to overwork, and people with kids tend to reprioritize and go for a 9-5 schedule. Since one gets to choose the team they join in Facebook (in contrast to being offered a job in a specific team) you get to choose a team that will fit your personality. This means you should pick a team not only based on their project, but also based on the people and the team's culture, and if you pick wrong, you can rather easily switch.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Stack ranking intuitively makes sense. Rank people by performance, fire the bottom 10% or so, promote the top 10%. The first iteration can work very well. But what about the next iterations? People will adapt to the process and change their behavior. Under stacked ranking, if you are interviewing someone brilliant that can potentially be the strongest member on your team, is it in your best personal interest to hire that person? The answer is: no. Because if you add high performance members to your team, with each iteration of stacked ranking not only it will be harder for you to be promoted, but you will be closer to being terminated. So what ends up happening is that people hire the worst possible candidates, which defeats the purpose of stacked ranking. With stacked ranking, instead of iterating towards stronger people, you iterate towards mediocre, political people.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  In my experience the biggest problem with stack ranking is that it's not easy to update. I mentored a developer and he skyrocketed from the bottom of the stack to near the top in real terms over the course of two years. But he could never escape his "reputation" as a lower tier person. He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income. This is such an American story :-) I don't think there's any other developed country where you can remain an individual contributor, a developer, and quadruple your income in 2 years. Heck, in most other developed countries the whole salary range for a profession is about 2x, from the lowliest junior developer to the highest senior developer. To make more you'd have to become a consultant, so basically start your own company, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      >To make more you'd have to become a consultant My name checks out :)
dllthomas 6y ago
> All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I think that's not quite right. You have incentive to compliment those who you would rather be working with, which hopefully correlates pretty well with those who deserve compliment. Of course, this is weighed against your other incentives, some of which are probably more important. This comment should not be taken as any meaningful endorsement of stack ranking.
m463 6y ago
I was at a company that had a few rounds of layoffs. great way to destroy a culture. Everybody hunkers down, looks out for themselves, and teamwork dies.
iamthemonster 6y ago
Like at most large companies, I am "stack ranked" and a bell curve is applied, but in my company we do not really have any problem with gaming the system, or trying to shit on your colleagues. The way this is achieved at my company is having no quantitative performance indicators and having your performance decided in a completely opaque process by leaders three levels above you in the organisation who you have never met. As a consequence, we have all given up on engaging in the formal side of the performance review process because we know it is a waste of time. However, if you have a good line manager, you end up having a genuine conversation about what went well and what could be done better. An odd situation, but infinitely preferable to counting up the number of fake "thank you" comments you receive (which just makes me vomit).

giantg2 6y ago

I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
I'm stupid in this way, too.
- giantg2 6y ago
  How's your career? Did this have an impact? Mine is ruined and this might have contributed a little. I'll never be more than an intermediate developer and I'm worried about being fired/laid off.
  - castlecrasher2 6y ago
    >I'll never be more than an intermediate developer Do you mean this at your specific company? I felt the same way in my last company because there was definitely nowhere to go up, but I've since moved on and am in a more senior role.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I'm in my 30 with a family and find that I am much slower at learning new stacks now. I was a FileNet developer and then a Neoxam developer. There aren't many opportunities for me. I'm also just tired of the bullshit and and mind games that management plays. My current plan is to gamble in the stock market and 'retire' whenever I can't take it anymore or get fired. I would love to retire to run a small farm and/or work a retail job like Lowes.
      - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
        Wanna go 50%/50% on a farm? We can be nerd neighbors.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Haha sure. I'll need to at least triple my money before I can even think about this as more than a dream.
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        If you don't like the industry you're in, programming culture, or the software stack you're used to, one way to break out of it is to get a low level office job in the sort of place you want to work and figure out how to solve problems with technology among people who don't normally have developers at their beck and call. This is also, I think, how you find a job that is very stable and secure - focusing first and foremost on something other than technology until they can't imagine hiring someone off the street to replace you who doesn't know the business.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Thanks! I've sort of considered moving into a business role and becoming a business analyst. Seems like a huge pay cut (that I can't afford) and years of wasted effort. I actually have a business administration minor and trade options and equities, so I have a better understanding of finance and the business than most people I work with in IT. I work for a large financial company and my previous team was amazed that I passed my CFA Foundations class without studying (it's not difficult like the CFA level 2 or anything). Maybe I'll reconsider becoming a business person.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    Don’t believe that about yourself for a second. I regularly scored low marks at a previous company of mine; and, even during one review, I got a ‘you improved a lot! But your coworkers improved even more, so you’re getting a [low rank] again.’ I’ve since moved on to different positions at different companies and am doing plenty fine. I’m even the senior member on a new team I’m joining now. A few bad years or even many bad years don’t end your career :)
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I once had a manager give me an FDN rating and when I asked what I can do to improve she told me "just keep doing what you're doing".
      - opportune 6y ago
        I’ve been told this several times when I’ve asked what I could do to get a higher rating or promotion. It always meant that there was some tenure element to the rankings. I think from the manager’s perspective they are being both honest and reassuring, but from the report’s perspective, it’s very frustrating knowing your progress is being limited, and hard work wasted, due to some bureaucratic limitation. And knowing that in practice it’s possible for exceptions to be made and it’s possible your manager isn’t advocating strongly enough for you.
        giantg2 6y ago
        At my company it wasn't a tenure thing, although I think that played an informal role as to why I was picked vs someone else. When a manager picks someone for the highest rating some departments require the manager to also pick someone as an FDN to "balance it out". In this case I know the guy that got the high rating. As weird as it is to say, and even when the wound was fresh, I was/am happy for him and he deserved it. He's a nice guy and he had nothing to do with the rating I recieved. He's now a manager several levels up.
        opportune 6y ago
  - gowld 6y ago
    Why are you worried about being fired? If you are underpaid for your work, your manager is happy to have you.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I recently switched stacks and I'm not coming up to speed as fast as they would like. I'm also becoming demoralized after being looked over or screwed over for about 4 years.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    Not that poster, but in my personal experience praising others is good to match with humble by noisy comments about the work you are doing. Whether this works or not depends if you have any psychopathic coworkers, which isn't something you can really know very easily. I also don't think the actions of others really define whether or not you are "intermediate," unless you're only talking about some corporate ladder bullshit.
- shahbaby 6y ago
  I used to be this stupid too but then I learned that it's better to just play their game, win and then move on, no point in fighting it, just think of it as another part of the job.
  - allenu 6y ago
    This is what I do now after trying and failing at "doing my best work and hoping to get recognized". I'm bad at communicating when I've worked on something challenging, so now I realize I should never give more effort than can be noticed. You may think that's cynical, but this is a business and I'm paid not on what I actually do but what the business perceives me of doing.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Thanks! I might look into trying that mindset.
      - jupyternonuser 6y ago
        In another comment you say you find the lying and mindgames to be morally offensive. How do you not find this morally offensive as well?
        giantg2 6y ago
        I read this as not giving any extra effort, which I think would help reduce the reliance of my self image on my work success. I wouldn't be lying and I wouldn't be playing head games.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I want to, but I find the lying and mind games to be morally offensive, especially when they can have such a large impact on a person's wellbeing.
    - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
natalyarostova 6y ago
You'll always have people across the industry who want you to go work with them :)
- giantg2 6y ago
  Thanks, but I'm turning into a miserable, no skills, scrooge so I don't think that will be the case much longer.
humanlion87 6y ago
Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.
- giantg2 6y ago
  That's me. I don't like visibility. I like to do a good job for the sake of the job without bragging.
  - indymike 6y ago
    That's why having a culture where people share their gratitude for your being helpful, competent and otherwise awesome really matters. The self-promoters always look good, but the best people - and those that make the best leaders - often don't self-promote.
  - velp 6y ago
    I feel this, and it's challenging because visibility is important for advancement. My manager advised me to think of the broadcast emails/posts as ways to boost the people I collaborated with, and that's helped a lot. It doesn't feel like I'm tooting my own horn, people still see the impact of projects I contributed to, and my colleagues are always enthusiastic to work on projects with me because they know they will get good visibility and be "given" they credit they deserve for their contributions. Granted my role is very crossfunctional, but I think it's pretty unusual to be consistently impactful working in your own silo. So boosting my collaborators gets me the visibility benefits, without feeling insincere, and contributes to a work culture that is collaborative and supportive. For context, I lead an analytics team at a FAANG company.
  - cookienapper 6y ago
    The dilemma is this... "Ignorance is bliss" - You can't be worried/stressed about problems you don't know... What if you're consistently doing good work but have zero visibility? Then years down the road, you notice a trend of people around you getting promotions/raises/bounses more often than you? The same people that slack off & lack integrity; to name a few. As a human being with emotions... can you honestly say you won't feel resentful in your moment of realization? I am asking as someone who's been in that situation more times than I care to admit... I do good work for myself and for the sake of doing good work; I take pride in the work I do... but as most of it was never communicated, no one knew about it and just took it's results for granted; I was bypassed for raises, promotions, etc... Was it worth it? I can't give you a answer... it's a very conflicting place to be.
driverdan 6y ago
If praising others hurts your position you should find a new employer.
- giantg2 6y ago
  If only it were that easy for me...
sjtindell 6y ago
How can giving praise hurt you?
- giantg2 6y ago
  If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.
  - sjtindell 6y ago
    Thanks, I haven’t experienced that. How painful. I agree with other posters here when I read about your problem in these comments. Personally I think of my manager and performance review more as symptoms or results of a process, rather than the source of anything. Promoting myself - Github, LinkedIn, trainings and brown bag sessions for my coworkers, program completion emails, those are part of my job just as much as personal learning, architectural planning, and writing code. In fact because I don’t want to fear for my job, they are almost more important. Perhaps it’s not the ideal. But it’s the job description. There are so many pluses to what is essentially a god-level nine to five grind: freedom, intellectual work, lots of money and benefits, etc. I just accept that some of these non-ideal extras are part of my deal. Hope I’m not preaching, trying to help.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Thanks for sharing! I loved giving a brown bag on Raspberry Pi project to my teammates. I know it's not a great work related topic, but installing and using linux and tips on securing it was at least tangentially related. I have to say, I wish I made lots of money.
  - vlz 6y ago
    > someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?
    - 6y ago

duxup 6y ago

It's something that on a casual basis no big deal. But once you ask folks to do it and there's any positive outcome ... it becomes a thing. I've been a part of similar systems and as soon as it is sort of institutionalized, it is a nightmare. It became office politics and groups of mutual admiration clubs, and frankly a lot of folks who maybe needed to up their game in the view of their bosses got in on these sort of mutual admiration clubs. More so than those who didn't, and that really skewed things. The underlying fact is a complement from a coworker might have jack squat to do with ... actually doing anything good, it could even be because of a bad thing, who knows, you just never know. As soon as it isn't 'organic' it becomes kinda horrible.

zozbot234 6y ago
> It became office politics and groups of mutual admiration clubs Right, the incentive problem is especially hard here, because "compliments" and "praise" by definition involve unverified info, so it's really easy for the whole thing to devolve into a popularity contest, and you can only avoid this by discouraging it. OTOH it might still be possible to reward employees for praise of coworkers that involves some amount of verifiability. It's not that everything is going to be verified after-the-fact, but the possibility has to be real so that everyone's behavior is kept in line.

opportune 6y ago

After experiencing this myself I’m beginning to think the best performance management system is one that is as “holistic” and loosely defined as possible. Probably doesn’t work at scale (since every director will be happy to spend as much of the company’s money as possible to retain employees) but seems to be better than OKR/tenure/stack ranked bullshit, even with the potential confounding variables like nepotism

toast0 6y ago
You need to set the directors' budgets somehow. But hopefully there's not so many directors, and company leadership can figure that out. Then let the directors do whatever within that, with light supervision (company CYA of course, but also to make sure things are fair enough within the overall company, etc).

ar_lan 6y ago

Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. School is a prime example, in my opinion - there is so much I "learned" in school that I'll never remember, because I didn't take a proper approach to learning - I just optimized for grades. I had a 4.7 GPA and could hardly tell you a thing about US history or recite a lick of Spanish, because I simply did not care about anything but getting the A so I could get into the college I cared about. In the work environment, I can see a lot of parallels to this. If I'm competing with my coworkers, my incentive is to outwork and outshine them. A common thing I see is when a coworker does a bit of innovative work - it's almost guaranteed some other coworker will intercede before a chance at applause is given to discuss its obvious flaws, the plethora of alternatives out there, etc., leading the developer to feel like their implementation was not good. (For the record, I'm not talking about general criticism - I'm talking about the general pattern of not celebrating someone's achievements and then discussing how to continue improving, but rather a "why did you even do this" mentality).

biswaroop 6y ago
> Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. Maybe it's Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  As another example: Agile dev team measuring velocity (story points per sprint) to predict how much work they can do in the future. If velocity gets turned into a target, corners will be cut (less testing, poor code quality) in order to get those story points for that sprint. Code quality suffers and tech debt accumulates, reducing output down the road. On the flip side, as time goes on teams could just progressively estimate a greater number of points to stories of similar difficulty during the planning process. So velocity goes up but actual deliverable features goes down or stays the same.
- shellum 6y ago

oblio 6y ago

> well known software company named...? :-)

mark-wagner 6y ago
Until November 2013 Microsoft used stack ranking.
- opportune 6y ago
  Doesn’t Microsoft, as well as almost all other large software companies, still do almost the same thing by having a fixed distribution of ratings that needs to be met under some organizational unit? IE under each director of 100 people you have 5 A+, 25 A, 30 B, 30 C, 5 D, 5F?
  - skytrue 6y ago
    Not to mention that there is a fixed budget, and so they can only promote so many people in a given period, as rewards are tied to promotions. That means that even if there are many top performers, they have to determine which ones aren't as "top" as others. This inherently creates a stack. Whoops.
    - skapadia 6y ago
      There is always a fixed budget, so at some level stacking has to occur. Whether that's at the individual level, or team, project, department, business unit, etc. Unfortunately at some level politics / perception / who speaks the loudest always comes into play.
  - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
    When people talk about stack ranking they are often referring to the most toxic part of the classic system, forced firing of the bottom ranked X% (usually around 10% per year)
  - maurys 6y ago
    The only other system I can recall is usually for things like sales. Where you have a fixed salary and commission-driven bonuses based on your numbers that quarter. Of course, sales is easier to compare 1:1. And I've always thought that hard targets would be more stressful than stack-ranking.

jorblumesea 6y ago

It doesn't have to even be the stats game. Just the fact that employees know there's mandatory 10% cuts every year/quarter whatever produces a hostile work environment. Amazon is a fantastic example of this. The PIP culture has produced an environment where everyone is backstabbing each other for promotions and to keep their job. If solid product gets built, it's incidental. People are too concerned about their jobs and employment.

grecy 6y ago

> All it does is create a zero-sum game Which is exactly what the employer wants. It's also why they don't want people talking to each other about their salaries, which is a practice that needs to die.

kache_ 6y ago

The only thing that really matters is your reputation among others. If you want a promotion, start looking for another job or start your own company. The only incentive companies have to give you raises is the changes in the going rate for software engineers. Everyone ends up moving in ~5 years; and if you make a good impression that becomes an opportunity for you. I do a good job because I'm a professional, and care about what my peers think about me. I'm not competing with them, I'm living up to the high standards that they have to me and vice versa. I don't do a good job because of some carrot on a stick tier "promotion" or "raise". Those are easy enough to get by job hopping or having the option of job hopping.

afterburner 6y ago
One of the least well understood things is that people can have different motivations to do a good job. But most people assume everyone's motivation is the same as theirs.

jabroni_salad 6y ago

It is easy to see zero-sum as noncooperative but in reality there is more than one winner. In fact, the number of losers is relatively small. One thing you can do to ensure your own position is to find some people you like and trade feedback with them. Everyone not included in the deal will have less feedback and you will be slightly advantaged over them.

mementomori 6y ago
That sounds like a good strategy: form an inner circle of peers that don't have conflict of interest (preferably not sharing the same supervisor, etc.) and being vulnerable with selective people should be helpful for fine-tuning strategy, and if not, at least generate a little social power. Previously, I had the tendency to isolate and not open up to anybody, to my own detriment.

strulovich 6y ago

I've been working at Facebook for a while now, and I think the environment is competitive, and you do need to shine in front of endless talent, but doing so doesn't mean numbers. Sadly, many people who don't do well take their feedback to mean that they need more code commits or comments. Some of them might even succeed at gaming the system for a short while due to a bad manager. The truth from my experience is that as long as you drive meaningful impact, and are able to convince you manager and others of it, you will be doing well. Falling back to silly stat numbers is the toolset of people who don't have enough achievements. In a way, good numbers don't mean good performance. But bad performance really does correlate with bad numbers. So people who are unhappy with their ratings will deduce that is the problem. It's aggravated by the fact people with good ratings don't boast about it (which is considered rude). I've noticed similar effects in college with grades. Judging by the vocal people one could assume the majority of the class failed at the exam, since whoever succeed will do well to not rub in their friends' faces) * Personally I do use numbers in reviews, but only as a secondary way to backup my claims for what I did, or why it was important * * If you are convinced that your manager and team only cares about stats, I recommend switching to another team or company when you have the opportunity.

discordance 6y ago
By meaningful impact, do you mean how many users you convinced into clicking ads? Or perhaps it was meaningful to create a tool that was used to monitor and manipulate millions of people to vote In a particular way?
- throwaway4715 6y ago
  If only you'd made a meaningful comment.
kevinastone 6y ago
I was an eng manager at Facebook for a number of years and I think you accurately summarized the coding metrics in performance reviews perpetual great debate.

jedberg 6y ago

This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal. Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset, based on a bunch of data they had on what people at other companies got paid for similar work. What we did have was 360 reviews once a year. It was basically a small survey you could fill out about anyone in the company, which they and their manager would see. You could evaluate your boss, your VP, or people who worked for you, or anyone else you worked with anywhere in the company. It was expected that managers do a 360 review for all of their reports, but beyond that you could do as few or as many as you wanted to. It was basically a start/stop/continue kind of thing. It was such a refreshing change from the stack ranking at eBay, which forced good people to get shitty reviews just so they could "fit the bell curve". And as you said, it incentivized you to not praise coworkers and some people even actively sabotaged their coworkers to get a better rank.

KKKKkkkk1 6y ago
I'm curious about the 360 reviews. Where I work, peer feedback is solicited by your manager. So your manager can choose the people writing your feedback based on whether the manager wants to reward you or to screw you over. As a byproduct, your peers do not fear any repercussions for bad behavior if they have confidence that their manager has their back. So, for example, people have no qualms about sabotaging the work of other teams. Do the 360 reviews help with this problem?
- jedberg 6y ago
  I don't think they are related. I think what stops that from happening is open feedback across the company and hiring the right people. No one is really thinking, "man I would totally screw this person if not for the bad review they might give me!". Especially since the reviews only happen once a year. If you do something negative to someone, that person will either directly address it with you or your manager at the time. The reviews are more to address longer term behavior.

fbanon9876 6y ago

I work at FB. Can't speak for other teams, but this does not match the culture I've seen in 3+ years. There is a tool to send thanks, but there are no expectations -- it's just a nice thing to see coworkers appreciate you. I've done reviews and never heard anyone mention the number of "thanks" their report has received. The PSC cycle (bi-annual review) is stressful, which I think is where the "craziness" stems. OTOH, there's not much day to day oversight - employees have an insane amount of freedom - so these 2x / year reviews are the tradeoff. ICs have tons of freedom, then twice a year, have to stand account for how they spent the last 6 months, compared to what other people in the same role and at the same level have done. (It's not stack ranking, it's more like grading on a curve across very different exam questions.) There are mechanisms to provide feedback more frequently than every 6 months. It's agreed that the manager failed at their job if an IC is surprised by how a review ends up. (FB also has 360 reviews every 6 months, offset from PSC by 3 months. These are usually upward reviews, and they are taken very seriously. Results from these determine manager career progression, so it's a chance for ICs to have their voices really well heard.) Gaming the stats does exist, just as it exists everywhere. I think this is probably the only part that I don't strongly disagree with. It's also a hard problem to solve, with significant tradeoffs for different approaches. (And might be the most interesting piece)

azemetre 6y ago
How does FB handle people that are strict 9-5'ers? I read a lot of conflicting things on teamblind or glassdoor about a poor WLB. It's hard to tell if this was someone in their early 20s out of school struggling to work with a large company or someone mid 30s that burned out. If you just do your obligations does it look bad? I mean not everyone can be a top performer, especially if there is a curve. Some companies will PIP you out, but I can't quite get the vibe at FB. I'd love to join, I interviewed last year but went thru some personal grief and didn't really prep well then failed the interview. I'd like to time to properly study this year because the process as was very do-able if you put in the effort.
- strulovich 6y ago
  Sorry to hear it didn't go well for you the last time. I know a bunch of people who passed the interview process only in a later try. I personally do 9-6, take my coffee breaks really seriously, sometimes to later work like reply to messages if I'm in the mood, and never (save for very very rare shitstorms) work on the weekend. Teams vary, I've seen plenty of 9-5ers that make it work (some of them on my team). As you already pointed out, I also think younger people tend to overwork, and people with kids tend to reprioritize and go for a 9-5 schedule. Since one gets to choose the team they join in Facebook (in contrast to being offered a job in a specific team) you get to choose a team that will fit your personality. This means you should pick a team not only based on their project, but also based on the people and the team's culture, and if you pick wrong, you can rather easily switch.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Stack ranking intuitively makes sense. Rank people by performance, fire the bottom 10% or so, promote the top 10%. The first iteration can work very well. But what about the next iterations? People will adapt to the process and change their behavior. Under stacked ranking, if you are interviewing someone brilliant that can potentially be the strongest member on your team, is it in your best personal interest to hire that person? The answer is: no. Because if you add high performance members to your team, with each iteration of stacked ranking not only it will be harder for you to be promoted, but you will be closer to being terminated. So what ends up happening is that people hire the worst possible candidates, which defeats the purpose of stacked ranking. With stacked ranking, instead of iterating towards stronger people, you iterate towards mediocre, political people.

Consultant32452 6y ago
In my experience the biggest problem with stack ranking is that it's not easy to update. I mentored a developer and he skyrocketed from the bottom of the stack to near the top in real terms over the course of two years. But he could never escape his "reputation" as a lower tier person. He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income.
- oblio 6y ago
  > He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income. This is such an American story :-) I don't think there's any other developed country where you can remain an individual contributor, a developer, and quadruple your income in 2 years. Heck, in most other developed countries the whole salary range for a profession is about 2x, from the lowliest junior developer to the highest senior developer. To make more you'd have to become a consultant, so basically start your own company, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    >To make more you'd have to become a consultant My name checks out :)

dllthomas 6y ago

> All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I think that's not quite right. You have incentive to compliment those who you would rather be working with, which hopefully correlates pretty well with those who deserve compliment. Of course, this is weighed against your other incentives, some of which are probably more important. This comment should not be taken as any meaningful endorsement of stack ranking.

m463 6y ago

I was at a company that had a few rounds of layoffs. great way to destroy a culture. Everybody hunkers down, looks out for themselves, and teamwork dies.

iamthemonster 6y ago

Like at most large companies, I am "stack ranked" and a bell curve is applied, but in my company we do not really have any problem with gaming the system, or trying to shit on your colleagues. The way this is achieved at my company is having no quantitative performance indicators and having your performance decided in a completely opaque process by leaders three levels above you in the organisation who you have never met. As a consequence, we have all given up on engaging in the formal side of the performance review process because we know it is a waste of time. However, if you have a good line manager, you end up having a genuine conversation about what went well and what could be done better. An odd situation, but infinitely preferable to counting up the number of fake "thank you" comments you receive (which just makes me vomit).