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Companies implement stack ranking because the management does not have necessarily visibility to valuate each employee. Those who can't stand stack ranking shou

Companies implement stack ranking because the management does not have necessarily visibility to valuate each employee. Those who can't stand stack ranking should either join a small startup, where visibility is not issue by nature, or join a team with explosive growth, so each person's productivity and impact can easily be gauged.

wiz21c 5y ago
> Those who can't stand stack ranking Do you imply that standing stack ranking is a quality needed to work at big tech ?
- hintymad 5y ago
  No, I don't think stack ranking is necessary. It, however, could be a consequence of bad management or of the belief that stack ranking is the most effective way of continuously improving teams.
  - at-fates-hands 5y ago
    >> could be a consequence of bad management or of the belief that stack ranking is the most effective way of continuously improving teams. I've never been at a company who uses it where the teams improved at all. Most of the time those regressed since people were actively working in silo's and shitting on other people's work to make their own work appear better.
itsathrower288 5y ago
Google's perf tools used to support stack ranking and layering. I used to love it...because it was completely open ended. You could stack rank on any dimension you wanted to, and you didn't even have to say what the dimension was. You could stack rack anybody, over arbitrary sets. AFAIK the results were only ever used in aggregate -- without the dimensions there really wasn't any other way to use it. You could stack rank how nice you thought people were, making two layers -- like "really nice" and "mostly nice" (of course, there were no labels in the tool). Or you could use it to highlight two particular team-mates who really stood out by making a layer for them, and then a layer for everyone else. It could also be used to stack-rank the entire management chain, which was fun.

wiz21c 5y ago

> Those who can't stand stack ranking Do you imply that standing stack ranking is a quality needed to work at big tech ?

hintymad 5y ago
No, I don't think stack ranking is necessary. It, however, could be a consequence of bad management or of the belief that stack ranking is the most effective way of continuously improving teams.
- at-fates-hands 5y ago
  >> could be a consequence of bad management or of the belief that stack ranking is the most effective way of continuously improving teams. I've never been at a company who uses it where the teams improved at all. Most of the time those regressed since people were actively working in silo's and shitting on other people's work to make their own work appear better.

itsathrower288 5y ago

Google's perf tools used to support stack ranking and layering. I used to love it...because it was completely open ended. You could stack rank on any dimension you wanted to, and you didn't even have to say what the dimension was. You could stack rack anybody, over arbitrary sets. AFAIK the results were only ever used in aggregate -- without the dimensions there really wasn't any other way to use it. You could stack rank how nice you thought people were, making two layers -- like "really nice" and "mostly nice" (of course, there were no labels in the tool). Or you could use it to highlight two particular team-mates who really stood out by making a layer for them, and then a layer for everyone else. It could also be used to stack-rank the entire management chain, which was fun.