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Wow, I thought the horror stories out of MSFT had put an end to stack-ranking forced-PIP evaluations. It seems incredibly counter productive, and leads to thing
by ubermonkey 5y ago
Wow, I thought the horror stories out of MSFT had put an end to stack-ranking forced-PIP evaluations. It seems incredibly counter productive, and leads to things like hire-to-fire that are just indefensible.
Having a team where everyone is excelling is a GOOD thing in most orgs, right?
- darkwater 5y agoWhat would be the rationale behind this? In their ideal world, why do they need it?
- notreallyserio 5y agoLazy thinking, IMO. It's the sort of concept a child might come up with because it is so "simple". If you think about it for more than 5 minutes you see the problem, but it's too late, the lazy thinkers have mandated it.
- sbierwagen 5y agoEvery company over a certain size will have stack ranking or something like it. Division leaders and VPs need an available knife to stick in the backs of their rivals. If stack ranking or URA doesn't exist, then they'll use a down quarter to create it, ("With the economy the way it is, we have to do some belt-tightening") then wield it to destroy their enemies. If all the VPs are cheerful, happy, nice guys, then someone will emerge from the lower ranks to overthrow the weakest member. From there, the bloodbath begins.
- bogomipz 5y agoWhat is "URA" here?
- sbierwagen 5y ago"Unregretted attrition", Amazon internal jargon that mandates firing 6% of all employees every year: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-unregretted-attrition-rate-people-not-sad-to-lose-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-unregretted-at... This program is obviously not applied uniformly. It's purpose is to be bent to eliminate divisions that lose internal political battles.
- bogomipz 5y agoNow that is a spectacular euphemism. That term sounds like something out of the movie "Office Space."
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoIt's intended as a simple forcing function against the strong incentives for managers to say that all their reports are performing well. Companies that don't stack rank still have to solve this problem, and while I'm ultimately opposed to stack ranking, it's probably true that the alternatives are more subjective and error prone.
- darkwater 5y agoYou are being downvoted but your answer makes total sense to me (and I have been the one asking the question). As a manager, probably living in a world of faries and unicorns, I try to push and be objective about my DRs no matter what, and we don't have stack ranks. I hope $DAYJOB never implement them otherwise I'll be looking for another place immediately.
- vishnugupta 5y agoBlame it on Jack Welch[1]. I can't think of a more toxic system. It has become pervasive and people bring it up as if it's some received wisdom from Gods or like some fundamental physics law. That you can rank humans on some imaginary "performance" parameter is just, let's say, inhuman. I get that some are more impactful than others. But that's just a matter of so many parameters. IME someone producing less output has always been due to some shitty process/documentation/systems. I'd rather fix the underlying problem. But no, like some law set in stone, they have to be ranked and the bottom 10% must be yanked. /rant [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve