11 ms·

At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your manager, but rather the manager submits your

At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your manager, but rather the manager submits your review to a calibrating board that tries to ensure fairness and maintain quality standards. They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking but you are absolutely graded on the curve of the other engineers in your department and level.

znpy 4y ago
I was contacted by meta just less than a month ago, and I declined the offer of an interview… I guess i dodged a bullet?
- battery_glasses 4y ago
  The pay is near top and the engineers are talented. There are a lot of systems in place to get you to work near max capacity all the time with little slowdown time. There are lots of processes and political upheavals that make it hard to ship code. Some people love it.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    That sounds like a place you'd go if you were using work to distract you from a problem in your personal life.
    - VHRanger 4y ago
      Or distract that you're writing code for a platform that harms people
      - gagege 4y ago
        IDK, I wouldn't be able to be distracted from the fact that I'm working for Lord Sauron.
        sbdncuvh 4y ago
        midoridensha 4y ago
        Please don't disrespect Sauron with this kind of comparison.
      - darepublic 4y ago
        Or distract that you're writing code for a product that is lame and writing is already on the wall that it won't succeed.
  - wallscratch 4y ago
    Can you give an example of a system that’s in place to ensure workers are near max capacity most of the time?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - myko 4y ago
      and rarely shipping, to boot!
    - battery_glasses 4y ago
      Diff count/LoC count is recorded and made publicly available for all engineers in a graph that lets you easily compare metrics between developers and teams. This means if you are constantly comparing your output to the rest of the team. The multi-axis performance review criteria that requires you to show deliverables on things like your impact on team-building or culture. This means that when you might normally get a couple week low-output time between projects, you are usually looking for something to fill in the non-coding axis, like organizing a team virtual offsite event or searching for a way to improve the codebase. Organizing team activities and code quality initiatives are a good thing, but the explcitivity in which you need to show deliverable impact on all axis is something I found unique to Meta and very exhausting.
      - znpy 4y ago
        Jesus Christ, I definitely dodged a bullet. That definitely sounds like pushing you to be “productive” as much as your body allows without burning out.
      - Johnny555 4y ago
        Doesn't that just encourage writing code for max LoC rather than efficiency or maintainability? Instead of generalizing a procedure you use in multiple places to make it a single function, if you write it out (slightly differently) each time you do it, then you get a higher LoC count?
  - waynesonfire 4y ago
    do they have bidets yet? Try google instead.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      How many Michelin stars on the food?
      - waynesonfire 4y ago
        But, I'm not joking. Google has bidets.
        ironmagma 4y ago
        I don't honestly know why all of America doesn't have them, and my suspicions are it has something to do with timber shareholders.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        No, it's cultural; Americans just can't imagine not using dry paper to smear feces around after they use the toilet, instead of using water to properly clean themselves. I tried talking to people I knew about them during the pandemic when everyone was freaking out about toilet paper shortages, but it went nowhere. I also suspect NIH is a big part of the problem. Bidets and washlets weren't invented in America or adopted there first, so Americans can't adopt them now since that would be admitting they weren't first for something. Americans are, as a whole, completely unable to look at what other countries are doing and learn from their example.
        znpy 4y ago
        Uh… a bidet is not a substitute for using toilet paper.
        psalminen 4y ago
        It's actually rooted in America's puritanical roots. Americans were largely introduced to bidets during WWII in French bordellos. It didn't leave a good reputation coming back. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/the-bidets-revival/555770/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/the-b...
- bergenty 4y ago
  Yeah the good life bullet.
  - znpy 4y ago
    Would you care to elaborate on that?
- pas 4y ago
  it depends. likely yes, but. there are good (usually small) teams doing interesting and professionally fulfilling work that's not really common elsewhere. (things that come due to "hyperscale". a-a-and, unfortunately, in this regard all big corps are alike. so if you want to do something like that, then your best bet is a corp like FB. though of course there are smaller niche companies for everything, so just because of some niche don't rush to big co-s.)
- outworlder 4y ago
  I was contacted this week I guess they are hiring at some BUs and firing at others?
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  They’re still actively recruiting and interviewing?!? They should have halted most of that and probably stop any contractual recruiting and possibly had HR layoffs.
BoorishBears 4y ago
That's nowhere near the same as "stack ranking" in the way that the term generally used in the tech industry... I wouldn't want to work somewhere at FB scale that doesn't grade you on the curve of other engineers in your department and level, once your departments are large enough that's exactly how it should work. What's problematic is forcefully defining X percent as being low performing, the comparison to peers is a misused kernel of benefit.
- bin_bash 4y ago
  They have a policy that XX% of engineers in a given department should* be given "Meets Most". If that's not stack ranking I'm not sure what would be. BTW "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your record. It doesn't directly relate to being fired but a ton of people quit when they receive it. I view it as sort of a "pre-PIP" state. (* Managers/directors will say it's only a suggestion but nobody really believes that. I'm sure management themselves are frowned upon for not having enough MM under them.)
  - piva00 4y ago
    > "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your record. The kind of newspeak I've heard from multiple friends and former coworkers that ended up at FB/Meta at some point. Well, the ones that didn't fall into the cult of Mark. It might be because I'm getting older but this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to puke. The co-optation of language to exude an aura of friendliness is absolutely disgusting.
    - bin_bash 4y ago
      Are you talking about "Metamates"—if so I said that ironically. I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside of the execs use that term when they weren't being sarcastic.
      - piva00 4y ago
acchow 4y ago
> They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking Graded in the context of peers’ performance does not imply that they sort employees by performance.
- Infinitesimus 4y ago
  What does sorting by performance look like to you? The curve determines rating and compensation, influences promotion decisions, projects people get to work on and what opportunities come their way. The seems like a sort to me given that budget and project opportunities are fixed in many places.
  - nightpool 4y ago
    The key component of stack ranking / sorting by performance is that there's no absolute measure of your contribution, only a relative measure by which you have to outcompete everyone else in your team/department. If you fire your lowest 15% of engineers—no matter how good they are on an absolute level—that's a stack ranking system. It's a horrifying Red Queen's Race that punishes high-quality teams. I'm not necessarily saying that Meta's system is good, but at least it's not that. EDIT: It sounds like at least some people are claiming that Meta has an internal policy that X% of your engineers under you are supposed to be given "Meets Most Expectations" ratings, which would also be pretty close to stack ranking (if at least allowing for some management leniency) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32930370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32930370
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      The other key component of stack ranking was that it's on a per team basis. A team of 20 people may have no low performers. An org of 400 probably has a couple, at some point the law of large numbers does really start to apply, and you're no longer in competition with the people you're working with on the daily. If one member of your two-pizza team is going to get fired each year, it makes sense to throw someone under the bus on the reg. If one member of your 100 person org is going to get fired each year, that strategy doesn't make sense.
time_to_smile 4y ago
> ensure fairness and maintain quality standards Got a good chuckle out of this. My experience with calibration at multiple companies is it's where you realize not only does your review depend on how happy you make your manager, but how politically savvy your manager is coupled with how much you were able to impress the people on the calibration committee. It also gives your manager a nice out if you work hard, but they don't quite like you. All they have to do is not fight for you in calibration and you'll never be able to get much beyond a "meets expectations" rating.
- water-your-self 4y ago
  And why should you work hard for a manager that doesn't like you in the first place? Clear signal to find another place to be, imo.
curiousllama 4y ago
Anecdotally, I know this process got rid of at least 1 engineer in the past few months. No egregious mistakes, just general underperformance.
- battery_glasses 4y ago
  It gets rid of plenty of performing/overperforming engineers too because it is exhausting.
  - ynx 4y ago
    Yep. I saved my team a couple of times over but pissed off a manager in the process. My performance review had multiple contradictions praising me and admonishing me for the same things (being a good mentor but not spending any time onboarding new team members, etc). I left rather than deal with the gaslighting that was all but certain to ramp up.
musicale 4y ago
Interesting that they seem to think that software developer performance can be measured meaningfully and accurately in a standard way across teams.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  So should they hand out promotions and fire people based on randomness? Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? What's the better solution?
  - IggleSniggle 4y ago
    Less scaling, smaller focus? I kid, but there's not an actual correct answer to any of this. Nobody likes nepotism except the family that it serves.
  - seadan83 4y ago
    Difficulty of project/task seemingly is a big factor. The engineer working in a legacy code base is likely to be less productive due to technical constraints. How to grade that into any kind of ranking, in a standard way, is seemingly not likely given how subjective the difficulty of a code base is. This also completely elides the clever and best engineers that find ways to simplify and/or avoid solving problems entirely. Further, a team that built a crap pile of bad code, but know it pretty well could seem really productive just because they have built for themselves some job security. Then compound all this with measuring the utility of what was produced.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    Holy strawman batman. Note: 'in a standard way across teams'. You have jumped directly to 'can't be measured at all in any circumstances'
  - gedy 4y ago
    > Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? Geez, I mean there are decent managers who do rate on performance and not just buddy-buddy stuff. Frankly I'd expect to be trusted with my reviews of people under me.
cletus 4y ago
It's worse than that. Not only is it graded on a curve but to prevent ratings inflation there are quotas for each ratings bucket. Many deny this, even when presented with concrete proof that such quotas exist (but were called "performance targets"). This itself would be fine except that negative ratings have a target percentage of ~10%. This includes regrettable losses and ratings below Meets All Expectations. Such targets are enforced at a reasonably high level, typically at director or higher over an org of 100-150+ employees. Why is that bad? Because it creates a hugely toxic environment. Why? Because such directors and VPs will demand their managers find sufficient "low" performers to meet their targets. The other aspect to this is that all of these ratings are essentially bullshit anyway. Why? Because it's a popularity contest. If your manager and director likes you, you'll pretty much always get a good rating. If they don't, you won't. The exact same set of facts can be used to argue ratings pretty much +/- 1 bucket, possibly more.
- function_seven 4y ago
  I'm constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization made up of humans. Stack ranking and related schemes are so obviously going to be gamed, will definitely measure something other than the nominal thing, and will gum up the works. It's one thing to have a Hunger-Games-style hiring process. Bad as that is, there's an expectation that once you've passed those trials—once you're hired—that you can then devote your time to building things or leading a team that builds things. But when it extends into quarterly or annual reviews, where there must be a loser, then of course it will serve as a distraction from accomplishing actual goals and doing useful work. Now you have to spend time managing your image, making sure you don't piss off the wrong peer, and choosing assignments that are trendy. Companies try to avoid all of that by adding even more complexity to the review process. More layers to prevent favoritism, more concrete metrics to sidestep subjectivity, a longer list of metrics to mitigate any one of them being over-weighted. This just means more time and attention is stolen from productive work, and directed instead toward image management and politics.
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    > how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization At the end of the day even upper management doesn't matter. This is about Owners and Workers and everything in between is just fluff. The $300k - $400k these engineers are making is a rounding error. Turning middle management into cannibals so that one day they might reach slightly higher management is exactly what is supposed to happen, because it means they are willing to kill for the owners.
systemvoltage 4y ago
I used to work at a Fortune 50 company and found stack ranking...kinda fair. I used to be a high performer, made real ROI impacts, helped others and had a strong sense of initiative. I'd come out with a better raise, stock options and had opportunities to take on more responsibility. It was more honest and straightforward than what silicon valley and Big Tech pretends to do. It is all ranking in some ways. Everything is. If you remove the facade, fundamentally you have a limited resource and you want to reward people that make the company successful. I don't see anything wrong with that. Doing anything else is wrong and unfair IMO.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  I dunno, I don't think it's helpful to identify your worst performers (or label them as "bottom 15%") unless they aren't meeting the needs of the position and need to be let go. Someone has to be the worst, and it's really not okay to arbitrarily make 15% of people's lives hell. Again, if they need to go, they need to go, but I really fucking doubt at any given time 15% of an organization is actually bad enough to warrant firing or a PEP or any action at all.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    > I don't think it's helpful to identify your worst performers (or label them as "bottom 15%") I didn't say that and I didn't imply that. Anyways, rewarding (positive reinforcement) is mutually exclusive to punishment (negative reinforcement). Rewarding should be encouraged, otherwise, I have zero motivation to do better. There are many other companies that would value me more and I would not stay there. Extreme meritocracy is idealistic, and I understand that cannot be achieved easily and there is always politics/networking that plays a role. But it does exist and I've been a beneficiary of it.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      I think when people bemoan stack ranking, they are talking about what it means for the bottom performers. I certainly don't have any issues with rewarding top performers. Did the company you worked for just rank the top?

znpy 4y ago

I was contacted by meta just less than a month ago, and I declined the offer of an interview… I guess i dodged a bullet?

battery_glasses 4y ago
The pay is near top and the engineers are talented. There are a lot of systems in place to get you to work near max capacity all the time with little slowdown time. There are lots of processes and political upheavals that make it hard to ship code. Some people love it.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  That sounds like a place you'd go if you were using work to distract you from a problem in your personal life.
  - VHRanger 4y ago
    Or distract that you're writing code for a platform that harms people
    - gagege 4y ago
      IDK, I wouldn't be able to be distracted from the fact that I'm working for Lord Sauron.
      - sbdncuvh 4y ago
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        Please don't disrespect Sauron with this kind of comparison.
    - darepublic 4y ago
      Or distract that you're writing code for a product that is lame and writing is already on the wall that it won't succeed.
- wallscratch 4y ago
  Can you give an example of a system that’s in place to ensure workers are near max capacity most of the time?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - myko 4y ago
    and rarely shipping, to boot!
  - battery_glasses 4y ago
    Diff count/LoC count is recorded and made publicly available for all engineers in a graph that lets you easily compare metrics between developers and teams. This means if you are constantly comparing your output to the rest of the team. The multi-axis performance review criteria that requires you to show deliverables on things like your impact on team-building or culture. This means that when you might normally get a couple week low-output time between projects, you are usually looking for something to fill in the non-coding axis, like organizing a team virtual offsite event or searching for a way to improve the codebase. Organizing team activities and code quality initiatives are a good thing, but the explcitivity in which you need to show deliverable impact on all axis is something I found unique to Meta and very exhausting.
    - znpy 4y ago
      Jesus Christ, I definitely dodged a bullet. That definitely sounds like pushing you to be “productive” as much as your body allows without burning out.
    - Johnny555 4y ago
      Doesn't that just encourage writing code for max LoC rather than efficiency or maintainability? Instead of generalizing a procedure you use in multiple places to make it a single function, if you write it out (slightly differently) each time you do it, then you get a higher LoC count?
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  do they have bidets yet? Try google instead.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    How many Michelin stars on the food?
    - waynesonfire 4y ago
      But, I'm not joking. Google has bidets.
      - ironmagma 4y ago
        I don't honestly know why all of America doesn't have them, and my suspicions are it has something to do with timber shareholders.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        No, it's cultural; Americans just can't imagine not using dry paper to smear feces around after they use the toilet, instead of using water to properly clean themselves. I tried talking to people I knew about them during the pandemic when everyone was freaking out about toilet paper shortages, but it went nowhere. I also suspect NIH is a big part of the problem. Bidets and washlets weren't invented in America or adopted there first, so Americans can't adopt them now since that would be admitting they weren't first for something. Americans are, as a whole, completely unable to look at what other countries are doing and learn from their example.
        znpy 4y ago
        Uh… a bidet is not a substitute for using toilet paper.
        psalminen 4y ago
        It's actually rooted in America's puritanical roots. Americans were largely introduced to bidets during WWII in French bordellos. It didn't leave a good reputation coming back. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/the-bidets-revival/555770/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/the-b...
bergenty 4y ago
Yeah the good life bullet.
- znpy 4y ago
  Would you care to elaborate on that?
pas 4y ago
it depends. likely yes, but. there are good (usually small) teams doing interesting and professionally fulfilling work that's not really common elsewhere. (things that come due to "hyperscale". a-a-and, unfortunately, in this regard all big corps are alike. so if you want to do something like that, then your best bet is a corp like FB. though of course there are smaller niche companies for everything, so just because of some niche don't rush to big co-s.)
outworlder 4y ago
I was contacted this week I guess they are hiring at some BUs and firing at others?
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
They’re still actively recruiting and interviewing?!? They should have halted most of that and probably stop any contractual recruiting and possibly had HR layoffs.

BoorishBears 4y ago

That's nowhere near the same as "stack ranking" in the way that the term generally used in the tech industry... I wouldn't want to work somewhere at FB scale that doesn't grade you on the curve of other engineers in your department and level, once your departments are large enough that's exactly how it should work. What's problematic is forcefully defining X percent as being low performing, the comparison to peers is a misused kernel of benefit.

bin_bash 4y ago
They have a policy that XX% of engineers in a given department should* be given "Meets Most". If that's not stack ranking I'm not sure what would be. BTW "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your record. It doesn't directly relate to being fired but a ton of people quit when they receive it. I view it as sort of a "pre-PIP" state. (* Managers/directors will say it's only a suggestion but nobody really believes that. I'm sure management themselves are frowned upon for not having enough MM under them.)
- piva00 4y ago
  > "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your record. The kind of newspeak I've heard from multiple friends and former coworkers that ended up at FB/Meta at some point. Well, the ones that didn't fall into the cult of Mark. It might be because I'm getting older but this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to puke. The co-optation of language to exude an aura of friendliness is absolutely disgusting.
  - bin_bash 4y ago
    Are you talking about "Metamates"—if so I said that ironically. I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside of the execs use that term when they weren't being sarcastic.
    - piva00 4y ago

acchow 4y ago

> They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking Graded in the context of peers’ performance does not imply that they sort employees by performance.

Infinitesimus 4y ago
What does sorting by performance look like to you? The curve determines rating and compensation, influences promotion decisions, projects people get to work on and what opportunities come their way. The seems like a sort to me given that budget and project opportunities are fixed in many places.
- nightpool 4y ago
  The key component of stack ranking / sorting by performance is that there's no absolute measure of your contribution, only a relative measure by which you have to outcompete everyone else in your team/department. If you fire your lowest 15% of engineers—no matter how good they are on an absolute level—that's a stack ranking system. It's a horrifying Red Queen's Race that punishes high-quality teams. I'm not necessarily saying that Meta's system is good, but at least it's not that. EDIT: It sounds like at least some people are claiming that Meta has an internal policy that X% of your engineers under you are supposed to be given "Meets Most Expectations" ratings, which would also be pretty close to stack ranking (if at least allowing for some management leniency) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32930370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32930370
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    The other key component of stack ranking was that it's on a per team basis. A team of 20 people may have no low performers. An org of 400 probably has a couple, at some point the law of large numbers does really start to apply, and you're no longer in competition with the people you're working with on the daily. If one member of your two-pizza team is going to get fired each year, it makes sense to throw someone under the bus on the reg. If one member of your 100 person org is going to get fired each year, that strategy doesn't make sense.

time_to_smile 4y ago

> ensure fairness and maintain quality standards Got a good chuckle out of this. My experience with calibration at multiple companies is it's where you realize not only does your review depend on how happy you make your manager, but how politically savvy your manager is coupled with how much you were able to impress the people on the calibration committee. It also gives your manager a nice out if you work hard, but they don't quite like you. All they have to do is not fight for you in calibration and you'll never be able to get much beyond a "meets expectations" rating.

water-your-self 4y ago
And why should you work hard for a manager that doesn't like you in the first place? Clear signal to find another place to be, imo.

curiousllama 4y ago

Anecdotally, I know this process got rid of at least 1 engineer in the past few months. No egregious mistakes, just general underperformance.

battery_glasses 4y ago
It gets rid of plenty of performing/overperforming engineers too because it is exhausting.
- ynx 4y ago
  Yep. I saved my team a couple of times over but pissed off a manager in the process. My performance review had multiple contradictions praising me and admonishing me for the same things (being a good mentor but not spending any time onboarding new team members, etc). I left rather than deal with the gaslighting that was all but certain to ramp up.

musicale 4y ago

Interesting that they seem to think that software developer performance can be measured meaningfully and accurately in a standard way across teams.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
So should they hand out promotions and fire people based on randomness? Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? What's the better solution?
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  Less scaling, smaller focus? I kid, but there's not an actual correct answer to any of this. Nobody likes nepotism except the family that it serves.
- seadan83 4y ago
  Difficulty of project/task seemingly is a big factor. The engineer working in a legacy code base is likely to be less productive due to technical constraints. How to grade that into any kind of ranking, in a standard way, is seemingly not likely given how subjective the difficulty of a code base is. This also completely elides the clever and best engineers that find ways to simplify and/or avoid solving problems entirely. Further, a team that built a crap pile of bad code, but know it pretty well could seem really productive just because they have built for themselves some job security. Then compound all this with measuring the utility of what was produced.
- outworlder 4y ago
  Holy strawman batman. Note: 'in a standard way across teams'. You have jumped directly to 'can't be measured at all in any circumstances'
- gedy 4y ago
  > Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? Geez, I mean there are decent managers who do rate on performance and not just buddy-buddy stuff. Frankly I'd expect to be trusted with my reviews of people under me.

cletus 4y ago

It's worse than that. Not only is it graded on a curve but to prevent ratings inflation there are quotas for each ratings bucket. Many deny this, even when presented with concrete proof that such quotas exist (but were called "performance targets"). This itself would be fine except that negative ratings have a target percentage of ~10%. This includes regrettable losses and ratings below Meets All Expectations. Such targets are enforced at a reasonably high level, typically at director or higher over an org of 100-150+ employees. Why is that bad? Because it creates a hugely toxic environment. Why? Because such directors and VPs will demand their managers find sufficient "low" performers to meet their targets. The other aspect to this is that all of these ratings are essentially bullshit anyway. Why? Because it's a popularity contest. If your manager and director likes you, you'll pretty much always get a good rating. If they don't, you won't. The exact same set of facts can be used to argue ratings pretty much +/- 1 bucket, possibly more.

function_seven 4y ago
I'm constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization made up of humans. Stack ranking and related schemes are so obviously going to be gamed, will definitely measure something other than the nominal thing, and will gum up the works. It's one thing to have a Hunger-Games-style hiring process. Bad as that is, there's an expectation that once you've passed those trials—once you're hired—that you can then devote your time to building things or leading a team that builds things. But when it extends into quarterly or annual reviews, where there must be a loser, then of course it will serve as a distraction from accomplishing actual goals and doing useful work. Now you have to spend time managing your image, making sure you don't piss off the wrong peer, and choosing assignments that are trendy. Companies try to avoid all of that by adding even more complexity to the review process. More layers to prevent favoritism, more concrete metrics to sidestep subjectivity, a longer list of metrics to mitigate any one of them being over-weighted. This just means more time and attention is stolen from productive work, and directed instead toward image management and politics.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  > how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization At the end of the day even upper management doesn't matter. This is about Owners and Workers and everything in between is just fluff. The $300k - $400k these engineers are making is a rounding error. Turning middle management into cannibals so that one day they might reach slightly higher management is exactly what is supposed to happen, because it means they are willing to kill for the owners.

systemvoltage 4y ago

I used to work at a Fortune 50 company and found stack ranking...kinda fair. I used to be a high performer, made real ROI impacts, helped others and had a strong sense of initiative. I'd come out with a better raise, stock options and had opportunities to take on more responsibility. It was more honest and straightforward than what silicon valley and Big Tech pretends to do. It is all ranking in some ways. Everything is. If you remove the facade, fundamentally you have a limited resource and you want to reward people that make the company successful. I don't see anything wrong with that. Doing anything else is wrong and unfair IMO.

DangitBobby 4y ago
I dunno, I don't think it's helpful to identify your worst performers (or label them as "bottom 15%") unless they aren't meeting the needs of the position and need to be let go. Someone has to be the worst, and it's really not okay to arbitrarily make 15% of people's lives hell. Again, if they need to go, they need to go, but I really fucking doubt at any given time 15% of an organization is actually bad enough to warrant firing or a PEP or any action at all.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > I don't think it's helpful to identify your worst performers (or label them as "bottom 15%") I didn't say that and I didn't imply that. Anyways, rewarding (positive reinforcement) is mutually exclusive to punishment (negative reinforcement). Rewarding should be encouraged, otherwise, I have zero motivation to do better. There are many other companies that would value me more and I would not stay there. Extreme meritocracy is idealistic, and I understand that cannot be achieved easily and there is always politics/networking that plays a role. But it does exist and I've been a beneficiary of it.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    I think when people bemoan stack ranking, they are talking about what it means for the bottom performers. I certainly don't have any issues with rewarding top performers. Did the company you worked for just rank the top?