7 ms·

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 pre

by 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.
  - 650 4y ago
    Exactly. So many people lose sight of the bigger picture, workers are always cogs in the machine. Luxurious, comfortable cogs, sure. But its crabs in a bucket.
- kibwen 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. Intelligence isn't a spectrum, it's an infinite-dimensional space. Someone can be smart on one axis and a dunce on infinity-minus-one other axes. Every genius ever born was almost certainly mediocre at nearly everything outside their expertise.
  - est31 4y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure about your claim, there were plenty of universal geniuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath And even today such people exist. Encountering them is often quite an experience. Seeing them being better than you at almost everything is on one hand really nice, on the other hand it makes you wonder what you did wrong. Such folks are usually quite rare though, 1 in a thousand types of people. But I'd imagine Google should be full of them. Or maybe it isn't, idk, given GP.
    - Tronno 4y ago
      I find your statements hard to accept at face value. Does a "polymath" have infinite time to develop excellence in every conceivable discipline? How good was Benjamin Franklin at, say, composing sonatas?
bentlegen 4y ago
Here’s what I’ve observed as a senior manager: First, it’s important to understand that managers are held to outcomes. If a manager retains low performers because “they’re friends”, over time they’ll find themselves with a low performing team and it will be visible in their results. At that stage they are now at the bottom of their manager’s stack-ranking process. Retain and promote your low-performing friends at your peril. Of course, if you believe your entire management chain to be incompetent, perhaps those managers will never be held to account. But if you hold that view there’s no reason to believe anything is functional, let alone promotions, and I’d explore other employment opportunities if you can.
- choppaface 4y ago
  Have never seen a low manager get fired for having low performers inside of 2 years. I’ve seen stack ranking invented to push out non-senior managers, but never the feedback cycle you claim exists. “there’s no reason to believe anything is functional” should be “you don’t believe in your manager.” Good managers divorce moral edict from feelings. Good managers know they don’t get to define what functional means.
  - bentlegen 4y ago
    They may not get fired, but they’ll certainly struggle to get promoted or get assigned the best projects. Avoid these managers.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I don't view the management chain to be incompetent. I think they have the same bad incentives to game things we employees do.
- cletus 4y ago
  > First, it’s important to understand that managers are held to outcomes. Respectfully, I disagree. First, let me point out that when I say "popularity" I don't mean friends necessarily in the nepotism sense (in response to your later point). "Popularity" is a reductive term but still a relatively accurate one. What's really going on here is the intangible factors lead other around you to interpret the same set of facts charitably or not almost arbitrarily. A big factor here is similarity in terms of demographic factors and background. This so often gets wrapped up "culture fit", which itself can be a euphemism for more problematic biases. The example I like to give is this: a person may work on a project for a half that never ships. It may not even produce an MVP. Given this set of facts you will people who will say "we learned a lot and will take those learnings into future projects" all the way to "this team failed to deliver a prototype and as such we canned the project". What's driving this are social factors. Managers are subject to the same social forces that drive this interpretation. A given manager may get credit for dealing with reports that aren't necessarily bad enough to be exited but would otherwise be a headache for someone else in the org. Or that manager may be blamed for their team being perceived as low-performing even though they're given projects doomed to fail (eg under-resourced). It's also worth noting that with any form of stack ranking or performance quotas, another factor that comes into play is horse-trading. That is, different managers are competing for a limited pool of ratings. You will find that a manager has decided someone should be promoted and that report will find themselves high on stack ranking as a result. There's an implicit quid pro quo here because other managers can get your support (as a manager) when one of their reports gets put up for promotion. > Of course, if you believe your entire management chain to be incompetent It's not competence. It's biases masquerading as objective determinations and an implicit over-reliance on social cues and factors all while managers have incentives that may come at the expense of those of their reports.
russiasux 4y ago
It's one thing to be crazy enough to think implementing a system like this will help a team of humans cooperate more efficiently, it is a completely different thing to expect the exact OPPOSITE type of tornado cash style bot obfuscation to be OK for the actual customers buying ads. Sure you can buy ad$... but are you prepared to buy the 30% fake impressions to fake people we require? The fact that both systems / strategies were developed by the same group of people is for sure the "why" behind these cuts.

by cletus 4y ago

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.
- 650 4y ago
  Exactly. So many people lose sight of the bigger picture, workers are always cogs in the machine. Luxurious, comfortable cogs, sure. But its crabs in a bucket.
kibwen 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. Intelligence isn't a spectrum, it's an infinite-dimensional space. Someone can be smart on one axis and a dunce on infinity-minus-one other axes. Every genius ever born was almost certainly mediocre at nearly everything outside their expertise.
- est31 4y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure about your claim, there were plenty of universal geniuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath And even today such people exist. Encountering them is often quite an experience. Seeing them being better than you at almost everything is on one hand really nice, on the other hand it makes you wonder what you did wrong. Such folks are usually quite rare though, 1 in a thousand types of people. But I'd imagine Google should be full of them. Or maybe it isn't, idk, given GP.
  - Tronno 4y ago
    I find your statements hard to accept at face value. Does a "polymath" have infinite time to develop excellence in every conceivable discipline? How good was Benjamin Franklin at, say, composing sonatas?

bentlegen 4y ago

Here’s what I’ve observed as a senior manager: First, it’s important to understand that managers are held to outcomes. If a manager retains low performers because “they’re friends”, over time they’ll find themselves with a low performing team and it will be visible in their results. At that stage they are now at the bottom of their manager’s stack-ranking process. Retain and promote your low-performing friends at your peril. Of course, if you believe your entire management chain to be incompetent, perhaps those managers will never be held to account. But if you hold that view there’s no reason to believe anything is functional, let alone promotions, and I’d explore other employment opportunities if you can.

choppaface 4y ago
Have never seen a low manager get fired for having low performers inside of 2 years. I’ve seen stack ranking invented to push out non-senior managers, but never the feedback cycle you claim exists. “there’s no reason to believe anything is functional” should be “you don’t believe in your manager.” Good managers divorce moral edict from feelings. Good managers know they don’t get to define what functional means.
- bentlegen 4y ago
  They may not get fired, but they’ll certainly struggle to get promoted or get assigned the best projects. Avoid these managers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaysleep 4y ago
I don't view the management chain to be incompetent. I think they have the same bad incentives to game things we employees do.
cletus 4y ago
> First, it’s important to understand that managers are held to outcomes. Respectfully, I disagree. First, let me point out that when I say "popularity" I don't mean friends necessarily in the nepotism sense (in response to your later point). "Popularity" is a reductive term but still a relatively accurate one. What's really going on here is the intangible factors lead other around you to interpret the same set of facts charitably or not almost arbitrarily. A big factor here is similarity in terms of demographic factors and background. This so often gets wrapped up "culture fit", which itself can be a euphemism for more problematic biases. The example I like to give is this: a person may work on a project for a half that never ships. It may not even produce an MVP. Given this set of facts you will people who will say "we learned a lot and will take those learnings into future projects" all the way to "this team failed to deliver a prototype and as such we canned the project". What's driving this are social factors. Managers are subject to the same social forces that drive this interpretation. A given manager may get credit for dealing with reports that aren't necessarily bad enough to be exited but would otherwise be a headache for someone else in the org. Or that manager may be blamed for their team being perceived as low-performing even though they're given projects doomed to fail (eg under-resourced). It's also worth noting that with any form of stack ranking or performance quotas, another factor that comes into play is horse-trading. That is, different managers are competing for a limited pool of ratings. You will find that a manager has decided someone should be promoted and that report will find themselves high on stack ranking as a result. There's an implicit quid pro quo here because other managers can get your support (as a manager) when one of their reports gets put up for promotion. > Of course, if you believe your entire management chain to be incompetent It's not competence. It's biases masquerading as objective determinations and an implicit over-reliance on social cues and factors all while managers have incentives that may come at the expense of those of their reports.

russiasux 4y ago

It's one thing to be crazy enough to think implementing a system like this will help a team of humans cooperate more efficiently, it is a completely different thing to expect the exact OPPOSITE type of tornado cash style bot obfuscation to be OK for the actual customers buying ads. Sure you can buy ad$... but are you prepared to buy the 30% fake impressions to fake people we require? The fact that both systems / strategies were developed by the same group of people is for sure the "why" behind these cuts.