4 ms·

I don't really understand how stack ranking is supposed to work. If 5% of employees must be ranked low, and they improve, they'll either be ranked low again or

I don't really understand how stack ranking is supposed to work. If 5% of employees must be ranked low, and they improve, they'll either be ranked low again or someone who wasn't ranked low will be ranked low- even if that person's performance hasn't changed. This just seems designed to ensure there's always some group of fall guys and also to create teams that are competitive with themselves to a toxic degree.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
These companies also have a general policy of 5-10% 'natural' attrition a year, i.e. they expect a large percent of people to leave. The bottom 5% of stack ranked folks are almost always targeted for this attrition. They're put on 'performance improvement plans' that demand daily monitoring and check-in, and other onerous rules designed to make them quit. With stack ranking the bottom bucket is basically assumed and designed to be ejected from the company every year.
fatneckbeard 4y ago
GE gained a lot of share price but the company long term value was crushed, now it's splitting into three companies. If you want a lot of short term goal people to make money pumping stock, this is a great way to go. If you want to build long term value for shareholders it's absolutely one of the dumbest things you can possibly do.
- enkid 4y ago
  GE didn't just split into three companies. Before this current split it basically shedded entire industries worth of spin off companies. Short term thinking led to over commitment to financial services like annuities, which paid upfront but then they had to pay back more than they got in the first place. It also led to sales with steep discounts on maintenance contracts, once again gaining significant cash upfront at the cost of a long tail of costs. This was directly related to the competitive culture, where anyone questioning something bringing in cash was seen as risk adverse and unaggressive.
wpietri 4y ago
I think "work" in the POSIWID [1] sense here means to give the people on top feelings of power by creating suffering and tension among the serfs, while increasing the need for middle managers to play power games, which keeps them busy and keeps the drama levels high. It's totally repulsive to me. But as this guy's firing clearly indicates, part of the point is repulsing people who care about staff and want to actually get things done. If an organization focused primarily on being effective, that would be a huge disadvantage to the ladder-climbers and intrigue-lovers that have clawed their way to the top. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- chongli 4y ago
  Yeah, so stack ranking doesn't really create toxicity at a company, it merely reveals the toxicity that is already there. The best advice for regular people applying for jobs or regular employees whose companies introduce stack ranking is summed up in two words: get out.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Why not both? As we see in some of the stories people are posting here, it sounds like stack ranking teaches both managers and employees to be toxic. But yes, I agree on the getting out part.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
saghm 4y ago
My assumption has always been that it's never actually supposed to have been about "improvement", just about trying to scare people into submitting more to management demands. If your manager in a stack-ranked company decides to tell the team to work overtime on the weekends to get the release out faster, no one wants to be the only one to say no when you're all quite literally competing with each other to not be in the bottom. It's not a coincidence that stack ranking turns unreasonable demands from management quite explicitly into a prisoner's dilemma problem.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
>> I don't really understand how stack ranking is supposed to work. It doesn't. Ever. I'll give you two examples. I currently work at a company that does stack ranking. The first year I started at the company, I started in the middle of the year. I was told because of that, I wasn't eligible for a bonus or salary increase. I later found out this was total BS. Second year? I work my ass off. Stay late, develop new tools for the team which are then used on other teams. I got some visibility with those tools with several managers. I consistently take on extra work, present to project leaders, go to any and all conferences, make reports, and suggest new technologies my manager and other managers. I feel like I hit it out of the park. Nope. Two project managers didn't like me and rated me low. My manager ranked me in the lower tier. I got a pittance for a bonus and no salary increase. Third year? I'm a bitter, frustrated developer. I decided, "Well fuck it, I gave you a great effort and got nothing in return. This year, the company gets fuck all." I barely worked. I did the absolute minimum. I was "quiet quitting" before it was cool. I'd log off early every day. I refused to take on more work. I missed or ignored meetings that weren't absolutely required. I worked on several side projects instead. I was getting paid a high six figure salary to do as little as possible. It was completely glorious. We get to the end of the year, I get the same low ranking. Same pittance of a bonus, and because it was my third year, I got a small raise in my salary. That was the end result of stack ranking. It didn't matter what YOU did, it only mattered what your co-workers did and how they felt about you. You could have the best year of your life, be totally plugged in and kicking ass, but if someone didn't like you? It was all for not which I soon realized very quickly. Its incredibly hard to try and be your best when you're constantly looking over your shoulder. Its impossible to be "all in" when you absolutely know your effort will be for nothing. Even Microsoft famously gave up on it when they realized it cost their company a decade of progress because stank ranking encouraged managers to sabotage their co-workers projects in order to look good on their own year-end reviews. https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/stack-ranking-steve-ballmer-s-employee-evaluation-system-and-microsoft-s-decline.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/stack-ranking-steve-bal... Its absolutely staggering to think there are companies still out there using this to measure employees performance. Its beyond toxic and will suck the life out of your team, your managers and your employees.
- lumost 4y ago
brightlancer 4y ago
It can work well with large groups, especially if they're doing fairly homogeneous work. Rather than an attempt to create fall guys and internal competition, I think executives are doing it sincerely to find and weed out low performers, but fail to understand that works well for 100 employees at a retail store doesn't work well for 6 employees on a SWE team, or even 40 employees under a large heterogeneous tech org.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

These companies also have a general policy of 5-10% 'natural' attrition a year, i.e. they expect a large percent of people to leave. The bottom 5% of stack ranked folks are almost always targeted for this attrition. They're put on 'performance improvement plans' that demand daily monitoring and check-in, and other onerous rules designed to make them quit. With stack ranking the bottom bucket is basically assumed and designed to be ejected from the company every year.

fatneckbeard 4y ago

GE gained a lot of share price but the company long term value was crushed, now it's splitting into three companies. If you want a lot of short term goal people to make money pumping stock, this is a great way to go. If you want to build long term value for shareholders it's absolutely one of the dumbest things you can possibly do.

enkid 4y ago
GE didn't just split into three companies. Before this current split it basically shedded entire industries worth of spin off companies. Short term thinking led to over commitment to financial services like annuities, which paid upfront but then they had to pay back more than they got in the first place. It also led to sales with steep discounts on maintenance contracts, once again gaining significant cash upfront at the cost of a long tail of costs. This was directly related to the competitive culture, where anyone questioning something bringing in cash was seen as risk adverse and unaggressive.

wpietri 4y ago

I think "work" in the POSIWID [1] sense here means to give the people on top feelings of power by creating suffering and tension among the serfs, while increasing the need for middle managers to play power games, which keeps them busy and keeps the drama levels high. It's totally repulsive to me. But as this guy's firing clearly indicates, part of the point is repulsing people who care about staff and want to actually get things done. If an organization focused primarily on being effective, that would be a huge disadvantage to the ladder-climbers and intrigue-lovers that have clawed their way to the top. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

chongli 4y ago
Yeah, so stack ranking doesn't really create toxicity at a company, it merely reveals the toxicity that is already there. The best advice for regular people applying for jobs or regular employees whose companies introduce stack ranking is summed up in two words: get out.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Why not both? As we see in some of the stories people are posting here, it sounds like stack ranking teaches both managers and employees to be toxic. But yes, I agree on the getting out part.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

saghm 4y ago

My assumption has always been that it's never actually supposed to have been about "improvement", just about trying to scare people into submitting more to management demands. If your manager in a stack-ranked company decides to tell the team to work overtime on the weekends to get the release out faster, no one wants to be the only one to say no when you're all quite literally competing with each other to not be in the bottom. It's not a coincidence that stack ranking turns unreasonable demands from management quite explicitly into a prisoner's dilemma problem.

at-fates-hands 4y ago

>> I don't really understand how stack ranking is supposed to work. It doesn't. Ever. I'll give you two examples. I currently work at a company that does stack ranking. The first year I started at the company, I started in the middle of the year. I was told because of that, I wasn't eligible for a bonus or salary increase. I later found out this was total BS. Second year? I work my ass off. Stay late, develop new tools for the team which are then used on other teams. I got some visibility with those tools with several managers. I consistently take on extra work, present to project leaders, go to any and all conferences, make reports, and suggest new technologies my manager and other managers. I feel like I hit it out of the park. Nope. Two project managers didn't like me and rated me low. My manager ranked me in the lower tier. I got a pittance for a bonus and no salary increase. Third year? I'm a bitter, frustrated developer. I decided, "Well fuck it, I gave you a great effort and got nothing in return. This year, the company gets fuck all." I barely worked. I did the absolute minimum. I was "quiet quitting" before it was cool. I'd log off early every day. I refused to take on more work. I missed or ignored meetings that weren't absolutely required. I worked on several side projects instead. I was getting paid a high six figure salary to do as little as possible. It was completely glorious. We get to the end of the year, I get the same low ranking. Same pittance of a bonus, and because it was my third year, I got a small raise in my salary. That was the end result of stack ranking. It didn't matter what YOU did, it only mattered what your co-workers did and how they felt about you. You could have the best year of your life, be totally plugged in and kicking ass, but if someone didn't like you? It was all for not which I soon realized very quickly. Its incredibly hard to try and be your best when you're constantly looking over your shoulder. Its impossible to be "all in" when you absolutely know your effort will be for nothing. Even Microsoft famously gave up on it when they realized it cost their company a decade of progress because stank ranking encouraged managers to sabotage their co-workers projects in order to look good on their own year-end reviews. https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/stack-ranking-steve-ballmer-s-employee-evaluation-system-and-microsoft-s-decline.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/stack-ranking-steve-bal... Its absolutely staggering to think there are companies still out there using this to measure employees performance. Its beyond toxic and will suck the life out of your team, your managers and your employees.

lumost 4y ago

brightlancer 4y ago

It can work well with large groups, especially if they're doing fairly homogeneous work. Rather than an attempt to create fall guys and internal competition, I think executives are doing it sincerely to find and weed out low performers, but fail to understand that works well for 100 employees at a retail store doesn't work well for 6 employees on a SWE team, or even 40 employees under a large heterogeneous tech org.