> “When team leads asked why we had to do this, World of Warcraft directors explained that while they did not agree, the reasons given by executive leadership w

> “When team leads asked why we had to do this, World of Warcraft directors explained that while they did not agree, the reasons given by executive leadership were that it was important to squeeze the bottom-most performers as a way to make sure everybody continues to grow,” Birmingham wrote in the email, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. “This sort of policy encourages competition between employees, sabotage of one another’s work, a desire for people to find low-performing teams that they can be the best-performing worker on, and ultimately erodes trust and destroys creativity.” Indeed, these stack ranking schemes need a Freakonomics or Moneyball style critical analysis applied to them, they’re likely at least as harmful as helpful.