6 ms·
The easiest of which is simply to not aggressively share knowledge. When you're stack ranked against your peers, I wonder if people ask themselves, "why should
by Splines 15y ago
The easiest of which is simply to not aggressively share knowledge.
When you're stack ranked against your peers, I wonder if people ask themselves, "why should I help you, when all I'm doing is making it harder for myself to get a bonus next year"?. I don't indulge in such behaviour, but I've wondered if others have thought and acted upon it.
- andywood 15y agoThis probably depends on the local culture. When I was at Microsoft, in the groups I worked in, we were explicitly evaluated on criteria such as "makes others better". My reviews actually stated that actively mentoring and going out of my way to be genuinely helpful to others contributed to my score, and I ranked on top almost every year. When I think of other colleagues who I know ranked highly, the people who come to mind are the ones who had both the ability and willingness to help a lot of other people do their jobs better.
- bh42222 15y agoThis probably depends on the local culture. Yep, and what I've heard (and only heard, never worked there myself) is that Microsoft has some of the most programmer friendly corporate culture around. A lot (if not most) big companies are not like that. The reason Joel's writing on company culture is so popular is because such simple things are still quite rare in the world.
- sliverstorm 15y agoMicrosoft has some of the most programmer friendly corporate culture around I figure this is part of what has kept them around, and is fueling what seems to me to be a come-back in spite of everything going against them. I don't have a great depth of knowledge on them, but I did interview with their Xbox team, and everyone was just really enthused to be there.
- MartinCron 15y agoIf you were to design something to sabotage team effectiveness, I can't think of anything more effective than stack ranking that wouldn't be a criminal offense.