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The article doesn’t answer the question which would have been fascinating. Article tldr; it’s happening, it started in the 80s, it persists, it’s real bad, it

by pdxdmz 4y ago

The article doesn’t answer the question which would have been fascinating. Article tldr; it’s happening, it started in the 80s, it persists, it’s real bad, it doesn’t do what companies think they want, oh well. Then why? Because there’s another reason unstated here? Because it’s the lowest effort one that lets them set up a machine and claim the equation did it? Because they’re cruel and that’s the point? That’s what I’d love to know, and it’s not here.

deleted 4y ago
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sokoloff 4y ago
My experience is that a vast majority of managers would prefer to not face the fact that some of their employees are underperforming. There are a variety of psychological or procedural "tricks" to get managers to be more discerning in evaluating that. Forced curve stack ranking is just one of them (procedural). Another (psychological) is to ask managers to rate their employees and separately, to answer the question "Knowing everything that you know now, would you hire this person again?" There is a fair percentage of "this person is meeting expectations/highly valued/<whatever the middle ranking is>" combined with "yeah, in retrospect, we made a mistake by hiring them." If you have absolutely no controls over the curve, many managers of modestly performing teams will earnestly report that their team is a mix of 25% superstars and 75% stars. I don't know what the best answer is here, and the best answer certainly varies by company and might even vary by department within a company.
- tomohawk 4y ago
  Peer review. After WW II, there was a large rif (reduction in force) in the US military. The Marines decided to use this to their advantage At each level they did peer reviews, where the results were one of a) retain at current grade, b) retain, but at lower grade, c) do not retain. This was all done with peer reviews of people at the same level. The result was they retained most of the best people they needed to retain. I've never seen promotion boards or managerial review produce very good results. In largish orgs, you might as well just hold a lottery.
  - rwmj 4y ago
    The Apollo astronauts also had to rank each other, with that feeding into who got assigned to missions. (I'm not saying this was or was not a good idea - probably too small a sample size and they were all superstars - only that it was a thing that happened). [Source: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/23149 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/23149]
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  A lot of that is that weird headcount thing that translates to how important you are as a manager. - if you have a lot of reports YOU ARE IMPORTANT - if you have a big budget (because of lots of reports) YOU ARE IMPORTANT wait, firing someone might take away a req/headcount. I AM NO LONGER AS IMPORTANT To the point that managers that don't have more than, like, 4 or 5 reports basically should plan and aren't a "I do a workers job plus management", regardless of company, should know they are going to get laid off or fired at some point. You're right, it is a forced culling. I can see it as being done for a couple years to cull fat, but as a permanent fixture of the business practices? Well then it's your culture, and your culture is backstabbing, machiavellian, ass kissing, undermining, outright sabotaging, juking stats, etc.
trynewideas 4y ago
It seems straightforward. If a company wants to fire an employee with cause, stack rankings and performance-improvement plans provide them. Otherwise people in orgs that apply it wouldn't call it "rank and yank" when they're being candid or honest about it.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  "Fired for cause" is usually reserved to mean "fired for serious misconduct" rather than a routine performance-related reason.

by pdxdmz 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sokoloff 4y ago

My experience is that a vast majority of managers would prefer to not face the fact that some of their employees are underperforming. There are a variety of psychological or procedural "tricks" to get managers to be more discerning in evaluating that. Forced curve stack ranking is just one of them (procedural). Another (psychological) is to ask managers to rate their employees and separately, to answer the question "Knowing everything that you know now, would you hire this person again?" There is a fair percentage of "this person is meeting expectations/highly valued/<whatever the middle ranking is>" combined with "yeah, in retrospect, we made a mistake by hiring them." If you have absolutely no controls over the curve, many managers of modestly performing teams will earnestly report that their team is a mix of 25% superstars and 75% stars. I don't know what the best answer is here, and the best answer certainly varies by company and might even vary by department within a company.

tomohawk 4y ago
Peer review. After WW II, there was a large rif (reduction in force) in the US military. The Marines decided to use this to their advantage At each level they did peer reviews, where the results were one of a) retain at current grade, b) retain, but at lower grade, c) do not retain. This was all done with peer reviews of people at the same level. The result was they retained most of the best people they needed to retain. I've never seen promotion boards or managerial review produce very good results. In largish orgs, you might as well just hold a lottery.
- rwmj 4y ago
  The Apollo astronauts also had to rank each other, with that feeding into who got assigned to missions. (I'm not saying this was or was not a good idea - probably too small a sample size and they were all superstars - only that it was a thing that happened). [Source: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/23149 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/23149]
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
A lot of that is that weird headcount thing that translates to how important you are as a manager. - if you have a lot of reports YOU ARE IMPORTANT - if you have a big budget (because of lots of reports) YOU ARE IMPORTANT wait, firing someone might take away a req/headcount. I AM NO LONGER AS IMPORTANT To the point that managers that don't have more than, like, 4 or 5 reports basically should plan and aren't a "I do a workers job plus management", regardless of company, should know they are going to get laid off or fired at some point. You're right, it is a forced culling. I can see it as being done for a couple years to cull fat, but as a permanent fixture of the business practices? Well then it's your culture, and your culture is backstabbing, machiavellian, ass kissing, undermining, outright sabotaging, juking stats, etc.

trynewideas 4y ago

It seems straightforward. If a company wants to fire an employee with cause, stack rankings and performance-improvement plans provide them. Otherwise people in orgs that apply it wouldn't call it "rank and yank" when they're being candid or honest about it.

sokoloff 4y ago
"Fired for cause" is usually reserved to mean "fired for serious misconduct" rather than a routine performance-related reason.