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"Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employe
by wmeredith 14y ago
"Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
HOLY SHIT that sounds like a bad idea! Who in the world would think that's a good idea. That's crazy.
- trimbo 14y ago> Who in the world would think that's a good idea. Jack Welch, AFAIK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
- tomjen3 14y agoGiven that it is a disaster in a tech company, but would work okay in the production floor of a paper mill, I guess some MBA. I really wish somebody would teach MBAs for 21 century businesses. They would properly be useful.
- gaius 14y agoBusiness "education" hasn't really advanced beyond Taylorism.
- nradov 14y agoNot at all. By B-school professors mentioned Taylorism primarily as a matter of historical interest. None of them suggested using it to manage a software company.
- mmcnickle 14y agoTaylorist ideas still pervade relatively modern industries; offshoring software development is one such example. The knowledge work is separated from the execution. This split in management/development and the manual workforce was the main motivator behind the production line of the day. By moving the knowledge work upstairs, you could pay an unskilled workforce much less to execute the assembly.
- 127001brewer 14y agoI think "MBAs" are used as a "strawman" far too often (probably because I'm biased as someone who has an MBA and since I've been developing for over ten (10) years). Bad "business decisions" can be made by anyone. Overall, it really doesn't matter who implemented this policy.
- yuhong 14y agoDoes not excuse legacy MBA courses making it worse.
- Rhino55 14y ago1. It makes a big difference if this policy is implemented at the team or company level 2. It makes a big difference if the policy is mandatory or advisory. If it is advisory, it can be a powerful tool for eliminating actual non-contributors / negative contributors on a team 3. This sort of policy works better when there is a lot of fat to trim. In fact, when there is a lot of fat to trim, any policy that identifies non-contributors and enables them to move on is going to be beneficial to the company 4. Implementing a stack ranking policy for a long time I think would have negative consequences for morale. The goal is to fire people who are doing negative work and causing problems. There will be unintended consequences of any policy that pursues this goal, exacerbated if only the bottom 1% are doing consistently negative work. It sounds like Microsoft mis-used a powerful management tool. This is a great thing for start-ups hungry for talent!
- potatolicious 14y ago> "Who in the world would think that's a good idea." Someone who manages a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings who, if left to their own devices, will sit around and do nothing all day every day. These environments actually exist - but in the R&D and creative arenas, if you are in possession of such a working environment, you've already lost, and no amount of management "science" will save you.
- Steko 14y agoBallmer's a sales guy and the system is probably outstanding in a sales environment where individual effort is both more important and easier to measure.