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Everyone forgetting about Lisa Brummel and "stack ranking"? That nearly ruined Microsoft... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-ditches-system-tha

Everyone forgetting about Lisa Brummel and "stack ranking"? That nearly ruined Microsoft... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-ditches-system-that-ranks-employees-against-each-other/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-ditches-syst...

deleted 2y ago
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bradlys 2y ago
What does Microsoft do now? Most every major tech company I’ve seen uses stack ranking - even if they don’t use that name. Hell, a lot of startups I’ve been at even use that. The founders and executives love it as far as I can tell - why else would they do it?
- andrewla 2y ago
  At Microsoft in particular, stack ranking has always been used in the sense of trying to put together a rough ordering of employees at similar levels. But "stack ranking" in scare quotes at Microsoft referred to the specific practice of the 20/70/10 rule -- the top 20% were the standouts, 70% was fine, and 10% was "this person needs to be eased out". This was applied for any org with more than a certain minimum number of people, and led to a very very toxic review process.
  - bradlys 2y ago
    This is pretty much what I see at almost every company I’ve been at in the last decade though… The review process is always toxic and has always lead to my peers in the industry being more likely to sabotage than help me since that’s the best way to look good in reviews. That with 80% of my peers being permanent H1B means they will do whatever it takes to stay employed. I would be happy to know big tech companies that aren’t doing this but I don’t know any?
    - andrewla 2y ago
      I would argue that Microsoft's original practice (without the 20/70/10) is actually pretty good. Have managers make subjective evaluations, merge them together at higher level meetings, and then work out compensation from there. There's a big cottage industry of trying to back everything up with data, to provide actionable feedback, etc., and these end up being giant time-wasting cover-your-ass exercises, which always end in an uncomfortable non-working system for everyone -- "I did the thing you asked but my review is the same as last year, why aren't I getting promoted". Mentorship and growth has to be more than just "here are your goals". Peer reviews can be okay, but only if you force people to make judgments -- "rank these three people against each other" rather than "give these people a rating 1-10 in each of these five areas". The subjective evaluation process doesn't work unless you trust your managers, though. And that invariable means that it doesn't scale.
schnitzelstoat 2y ago
I was going to mention this. It was such an awful system and management method.
fsckboy 2y ago
"grading on a curve" is a good idea, and if athletics wasn't run that way, nobody would watch. that doesn't mean it's easy to implement, manage, or impossible to game, or that it plays nice wrt human factors, but to attack the core idea as essentially wrong is anti math, science, and rationality. Microsoft always suffered from rewarding egotists and political animals over people who did actual work.
- GVIrish 2y ago
  > but to attack the core idea as essentially wrong is anti math, science, and rationality The way Microsoft implemented stack ranking was anti math. You're supposed to measure the data then calculate the level of fit to a distribution, not artificially shoehorn the data into buckets to create the curve. If you analyze the data honestly you may find you have a bimodal distribution, or a heavily skewed distribution, who knows. Stack ranking just clumsily says, I'm gonna give x% a bad score, y% a middle score, and z% the top score.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    >Stack ranking just clumsily says, I'm gonna give x% a bad score, y% a middle score, and z% the top score. as long as the ordering top/middle/bad is preserved, I don't see a problem. there are entire respected statistic methods based on rank ordering, not raw metrics. People don't have a right to fall on a normal distribution. Employers do have a right to grow or trim the workforce, and those numbers are driven by factors that are not necessarily normally distributed. the people who downvote me simply want participation trophys, and "no" is the answer. You absolutely can argue that Microsoft pursued a system that hurt both Microsoft and its employees, but not by attacking rank ordering.
    - psunavy03 2y ago
      Ah, "participation trophies" and "if you disagree you're a snowflake." Took this long down the thread for the thought-terminating cliches to start flying around.
Alexanderanna 2y ago
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wisdomalfred 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago

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bradlys 2y ago

What does Microsoft do now? Most every major tech company I’ve seen uses stack ranking - even if they don’t use that name. Hell, a lot of startups I’ve been at even use that. The founders and executives love it as far as I can tell - why else would they do it?

andrewla 2y ago
At Microsoft in particular, stack ranking has always been used in the sense of trying to put together a rough ordering of employees at similar levels. But "stack ranking" in scare quotes at Microsoft referred to the specific practice of the 20/70/10 rule -- the top 20% were the standouts, 70% was fine, and 10% was "this person needs to be eased out". This was applied for any org with more than a certain minimum number of people, and led to a very very toxic review process.
- bradlys 2y ago
  This is pretty much what I see at almost every company I’ve been at in the last decade though… The review process is always toxic and has always lead to my peers in the industry being more likely to sabotage than help me since that’s the best way to look good in reviews. That with 80% of my peers being permanent H1B means they will do whatever it takes to stay employed. I would be happy to know big tech companies that aren’t doing this but I don’t know any?
  - andrewla 2y ago
    I would argue that Microsoft's original practice (without the 20/70/10) is actually pretty good. Have managers make subjective evaluations, merge them together at higher level meetings, and then work out compensation from there. There's a big cottage industry of trying to back everything up with data, to provide actionable feedback, etc., and these end up being giant time-wasting cover-your-ass exercises, which always end in an uncomfortable non-working system for everyone -- "I did the thing you asked but my review is the same as last year, why aren't I getting promoted". Mentorship and growth has to be more than just "here are your goals". Peer reviews can be okay, but only if you force people to make judgments -- "rank these three people against each other" rather than "give these people a rating 1-10 in each of these five areas". The subjective evaluation process doesn't work unless you trust your managers, though. And that invariable means that it doesn't scale.

schnitzelstoat 2y ago

I was going to mention this. It was such an awful system and management method.

fsckboy 2y ago

"grading on a curve" is a good idea, and if athletics wasn't run that way, nobody would watch. that doesn't mean it's easy to implement, manage, or impossible to game, or that it plays nice wrt human factors, but to attack the core idea as essentially wrong is anti math, science, and rationality. Microsoft always suffered from rewarding egotists and political animals over people who did actual work.

GVIrish 2y ago
> but to attack the core idea as essentially wrong is anti math, science, and rationality The way Microsoft implemented stack ranking was anti math. You're supposed to measure the data then calculate the level of fit to a distribution, not artificially shoehorn the data into buckets to create the curve. If you analyze the data honestly you may find you have a bimodal distribution, or a heavily skewed distribution, who knows. Stack ranking just clumsily says, I'm gonna give x% a bad score, y% a middle score, and z% the top score.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >Stack ranking just clumsily says, I'm gonna give x% a bad score, y% a middle score, and z% the top score. as long as the ordering top/middle/bad is preserved, I don't see a problem. there are entire respected statistic methods based on rank ordering, not raw metrics. People don't have a right to fall on a normal distribution. Employers do have a right to grow or trim the workforce, and those numbers are driven by factors that are not necessarily normally distributed. the people who downvote me simply want participation trophys, and "no" is the answer. You absolutely can argue that Microsoft pursued a system that hurt both Microsoft and its employees, but not by attacking rank ordering.
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    Ah, "participation trophies" and "if you disagree you're a snowflake." Took this long down the thread for the thought-terminating cliches to start flying around.

Alexanderanna 2y ago

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wisdomalfred 2y ago

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