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Unfortunately, a lot of things boil down to metrics, even at companies with great engineering cultures. If you have four L4 engineers on the team, all of whom

Unfortunately, a lot of things boil down to metrics, even at companies with great engineering cultures. If you have four L4 engineers on the team, all of whom are performing at the level described in the career profile as L5, but only budget to promote two of them, how do you pick which two? What if they have different managers, all of whom sincerely believe their report is the one delivering essential value? If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? If you don't have an obvious low performer you'd better have metrics. This system is soul crushing but it exists all over the industry.

alextingle 2y ago
> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? Easy. You quit, and find a better job. That practice is so toxic that it's sufficient to condemn the organisation as unworthy of any buy-in whatsoever. Just leave.
- jart 2y ago
  Nah you make sure X% of your team is staffed with losers. It's a nutty system I know. But I'd imagine that's how things worked at companies that have stack ratings. Managers probably traded low performers like baseball cards.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  In defense of stack ranking, it does solve a very common problem -- managers who never fire people who deserve to be let go. This ultimately rots an organization from the inside, as it leads to attrition of higher performers because they're forced to work with useless people. You see this a lot in companies that rarely fire people, because managers optimize for accumulating direct report count (whether or not those direct reports are doing valuable work).
  - convolvatron 2y ago
    companies need to do much better about letting managers go. I get it, they are hard to find. and those that actually have any engineering management skill at all are even harder to find. and every time you hire a new one you're taking a risk that they'll be a absolutely terrible manager. a terrible manager can cause a huge swath of destruction. but the answer can't be an army of useless middle managers diluting the impact of the people who actually do want to help the company and providing cover for people like them that are just phoning it it.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Absolutely. I'd like to see companies get more serious about driving manager requirement from span of control. As well as regularly rotating managers, like the military does (e.g. 3 year reassignment).
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > This ultimately rots an organization from the inside Hum... So instead you decide to immediately rot the organization from the inside. I can see how it avoids that one problem. The important problem is the waiting, right?
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Try working for IT in a utility, insurance company, or other stable business. You'd be amazed how high the bar for termination is.
      - marcosdumay 2y ago
        No disagreement here. But you are falling for a very bad logical fallacy.
gradstudent 2y ago
> how do you pick which two? You (=hypothetical manager, please excuse second-person tense) use your managerial skills to make a decision, which considers metrics and other contributing factors. Then you write a justification which you defend, to higher ups and to those who weren't promoted. Because that's your job.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Yes, the Nuremberg defense - "I was just following orders" - is one approach. It's a lot easier than applying back pressure, fighting for your reports, or quitting in solidarity. "Sorry, Hugo and Maryna, you two only got the Fields medal while Anton and Alain got a Nobel Prize, so we'll have to let you go for your under-performance."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Arainach 2y ago
    Here's how this works in practice: * Corporate says "here are the buckets. They should match at the VP level since that's a large pile of people" * VPs tell their Directors to match these buckets, who recurse further * L1/2 Manager Alice says "my team is too small, this isn't how statistics work, I want an exception" * Problem #1: the teams with actual low performers will often make similar claims * If the claim actually gets escalated all the way to the VP, the VP says "tough, fit the buckets". * Alice is now a troublemaker in VP/Director's eyes * If Alice and everyone who feels the same way quits in protest, nothing changes except that the org is full of yes men, none of whom are even trying to push for changes in the system any more.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      So it's better that Alice stays because ... why?
      - Arainach 2y ago
kaashif 2y ago
> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? If you don't have an obvious low performer you'd better have metrics. This is a case where you're forced to rate people who are up to par as subpar - the rating system is simply bullshit. You should be allowed to rate people according to their actual performance. Metrics don't solve the underlying problem which is that the rating system sucks. Having a random number generator called "metrics" to "make decisions" isn't good either.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Dice.
red_admiral 2y ago
> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? I think it's Joel Spolsky who has a tale of a manager asking him to do that for his team when everyone had gone all in with overtime to get something shipped on time. To their great credit, the author refused, and the manager saw sense.
Yizahi 2y ago
Pfff, what kind of problem question is that. Manager promotes the ones who go with him for a smoke or do some other regular informal activity together, obviously. :)
csa 2y ago
> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? If you don't have an obvious low performer you'd better have metrics. If you’re a manager in this type of system, your job is to reach out constantly and find folks who are low performers and get them into your department. They will fill the bottom of your team rating chart. At that point, they can be managed out (ideally in a humane way) or just held onto to fill that cellar dweller role while not slowing others down (some people are ok with this as long as they get paid). I would never choose to work in an environment like that, but some people find themselves there without better options (e.g., being location-bound due to family, etc.).
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Wow, I never saw this type of advice before, but I like it. In short: If you are required to do stack ranking, where at least one person must get a shitty score/grade, then recruit someone internally who is below average and will take the hit. Brutal, but practical.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Or externally! I posted an idea here a while ago, where I thought I'd start a staffing company called "Scapegoat Consultants" and we would offer your team a "low performer" that you could hire and then fire after a year, to protect the rest of your team from stack-ranking. Our consultant will join your team and do as little as you want, or even nothing at all! We'd guarantee that they will at least not actively make your code base worse, but that's it. After a year of this, you can easily make the case that our recruit was a low-performer and manage them out. Don't worry, he won't mind--his job was to be the low performer, and we'll hire him out to the next BigTech company who struggles with stack ranking. It used to be tongue in cheek, but maybe the industry actually needs something like this.
    - Calamitous 2y ago
      Cynical, but probably the most humane take I’ve seen here so far.

alextingle 2y ago

> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? Easy. You quit, and find a better job. That practice is so toxic that it's sufficient to condemn the organisation as unworthy of any buy-in whatsoever. Just leave.

jart 2y ago
Nah you make sure X% of your team is staffed with losers. It's a nutty system I know. But I'd imagine that's how things worked at companies that have stack ratings. Managers probably traded low performers like baseball cards.
ethbr1 2y ago
In defense of stack ranking, it does solve a very common problem -- managers who never fire people who deserve to be let go. This ultimately rots an organization from the inside, as it leads to attrition of higher performers because they're forced to work with useless people. You see this a lot in companies that rarely fire people, because managers optimize for accumulating direct report count (whether or not those direct reports are doing valuable work).
- convolvatron 2y ago
  companies need to do much better about letting managers go. I get it, they are hard to find. and those that actually have any engineering management skill at all are even harder to find. and every time you hire a new one you're taking a risk that they'll be a absolutely terrible manager. a terrible manager can cause a huge swath of destruction. but the answer can't be an army of useless middle managers diluting the impact of the people who actually do want to help the company and providing cover for people like them that are just phoning it it.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Absolutely. I'd like to see companies get more serious about driving manager requirement from span of control. As well as regularly rotating managers, like the military does (e.g. 3 year reassignment).
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > This ultimately rots an organization from the inside Hum... So instead you decide to immediately rot the organization from the inside. I can see how it avoids that one problem. The important problem is the waiting, right?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Try working for IT in a utility, insurance company, or other stable business. You'd be amazed how high the bar for termination is.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      No disagreement here. But you are falling for a very bad logical fallacy.

gradstudent 2y ago

> how do you pick which two? You (=hypothetical manager, please excuse second-person tense) use your managerial skills to make a decision, which considers metrics and other contributing factors. Then you write a justification which you defend, to higher ups and to those who weren't promoted. Because that's your job.

eesmith 2y ago
Yes, the Nuremberg defense - "I was just following orders" - is one approach. It's a lot easier than applying back pressure, fighting for your reports, or quitting in solidarity. "Sorry, Hugo and Maryna, you two only got the Fields medal while Anton and Alain got a Nobel Prize, so we'll have to let you go for your under-performance."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Arainach 2y ago
  Here's how this works in practice: * Corporate says "here are the buckets. They should match at the VP level since that's a large pile of people" * VPs tell their Directors to match these buckets, who recurse further * L1/2 Manager Alice says "my team is too small, this isn't how statistics work, I want an exception" * Problem #1: the teams with actual low performers will often make similar claims * If the claim actually gets escalated all the way to the VP, the VP says "tough, fit the buckets". * Alice is now a troublemaker in VP/Director's eyes * If Alice and everyone who feels the same way quits in protest, nothing changes except that the org is full of yes men, none of whom are even trying to push for changes in the system any more.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    So it's better that Alice stays because ... why?
    - Arainach 2y ago

kaashif 2y ago

> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? If you don't have an obvious low performer you'd better have metrics. This is a case where you're forced to rate people who are up to par as subpar - the rating system is simply bullshit. You should be allowed to rate people according to their actual performance. Metrics don't solve the underlying problem which is that the rating system sucks. Having a random number generator called "metrics" to "make decisions" isn't good either.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

Dice.

red_admiral 2y ago

> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? I think it's Joel Spolsky who has a tale of a manager asking him to do that for his team when everyone had gone all in with overtime to get something shipped on time. To their great credit, the author refused, and the manager saw sense.

Yizahi 2y ago

Pfff, what kind of problem question is that. Manager promotes the ones who go with him for a smoke or do some other regular informal activity together, obviously. :)

csa 2y ago

> If you have an organization with forced bucketing where X% of your team need to be given a subpar rating, how do you decide which one? If you don't have an obvious low performer you'd better have metrics. If you’re a manager in this type of system, your job is to reach out constantly and find folks who are low performers and get them into your department. They will fill the bottom of your team rating chart. At that point, they can be managed out (ideally in a humane way) or just held onto to fill that cellar dweller role while not slowing others down (some people are ok with this as long as they get paid). I would never choose to work in an environment like that, but some people find themselves there without better options (e.g., being location-bound due to family, etc.).

throwaway2037 2y ago
Wow, I never saw this type of advice before, but I like it. In short: If you are required to do stack ranking, where at least one person must get a shitty score/grade, then recruit someone internally who is below average and will take the hit. Brutal, but practical.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Or externally! I posted an idea here a while ago, where I thought I'd start a staffing company called "Scapegoat Consultants" and we would offer your team a "low performer" that you could hire and then fire after a year, to protect the rest of your team from stack-ranking. Our consultant will join your team and do as little as you want, or even nothing at all! We'd guarantee that they will at least not actively make your code base worse, but that's it. After a year of this, you can easily make the case that our recruit was a low-performer and manage them out. Don't worry, he won't mind--his job was to be the low performer, and we'll hire him out to the next BigTech company who struggles with stack ranking. It used to be tongue in cheek, but maybe the industry actually needs something like this.
  - Calamitous 2y ago
    Cynical, but probably the most humane take I’ve seen here so far.