6 ms·

Wow hard to figure out if the post is sarcastic or mad or just a matter fact this is how it is. It seems like a sad place. :(

majormajor 14y ago
Doesn't sound bad to me. Seems like a good place to be if you're performing well.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  The problem is the system imposes a bottom 10% even if everyone performs equally well.
  - tonetheman 14y ago
    exactly... anyone who has worked in a place like that (I have) thinks it sucks... or you really thrive... one of the two. I end up in the camp that thinks it sucks. In other words your entire team works for a full quarter straight 60 hours a week... ah well at least some percentage of you are ranked lower. Tell me that is fair. Stack ranking is horrible.
    - majormajor 14y ago
      I haven't yet worked anywhere where everyone performed equally. I've seen places that keep the people at the bottom on as long as everything else is going well, and other places that try to replace them as soon as possible. But I don't know enough about the precise details of MS's system to comment on how fair it would be in the end. An entire team working 60 hours a week a full quarter straight is an entirely different problem.
      - tonetheman 14y ago
        true... ;)
  - matwood 14y ago
    The problem is the system imposes a bottom 10% even if everyone performs equally well. The problem isn't ranking people, it's how they determine the score. Are the bottom 10% really the bottom or the people who were the worst at selling themselves to their managers? Do you really thinking that everyone performs equally well? I look at the MSs and Googles of the world as the big leagues in software development. They only want to hire the best and only want to keep the best around. Not everyone can make it in the big leagues, it's just that simple. This sort of thing happens in pro sports every single day. NFL teams are finishing their cuts right now.
    - tsotha 14y ago
      The problem isn't ranking people, it's how they determine the score. That's not the problem either. The real problem is stack ranking is a morale killer. You get rid of the bottom ten percent and then the top ten percent says "Damn, every day I come to work I feel like there's this black cloud hanging over the cube farm. This place sucks, and I can get a job anywhere I want!" Then they do. So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year. Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup.
      - matwood 14y ago
        The real problem is stack ranking is a morale killer. Depends. I've been on teams where the weak links are the morale killer. Busting my ass while watching people do little and continue with a job or worse yet get the team accolades made me leave my last job. Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup. This is a completely separate issue. I would argue that MSs problems have nothing to do with engineering talent. Their problems stem from the management side with Balmer being problem number one. Doesn't Google also do some form of employee ranking? They seem to also have plenty of talent. Google though has side stepped needing great management by being data focused to a fault. This has made them better than MS in some ways, but worse in others. So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year. You're right that it's not always the best solution. First, a company needs to be at the top of their field so they are attracting top talent. If Joe Bobs software attempted stack ranking they are going to fail because they are not the big leagues. No one goes to work there expecting it to be that way. People who work at the Googles and MSs of the world expect that environment and are rewarded well when they thrive. At the end of the day, coming in at the bottom of one of the premier software companies isn't necessarily a bad thing. I regret not trying to get a job at one when I was younger just to see if I could hack it. At the time though my priorities were different.
homosaur 14y ago
You have to be down for any company's culture to have much success there. I agree that this seems stupid, but Microsoft also is far larger than any company I'd probably work for. There's a lot of other companies that I wouldn't work for either that are that large and they don't use stack ranking. At some point when you become this big, you look at HR as being literally HUMAN RESOURCES, in the sense of the junk you mine in StarCraft. It's chaff to deliver products. Seems as reasonable a system as any to manage that many folks. It's the resources attitude I wouldn't want to be around, not specifically the stack ranking. Seems like a consequence rather than a cause.

majormajor 14y ago

Doesn't sound bad to me. Seems like a good place to be if you're performing well.

jinushaun 14y ago
The problem is the system imposes a bottom 10% even if everyone performs equally well.
- tonetheman 14y ago
  exactly... anyone who has worked in a place like that (I have) thinks it sucks... or you really thrive... one of the two. I end up in the camp that thinks it sucks. In other words your entire team works for a full quarter straight 60 hours a week... ah well at least some percentage of you are ranked lower. Tell me that is fair. Stack ranking is horrible.
  - majormajor 14y ago
    I haven't yet worked anywhere where everyone performed equally. I've seen places that keep the people at the bottom on as long as everything else is going well, and other places that try to replace them as soon as possible. But I don't know enough about the precise details of MS's system to comment on how fair it would be in the end. An entire team working 60 hours a week a full quarter straight is an entirely different problem.
    - tonetheman 14y ago
      true... ;)
- matwood 14y ago
  The problem is the system imposes a bottom 10% even if everyone performs equally well. The problem isn't ranking people, it's how they determine the score. Are the bottom 10% really the bottom or the people who were the worst at selling themselves to their managers? Do you really thinking that everyone performs equally well? I look at the MSs and Googles of the world as the big leagues in software development. They only want to hire the best and only want to keep the best around. Not everyone can make it in the big leagues, it's just that simple. This sort of thing happens in pro sports every single day. NFL teams are finishing their cuts right now.
  - tsotha 14y ago
    The problem isn't ranking people, it's how they determine the score. That's not the problem either. The real problem is stack ranking is a morale killer. You get rid of the bottom ten percent and then the top ten percent says "Damn, every day I come to work I feel like there's this black cloud hanging over the cube farm. This place sucks, and I can get a job anywhere I want!" Then they do. So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year. Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup.
    - matwood 14y ago
      The real problem is stack ranking is a morale killer. Depends. I've been on teams where the weak links are the morale killer. Busting my ass while watching people do little and continue with a job or worse yet get the team accolades made me leave my last job. Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup. This is a completely separate issue. I would argue that MSs problems have nothing to do with engineering talent. Their problems stem from the management side with Balmer being problem number one. Doesn't Google also do some form of employee ranking? They seem to also have plenty of talent. Google though has side stepped needing great management by being data focused to a fault. This has made them better than MS in some ways, but worse in others. So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year. You're right that it's not always the best solution. First, a company needs to be at the top of their field so they are attracting top talent. If Joe Bobs software attempted stack ranking they are going to fail because they are not the big leagues. No one goes to work there expecting it to be that way. People who work at the Googles and MSs of the world expect that environment and are rewarded well when they thrive. At the end of the day, coming in at the bottom of one of the premier software companies isn't necessarily a bad thing. I regret not trying to get a job at one when I was younger just to see if I could hack it. At the time though my priorities were different.

homosaur 14y ago

You have to be down for any company's culture to have much success there. I agree that this seems stupid, but Microsoft also is far larger than any company I'd probably work for. There's a lot of other companies that I wouldn't work for either that are that large and they don't use stack ranking. At some point when you become this big, you look at HR as being literally HUMAN RESOURCES, in the sense of the junk you mine in StarCraft. It's chaff to deliver products. Seems as reasonable a system as any to manage that many folks. It's the resources attitude I wouldn't want to be around, not specifically the stack ranking. Seems like a consequence rather than a cause.