> In a large organisation like Microsoft's the skill of the engineers and the ratings should follow a normal distribution. My understanding is that stack ranki

> In a large organisation like Microsoft's the skill of the engineers and the ratings should follow a normal distribution. My understanding is that stack ranking is effective when first implemented. Subsequent implementations are progressively less effective and eventually become toxic if done too frequently. This is because at the beginning, the distribution of skill in the company's population of engineers does mirror the distribution in the overall, global population of engineers. So the initial stack rank eliminates the bottom, say 10%, performing engineers. The problem is when this happens again the following year, which seems to be what Microsoft has been doing. Barring a horrible incoming recruiting class, the company's distribution has already been shifting to the right. So each yearly cut is cutting out increasingly better engineers.