5 ms·

I worked at Yahoo, and quite frankly, Yahoo needs to go through a few years of culling the bottom 10% like this. After several iterations of this, it could be

by steven2012 13y ago

I worked at Yahoo, and quite frankly, Yahoo needs to go through a few years of culling the bottom 10% like this. After several iterations of this, it could be a great company again. What Mayer is saying is that she is willing to sacrifice those employees that are at the lower boundaries of acceptable, in order to make more room for the top 85% And quite frankly, the managers that are complaining about having to put people at the lower boundaries are highly likely to be underperforming as well. When I was there, it was mostly filled with bloated and lazy employees.

masklinn 13y ago
There are two problems here: 1. if the company moves to stack ranking rather than just does a cull, it's a bad move 2. stack ranking works at the team level, not at the company level. If a team is full of morons and the next one is full of awesome developers, stack ranking will keep 90% of the morons and cull 10% of the good devs.
- ianbicking 13y ago
  "stack ranking works at the team level, not at the company level. If a team is full of morons and the next one is full of awesome developers, stack ranking will keep 90% of the morons and cull 10% of the good devs." That may be a risk they are willing to take. They are probably firing some good people. If a team is doing great and they fire someone from that team because SOMEONE has to get fired, then that's poisonous. But if someone isn't right for the job, but because the job is badly defined, or poorly managed, or the goals are unreasonable, or whatever... it does definitely suck for the person being fired, but losing that employee is a reasonable cost for Yahoo.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    That may be a risk they are willing to take Yup. They are in kind of a "bet-the-company" stage right now. They've got a problem, they've got no perfect solutions, and if they sit about just twiddling their thumbs they will go under.
wwweston 13y ago
> in order to make more room for the top 85% And nothing attracts top developers to an organization like news that they've got a great stack-ranking system!
- jmduke 13y ago
  I think you overestimate the number of prospective employees who make their ultimate decision whether or not to work at a company based off of stack-ranking.
  - steven777400 13y ago
    I turned down an offer from Microsoft, in substantial part, due to their evaluation system and the resulting "competitiveness" of the teams. (The competitiveness was self-admitted during the interview when I asked about the team culture) I'm not a "star" developer by any means (although I consider myself competent), and I was frankly very concerned that they might be bringing me on to be the "scapegoat" that could be rated underperforming to save the rest of the team.
    - mruniverse 13y ago
      That's a good point. I'm not sure how stack ranking can be good for any company: 1) It seems likely to deter prospective employees. 2) There's the incentive for the hiring teams to hire weak employees to use as "scapegoats" Seems like a death spiral.
- elq 13y ago
  Yahoo isn't exactly an attractive company to many developers now, IMHO.
  - cantankerous 13y ago
    Yeah I'd tend to agree. Given the press about the company, I can't say legions of talented developers are beating down the Yahoo's door to get in.
tesseractive 13y ago
Exactly. It was like ending work-from-home arrangements: probably a negative move for a generic company in a vacuum, but a reasonable risk for a company in trouble with Yahoo's specific issues. If the company is performing well in a couple of years, they can revisit their policies and loosen up on things like this, because if the company is performing well, or probably means they've fixed most of their workforce issues anyway.

masklinn 13y ago

There are two problems here: 1. if the company moves to stack ranking rather than just does a cull, it's a bad move 2. stack ranking works at the team level, not at the company level. If a team is full of morons and the next one is full of awesome developers, stack ranking will keep 90% of the morons and cull 10% of the good devs.

ianbicking 13y ago
"stack ranking works at the team level, not at the company level. If a team is full of morons and the next one is full of awesome developers, stack ranking will keep 90% of the morons and cull 10% of the good devs." That may be a risk they are willing to take. They are probably firing some good people. If a team is doing great and they fire someone from that team because SOMEONE has to get fired, then that's poisonous. But if someone isn't right for the job, but because the job is badly defined, or poorly managed, or the goals are unreasonable, or whatever... it does definitely suck for the person being fired, but losing that employee is a reasonable cost for Yahoo.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That may be a risk they are willing to take Yup. They are in kind of a "bet-the-company" stage right now. They've got a problem, they've got no perfect solutions, and if they sit about just twiddling their thumbs they will go under.

wwweston 13y ago

> in order to make more room for the top 85% And nothing attracts top developers to an organization like news that they've got a great stack-ranking system!

jmduke 13y ago
I think you overestimate the number of prospective employees who make their ultimate decision whether or not to work at a company based off of stack-ranking.
- steven777400 13y ago
  I turned down an offer from Microsoft, in substantial part, due to their evaluation system and the resulting "competitiveness" of the teams. (The competitiveness was self-admitted during the interview when I asked about the team culture) I'm not a "star" developer by any means (although I consider myself competent), and I was frankly very concerned that they might be bringing me on to be the "scapegoat" that could be rated underperforming to save the rest of the team.
  - mruniverse 13y ago
    That's a good point. I'm not sure how stack ranking can be good for any company: 1) It seems likely to deter prospective employees. 2) There's the incentive for the hiring teams to hire weak employees to use as "scapegoats" Seems like a death spiral.
elq 13y ago
Yahoo isn't exactly an attractive company to many developers now, IMHO.
- cantankerous 13y ago
  Yeah I'd tend to agree. Given the press about the company, I can't say legions of talented developers are beating down the Yahoo's door to get in.

tesseractive 13y ago

Exactly. It was like ending work-from-home arrangements: probably a negative move for a generic company in a vacuum, but a reasonable risk for a company in trouble with Yahoo's specific issues. If the company is performing well in a couple of years, they can revisit their policies and loosen up on things like this, because if the company is performing well, or probably means they've fixed most of their workforce issues anyway.