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Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

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Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#111

Post by physicsyogi »

sokoloff wrote: post #104
ardit33 wrote: post #92

I think this is a more issue of "Stack Ranking", which by itself should be illegal, but somewhat it is still legal. While pretty much all employment in the US is "at will" employment, "good faith" is assumed in the system.... Stack Ranking by default is a "bad faith" system, where the employer, will fire people, even though the employees were good performers (if you are in a team of all good performers, it is common…

Stack Ranking seems like it should be a perfectly legal method of performance management. You might choose to not work at a company that practices it, but why should it be illegal? It is perhaps a natural fear that a Stack Ranking system would lead to a "Rank and Yank", but the mere ordering of employees during a performance management process doesn't give me any particular concern, nor do I consider it a bad faith s…

Microsoft used stack ranking for some time and from what I've read it caused a lot of problems and was considered to be negative overall. It led to a cutthroat environment where employees were competing with each other (and not focusing on doing their best work) so that they would get a good ranking [1]. According to reviews on Glassdoor, it's still used unofficially for their 6-month reviews [2]. Amazon also used it for a time [3] and has since abandoned it.

1: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l... 2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Microsoft-stack-ranking-Re... 3: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-w...

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#112

Post by sokoloff »

physicsyogi wrote: post #111
sokoloff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Ranking seems like it should be a perfectly legal method of performance management. You might choose to not work at a company that practices it, but why should it be illegal? It is perhaps a natural fear that a Stack Ranking system would lead to a "Rank and Yank", but the mere ordering of employees during a performance management process doesn't give me any particular concern, nor do I consider it a bad faith s…

Microsoft used stack ranking for some time and from what I've read it caused a lot of problems and was considered to be negative overall. It led to a cutthroat environment where employees were competing with each other (and not focusing on doing their best work) so that they would get a good ranking [1]. According to reviews on Glassdoor, it's still used unofficially for their 6-month reviews [2]. Amazon also used it…

We also used it in the past (pure ranking, no rank-and-yank) and have since abandoned it.

I thought it was effective in forcing deeper conversations as part of the comparison process, but became unwieldy and unworkable when we passed about 50 engineers which was a long time ago, so I'm not sad to see it go.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#113

Post by ewjordan »

dragonwriter wrote: post #63
SamReidHughes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't. That's why people use, or include, subjective evaluation.

Subjective measures are, inherently, “not directly tied to their contribution to company success”.

"Makes people on the team uncomfortable by being argumentative", "is condescending during code reviews", "strongly supports team members via mentorship", and "defuses technical disagreements effectively and without bad feelings" are all highly positive and negative contributions to company success, but are inherently subjective since they require evaluations of soft interpersonal skills, not technical mastery. I can't imagine that you'd want to ignore such factors (employees will quit if you let toxic people stay around unchecked), but absent extreme situations where HR complaints are filed, they are also incredibly difficult to measure other than by listening to peer opinions.

Usually from the point of view of the problematic person, everyone else is the asshole. At some point the evaluation has to boil down to a judgement call, rather than an objective measurement. This process is always fraught, for instance when the bosses are the assholes themselves or support them (ahem, Travis), but I don't love the idea of just not considering interpersonal factors when evaluating performance. Bad behavior shouldn't have to rise to the level of an HR complaints before consequences are faced, and good behavior should be rewarded.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#114

Post by mr_toad »

nohat wrote: post #109
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decimation was a punishment for serious offences, like mutiny or desertion- not for performing badly in battle, or being cowardly. With Romans, specifically, if cowardice was punished, there would be noone left. They were disciplined and had great quality equipment, but their morale was not the highest. For instance, before they met the Germans on the field, having heard of the military prowerss of their enemy, the R…

Cowardice in the form of running away from battle was definitely a cause for decimation.

Only for cohorts or larger groups. Individual deserters and smaller groups were simply all executed.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#115

Post by wildmusings »

ardit33 wrote: post #92

I think this is a more issue of "Stack Ranking", which by itself should be illegal, but somewhat it is still legal. While pretty much all employment in the US is "at will" employment, "good faith" is assumed in the system.... Stack Ranking by default is a "bad faith" system, where the employer, will fire people, even though the employees were good performers (if you are in a team of all good performers, it is common…

Why should stack ranking be illegal? It’s your company. You’re allowed to run it as well or as poorly as you want. We have at-will employment.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#116

Post by D-Coder »

empath75 wrote: post #103
ardit33 wrote: post #92

I think this is a more issue of "Stack Ranking", which by itself should be illegal, but somewhat it is still legal. While pretty much all employment in the US is "at will" employment, "good faith" is assumed in the system.... Stack Ranking by default is a "bad faith" system, where the employer, will fire people, even though the employees were good performers (if you are in a team of all good performers, it is common…

It’s such a dumb way of doing business. Like on a surface level it makes sense — if you constantly let your worst performers go, the average quality of your employees has to go up, right? But five minutes of thought will tell you that people will hate working on that environment and will quit or just not apply to work there.

Or hire some dumbshits to be the sacrificial firings.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#117

Post by alexasmyths »

tptacek wrote: post #29
SamReidHughes wrote: post #28

Is it possible to create a performance review system that somebody won't complain is sexist?

Obviously, yes. Problems like this are endemic to zero-sum schemes like stack ranking.

"Problems like this are endemic to zero-sum schemes like stack ranking."

Stack ranking is nothing more than a more aggressive form of regular hiring promotion and advancement.

Moreover, it's just as likely that female managers prefer females.

There's nothing inherently sexist about 'stack ranking' - rather, possible sexism is derived during performance reviews - which are commonplace.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#118

Post by alexasmyths »

gozur88 wrote: post #8
s73ver_ wrote: post #7

At this point, any company that thinks stack ranking is a decent idea just needs to die.

I wouldn't go that far, but I agree stack ranking is a really bad idea. Uber seems to be full of bad ideas, so maybe it's a good fit.

"Uber seems to be full of bad ideas,"

I don't know. They've basically changed the world, made a 60 billion dollar company quickly, and become a brand synonymous with a service.

That's very special.

Just as I think they probably have used some slightly underhanded things on their way there, I significantly doubt anything they're doing is considerably more sketchy than other companies.

As the article states: 1/3 of F100 companies use stack ranking - so how can we possibly call them out for it. Moreover, that someone 'says they are sexist' does not make them sexist.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#119

Post by ImSkeptical »

jey wrote: post #89
ImSkeptical wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young women (20-35) are more likely to get pregnant and take significant time off from work than their male counterparts. What ranking system could negate the difference that results from men working x hours more per year? Is that desirable or fair?

Why's it relevant? Why not just judge based on the employee's actual output? It's certainly conceivable that a talented and dedicated woman could both raise kids and simultaneously out-code her male colleagues.

Of course, but unless you think women are innately superior, wouldn't they be at a disadvantage because they work fewer hours? In other words, if your system is based on output, and men and women are equal, men should be expected to perform better because they work more hours.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/mobile/time-spent-working-...

Of course if a woman produces more output or is better, she should be paid more. My point is about how you should expect the average result to be in men's favor though, unless you think women are innately superior. If you work 8 hours a day and I work 9, I'll probably be ahead of you at the end of the year, unless you're a lot better.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#120

Post by ImSkeptical »

tptacek wrote: post #84
ImSkeptical wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young women (20-35) are more likely to get pregnant and take significant time off from work than their male counterparts. What ranking system could negate the difference that results from men working x hours more per year? Is that desirable or fair?

I am really not interested in a new first-principles explication of the inferiority of women as a workforce demographic in the tech industry. Sorry.

Your comment seems unfairly antagonistic. I'm talking about a well documented phenomenon. Men typically work more hours than women. One of the reasons is pregnancy and maternity leave.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/mobile/time-spent-working-...

If men work more hours, shouldn't you expect ranking systems to consistently favor men? You can try to pretend like this observation is sexist, but you're just refusing to answer the argument by doing so. Please, explain why I'm wrong and I'll happily change my mind.

I don't think women are inferior. I think they work less, because that's what I've read. One reason they work less is because of pregnancy and maternity leave. Even when equal leave is offered to men, women tend to take more of it, which makes sense as women are the ones who are actually pregnant. So, given the equality of men and women, and that men tend to work more hours, ranking systems that measure by output should be expected to put men ahead of women on average.

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