371–380 of 408 posts
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Here’s what I’ve observed as a senior manager: First, it’s important to understand that managers are held to outcomes. If a manager retains low performers because “they’re friends”, over time they’ll find themselves with a low performing team and it will be visible in their results. At that stage they are now at the bottom of their manager’s stack-ranking process. Retain and promote your low-performing friends at you…
Have never seen a low manager get fired for having low performers inside of 2 years. I’ve seen stack ranking invented to push out non-senior managers, but never the feedback cycle you claim exists. “there’s no reason to believe anything is functional” should be “you don’t believe in your manager.” Good managers divorce moral edict from feelings. Good managers know they don’t get to define what functional means.
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It's worse than that. Not only is it graded on a curve but to prevent ratings inflation there are quotas for each ratings bucket. Many deny this, even when presented with concrete proof that such quotas exist (but were called "performance targets"). This itself would be fine except that negative ratings have a target percentage of ~10%. This includes regrettable losses and ratings below Meets All Expectations. Such t…
I'm constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization made up of humans. Stack ranking and related schemes are so obviously going to be gamed, will definitely measure something other than the nominal thing, and will gum up the works. It's one thing to have a Hunger-Games-style hiring process. Bad as that is, there's an expectation that once you've passed…
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It's worse than that. Not only is it graded on a curve but to prevent ratings inflation there are quotas for each ratings bucket. Many deny this, even when presented with concrete proof that such quotas exist (but were called "performance targets"). This itself would be fine except that negative ratings have a target percentage of ~10%. This includes regrettable losses and ratings below Meets All Expectations. Such t…
I'm constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization made up of humans. Stack ranking and related schemes are so obviously going to be gamed, will definitely measure something other than the nominal thing, and will gum up the works. It's one thing to have a Hunger-Games-style hiring process. Bad as that is, there's an expectation that once you've passed…
The goal of corporate employees usually is not maximizing profit. If it were, things like private equity, LBOs, and shareholder lawsuits would not be necessary. Rather, the goal of organization-man is maintenance of the hierarchy. Why? Because people who aren't interested in this goal either quit and take jobs outside of the corporate world (like consultant, therapist, small business owner, etc.) or they circulate freely throughout many different companies and rely on up-leveling at the interview stage to get raises and promotions.
With this goal, all the stack ranking, annual reviews, politics and image maintenance makes sense. For there to be a hierarchy, there must be people at the bottom of the hierarchy. There must also be a pathway to the top of the hierarchy, lest people tire of the game and quit. Therefore, people seeking to preserve the hierarchy will create processes to ensure some people are defined as needing improvement, and others are defined as being worthy of promotion and upward mobility.
The folks who are purely interested in maximizing profit usually enter finance and become hedge fund managers, where they have a small staff (largely dispensable, other than themselves) but outsize influence on markets, and can keep 20% of their profits (100% if trading their own capital) for themselves.
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I find your statements hard to accept at face value. Does a "polymath" have infinite time to develop excellence in every conceivable discipline? How good was Benjamin Franklin at, say, composing sonatas?
I’m not sure if you are being ironic, but Benjamin Franklin was a pretty good composer: https://iml.esm.rochester.edu/polyphonic-archive/article/ben...
Without any examples of his work it’s hard to believe that they are of any consequence. I don’t think anyone can just write a piece of music, but you don’t present a strong case that anything he wrote is even remotely worthwhile.
Hell, Bruce Willis has a band that’s released records. I just don’t see any reason to think they’re worth listening to over anyone else.
Meta kind of screwed everybody here. I am at one of the hyperscalers with some insight into SDE offers. Second half of 2021 things got extremely crazy with Meta offering ridiculous salaries even for junior positions. This caused a chain reaction. Other FAANG had to increase their offers outside the normal bands to fill positions, which caused experienced folks to leave where out of frustration that new hires one leve…
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> Apple: it's intentionally slowing working products This is really disingenuous. They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot. Not exactly what I would call “intentionally slowing working products” but rather “reducing CPU power consumption to mitigate abrupt reboots to keep a reliable user experience”. Granted, Apple was a bi…
> They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot Only after they have made it impossibly expensive to replace some lithium. This is an incredibly disingenuous defense of their actions. Apple is fully trying to tie hardware refreshes to the cadence of should be battery refreshes and the frog has been so boiled that android devices…
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as a manager what do you say there to the report
Polish your resume, the guillotine is coming and there's nothing I can do to save you. I tried for you, remember me when your next job is hiring managers.
Ideally you'd do this before calibration so the rating doesn't mess it up.
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I'm constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people can be when it comes to applying metrics to an organization made up of humans. Stack ranking and related schemes are so obviously going to be gamed, will definitely measure something other than the nominal thing, and will gum up the works. It's one thing to have a Hunger-Games-style hiring process. Bad as that is, there's an expectation that once you've passed…
In what fucking universe has any business major ever passed as smart?
Not to mention that decisions on whether or not to stay in education are often taken when fairly young, and even very clever people can arrive in their 20s with incorrect views about the world based on what their parents/teachers/etc believed - if you've spent your childhood being told that a degree is the only way to have a secure future, you have to not only be smarter than needing a degree you also have to be bold enough to think you already know better than everyone around you (which sure, some people are that confident as 12 year olds, some never get that confident even as adults).
TLDR, I get why business degrees get a bad rep, and agree that many idiots do do them; but also, a couple of the cleverest people I've ever known have done them, mid-career, because the job they were aiming for (and in both cases I'm thinking of, then went on to achieve) had hard requirements attached and they considered it worth wasting time on an MBA to progress.