Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft reorganizes

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 283 posts

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#51

Post by michaelochurch »

kvb wrote: post #22
michaelochurch wrote: post #17

What look like complex failures in organizations are often rooted in simple causes. In Microsoft, it's stack-ranking and Enron-style (that is, visible in transfer packet) performance reviews. When you have stack-ranking, you never get harmonious teams and "all-star" sub-organizations are out of the question. When performance reviews are part of the transfer process, people become largely immobile and teams become per…

This seems simplistic to me. Doesn't Valve, your favorite poster boy for open allocation, also stack rank? There seem to be several sub-organizations at Microsoft that are harmonious, at least to an outsider's view (e.g. Azure since Scott Guthrie's involvement). As I understand it there's not too much pressure to hit the stack ranking curve until you get up to the several-hundred-report levels.

Valve stack-ranking is for compensation only-- not a "fire the unluckiest X percent" system. That can still be damaging, if low rank results in permanent underclass status, but that's a human problem that I have no insight into as it pertains to Valve.

I don't know enough about Valve to know how it works, or even if the culture lives up to the press. So I'm not going to try to comment on that.

In general, though, stack-ranking is destructive even if no one gets fired. In companies that use it, it becomes impossible to transfer without a top-10% political success review (sorry, I mean "performance" review) history. But if you're doing that well politically, then you don't want to transfer because it entails rolling the dice again. The result is that people become pretty much immobile.

Closed allocation actually forces engineering ladders (with their attendant negatives) into existence because unsuccessful/persecuted people can't move and successful people won't move at all unless they can get a permanent credibility bump (promotion). But that leads to an arrangement where managers avoid promoting their best people because they know it might cause them to transfer.

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#52

Post by knodi »

clavalle wrote: post #43

If their new tack is as sharp and focused as that memo, Microsoft is in trouble. "We will be all things to all people by getting rid of anything that is not a huge profit center. Those profit centers will be organized in appropriate silos. Those silos will assign people to product committees for collaboration with other silos on individual products. Each committee will have a leader (Champion) who reports to the laye…

I honestly think he doesn't realize that he's the problem and people around him won't tell him the truth. Ballmer is a very intimidating guy both in physical size and attitude and is always ready to be combative. This make it very difficult to have a open dialog with him.

Him remaining still as the CEO is not his fault its the boards fault they should have made moves to genteelly replace him a long time ago.

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#53

Post by jaynate »

Complete and utter lack of focus is what I read:

"Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most."

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#54

Post by yulaow »

clavalle wrote: post #43

If their new tack is as sharp and focused as that memo, Microsoft is in trouble. "We will be all things to all people by getting rid of anything that is not a huge profit center. Those profit centers will be organized in appropriate silos. Those silos will assign people to product committees for collaboration with other silos on individual products. Each committee will have a leader (Champion) who reports to the laye…

Ballmer is very good in one thing and it is: remove the main rivals from inside microsoft. He was doing this since years to try to put himself in a secure position with no alternatives for the Board of Directors.

I think he will never step down. The only solution would be a strong pressure from all the main actionists of microsoft, but it seems they are all sleeping.

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#55

Post by bcoates »

kvb wrote: post #32
bornhuetter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack ranking seems, to me, to be an incredibly bad idea for Microsoft as a whole. Do you know if they are considering moving away from it? I think Stack Ranking can work in some situations, like mechanical (ie. non-heuristic) work, but for Engineers? I've never understood why they even considered that it would work.

How do you ensure that performance is rewarded fairly and consistently across an organization with tens of thousands of engineers? I'm not wild about the concept of stack ranking but I don't see any alternatives that don't have serious drawbacks of their own.

Is that a goal? I'd rather own a company where the pay was unfair and inconsistent but it delivered on products and made money. I'd rather work for one, too.

It's not like Jack Welch's worst idea isn't a driver of politics and strategic[1] moves in the real world.

[1] as in, bad for the company but the most rational move for the employee, like attempting to make sure every person added to your team is worse than you.

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#57

Post by kyllo »

kvb wrote: post #32
bornhuetter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack ranking seems, to me, to be an incredibly bad idea for Microsoft as a whole. Do you know if they are considering moving away from it? I think Stack Ranking can work in some situations, like mechanical (ie. non-heuristic) work, but for Engineers? I've never understood why they even considered that it would work.

How do you ensure that performance is rewarded fairly and consistently across an organization with tens of thousands of engineers? I'm not wild about the concept of stack ranking but I don't see any alternatives that don't have serious drawbacks of their own.

How about evaluating each engineer's job performance (based on sane productivity and code quality metrics) without forcing them to a curve, where even if your whole team is high-performing, someone will get a bad review and be marked for firing just because it's required that someone gets a bad review?

Jack Welch-style rank-and-yank is cruel and wildly inappropriate for software developers (or any human workers, I'd argue). It encourages political blame-shifting/scapegoating games that distract from the actual work. Just having the practice is also an implicit acknowledgement that your hiring process blows.

Performance curves are just a demented and sadistic way to manage people. They're also the epitome of b-school cargo culting.

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#58

Post by podperson »

Seems to me like the emphasis is on XBox.

"Terry Myerson will lead this group, and it will span all our OS work for console..."

Interesting, because I think XBox One (from One Microsoft) is a bit of a Hail Mary. It's not clear to me that the "next console" is going to be that big a deal. (My secret hope is that Apple has a really juicy Apple TV up its sleeve with iOS dev support, etc., and is just waiting to announce it when it will do the most good / damage.)

Re: Microsoft reorganizes

#59

Post by lmm »

kvb wrote: post #32
bornhuetter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack ranking seems, to me, to be an incredibly bad idea for Microsoft as a whole. Do you know if they are considering moving away from it? I think Stack Ranking can work in some situations, like mechanical (ie. non-heuristic) work, but for Engineers? I've never understood why they even considered that it would work.

How do you ensure that performance is rewarded fairly and consistently across an organization with tens of thousands of engineers? I'm not wild about the concept of stack ranking but I don't see any alternatives that don't have serious drawbacks of their own.

Trust your managers and allow people to move freely internally? If a manager is too stingy their people will move away from them; if a manager is paying a lot either they'll get results that justify it or they won't, and in the latter case they correct things or you fire them.
Post reply on HN