Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
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Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#2So what's a better way to do it?
You need a documented system. If you don't have a documented system then there will be an undocumented system which is the same problem with less documentation.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#3So what's a better way to do it? You need a documented system. If you don't have a documented system then there will be an undocumented system which is the same problem with less documentation.
I think michaelochurch advocated open allocation.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#4So what's a better way to do it? You need a documented system. If you don't have a documented system then there will be an undocumented system which is the same problem with less documentation.
Less documentation isn't always a bad thing. If you can't appeal to a written authority, you have to rely on your own judgment in the face of ambiguity.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#5So what's a better way to do it? You need a documented system. If you don't have a documented system then there will be an undocumented system which is the same problem with less documentation.
A peer review-driven process.
Productivity lost to that can't possibly be worse then the culture of backstabbing that stackrank promotes.
For another point, the article seems to be making a heavy statistical error in assuming that Google's average developer lifespan is 1 year. Taking the average lifespan biases the result heavily towards new hires (Of which there are a lot of).
A more relevant metric would be average time between an engineer joining, and leaving.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#6The evil, destructive, part of stack ranking is when you need to apply the 20%/70%/10% breakdowns to all teams equally, meaning that even a team of 5 people needs to have one and only one "exceeds expectation" person and one person who "needs improvement", regardless of overall team level. It's not clear from this writeup that Amazon and Facebook are applying curves at such a micro level.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#7Because it's easy and everyone else is doing it. Next question?
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#8The title of this post assumes MS's stack ranking system is bad. Based off of personal experience, MS has dramatically improved how they do stack ranking. All companies stack rank, even startups. The only difference is that when that is formalized, everyone is on the same page and culture is more transparent.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#9Inevitably some percentage of hiring decisions were flawed, either that they underestimated or overestimated the candidate's potential.
These kinds of ranking systems are a mechanism to correct for that error once there is a lot more information known about the employee.
Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?
#10The evil, destructive, part of stack ranking is when you need to apply the 20%/70%/10% breakdowns to all teams equally, meaning that even a team of 5 people needs to have one and only one "exceeds expectation" person and one person who "needs improvement", regardless of overall team level. It's not clear from this writeup that Amazon and Facebook are applying curves at such a micro level.
I wonder if you could fix that by exempting employees from individual ranking if they work in groups smaller than n, and then rank those groups as if they were individual contributors. That way, a mid-level manager with five groups of five people would have to cut the least promising group loose.
... Nah, still sounds like a stupid idea. Any ranking system where an individual's outcome depends on their number of colleagues is bafflingly broken. This process can't build a cathedral or a bazaar, just a bureaucracy.