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

Microsoft does away with stack ranking

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 159 posts

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#81

Post by Ensorceled »

tensor wrote: post #77
Ensorceled wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm usually one of the strongest developers on my team, even when I'm managing. It's one of my strengths and why I stay with small companies. It also means I'm qualified to judge the technical skills of my developers, I know how long it should take. People who think judging performance is hard have a broken development methodology or no technical chops. That's also why I included the comment on my own rankings; I hav…

>People who think judging performance is hard have a broken development methodology or no technical chops. And this is exactly why I asked the question. Here you have judged me, since I said judging performance was hard, on both my development methodology and technical chops. Yet you know nothing about me at all. The problem of evaluation is an important one, and one I'm always interested in reading more on. Unfortun…

In fairness, you judged me first.

I've never had a problem judging performance when I was doing my job right. Any time I've been unsure it's because I was either not managing the team properly or did not have enough technical knowledge to evaluate the estimates and claims (e.g. this took longer because of X and Y).

I know you can manage performance in a way that allows evaluation even if you don't have the technical chops to evaluate it technically, because I have seen technically weak peers do a good job of it.

I didn't discard the reports of my peers. I noticed a trend of the peers who liked me rating me higher in areas of weakness (as perceived by both myself and my boss) than my skills deserved.

Data that contains some bias is not useless if you can adjust for the bias.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#82

Post by ethomson »

mhurron wrote: post #78
ethomson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we're competing. That's the whole point of a merit-based bonus system. What's your counterargument?

When one person succeeds we all succeed breaks down when you are pushed to succeed at the expense of everyone else. You are supposed to be working for the good of the whole, not just yourself. Cooperation and team work are also meritorious, but they are not rewarded or encouraged in this type of merit-based system.

I agree with you, but this doesn't address the clever and glib but ultimately content-free argument above. You can stack rank on any criteria - including cooperation and team work.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#83

Post by cykho »

This is going to open the floodgates of deadwood. Stackranking at least forces hard choices. They just needed to adjust the curve by team performance. E.g. rockstar teams have more exceeds than underperforms and a failing team has more underperforms than exceeds. Under the most recent system the best way to get a review is to be an A player on the B team.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#84

Post by [deleted] »

Ensorceled wrote: post #34

One major thing I learned from 360 reviews is how bad developers are at judging each other or their manager. I've had employees on probation for lack of productivity judged as excellent by their peers because of their ability to socialize their "abilities". I had the best developer on my team (a 10x developer if ever there was one) get slammed on technical ability rankings because of his prickly personality. My VP an…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#85

Post by cesarbs »

sib wrote: post #61
alkonaut wrote: post #36

I wasn't aware that US companies ranked employees and used rankings when purging the workforce (when I think about it it's a pretty obvious idea). In countries with stronger labour laws "underperformance" basically isn't a reason to fire someone. The employer is responsible for the employees performance (training etc.). This can be frustrating in the software business when just a few really poor performers can really…

"In countries with stronger labour laws..." Interesting. I would refer to those as countries with "weaker" or "perverse" employment laws...

I think that's really subjective. There are always ways to abuse any kind of system.

Take for example working hours. A country with strong labor laws will usually prohibit employers from making employees work more than x hours a week, and if they do that they have to pay for overtime. That will make some people happy and productive because they will feel safe having protection from the system. But some people will abuse it and slack off.

On the other hand, if you don't have control over that you might end up in a situation where people are only considered good employees and productive if they work crazy hours all the time. Instead of being abused by employees, the system will be abused by the people at the top.

And I guess that covers underperformance. Who defines what bad/average/good performance is? Is the guy who does really good work considered to be underperforming just because he works 9-5 and wants to spend quality time with his family instead of making the office his second home? That kind of thing has to be prevented by law.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#87

Post by michaelt »

Ensorceled wrote: post #34

One major thing I learned from 360 reviews is how bad developers are at judging each other or their manager. I've had employees on probation for lack of productivity judged as excellent by their peers because of their ability to socialize their "abilities". I had the best developer on my team (a 10x developer if ever there was one) get slammed on technical ability rankings because of his prickly personality. My VP an…

What's the point of doing a 360 review if you're going to attribute away all the results you don't agree with to bias? Why not just do the reviews yourself and save everyone else from wasting their time :)

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#89

Post by michaelt »

ethomson wrote: post #74
Ensorceled wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem with stack ranking is that you convince your employees that their personal competitors are their teammates and not actual business competitors. Any time the best way for me to get ahead is by using "The Art of War" on my peers you have set up your organization for eventual failure.

Of course we're competing. That's the whole point of a merit-based bonus system. What's your counterargument?

Generating value for your employer is not a zero-sum game. If I make the company an extra $x and the company rewards me with a bonus of $0.1x that money doesn't have to come from the guy next to me, it comes from the extra $x I brought into the company.

The idea that "there's a fixed budget for raises" or "that money goes into a different pot" is simply a way of refusing while transferring blame to an inanimate object.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#90

Post by nness »

mbesto wrote: post #86

Curious - what's the origin of stack ranking? Was there any science (psychology/sociology) behind it?

I'm not sure how it was developed, but its popularity is credited to Jack Welch, who introduced it to General Electric in 1980. In doing so, GE experienced a "5-fold increase in revenue":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

Post reply on HN