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

111–120 of 159 posts

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#111

Post by mathattack »

pagefault wrote: post #96
mathattack wrote: post #64

Now that they get rid of it, I wonder if they're going to run into problems on the other extreme... - Difficulty knowing who the best employees are. - Employees surprised by layoffs. "I thought I was doing well." - Managers slacking on giving constructive feedback. Performance management is such a tough subject. Both extremes (ruthless stacking, and no-curve) have issues and I don't know a better solution.

Part of the new program is an explicit focus on frequent feedback. If anything, there ought to be fewer surprises than the current once (twice-ish with midyear discussions) a year feedback. The risk going forward is that without being forced to a distribution, wishy-washy managers will trend towards the middle. High achievers will be under-compensated, and under-achievers will be overcompensated. The budget hasn't ch…

My experience is that wishy washy managers make everyone top rated, therefore nobody is really top rated.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#112

Post by Ensorceled »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #105
Ensorceled wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most managers are unable to adjust for their own biases, though. I'm especially skeptical of managers who evaluate themselves as having above average technical ability after they have asserted how poorly most people evaluate their peers. The necessary conclusion of such an assertion is that people therefore haven't a rational basis on which to judge their own skills relative to others.

Ummmm, sure. Are you always this aggressive of an ass?

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#113

Post by Ensorceled »

michaelt wrote: post #87
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 :)

I'm not sure why everybody is assuming I toss all of these reviews. They are not useless even when biased.

The reason you do 360's is that you have to take every individual review with a grain of salt. When you have 7-10 reviews the biases start to average out.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#114

Post by gboudrias »

300bps wrote: post #98
lmg643 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a similar experience - in an interview situation. (I can be likeable in person, just not in comments...) The guy was attributing statements to me, from the conversation we were having in that moment, that i had never said. He would even say "what you said, or what you were going to say..." I found it extremely bizarre. I am a pretty precise person, and I wanted to correct him but i realized it is pointless…

the other thing we can do is to figure out how to "hack" likability Actually, the key to life is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#115

Post by Ensorceled »

munificent wrote: post #100
Ensorceled wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know what a 360 is, I've participated in them. In the situations I indicated I was also a developer on the team so I knew how productive and skilled the 10x prickly developer was. His peers ranked him high on technical skills but only as high as more amicable and lessor skilled peers. I'm not saying I ignored the social aspect, in fact that is why I called him "prickly". I'm just saying that, while his teamwor…

> I knew how productive and skilled the 10x prickly developer was How? What makes you so sure you weren't biased?

Well, I certainly am biased, in a way I'm probably not aware of :-)

How? He wrote a ton of great code in a short period of time that worked amazingly well. How else would you tell somebody was productive and skilled?

But, think whatever you want!

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#116

Post by 300bps »

gboudrias wrote: post #114
300bps wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the other thing we can do is to figure out how to "hack" likability Actually, the key to life is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term.

You seem to know a lot about psychology. What do you call someone who doesn't recognize jokes?

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#117

Post by barry-cotter »

gboudrias wrote: post #114
300bps wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the other thing we can do is to figure out how to "hack" likability Actually, the key to life is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term.

Oh but you can. The unfortunate thing is that keeping on faking it, while possible, is very hard.

People's ideals generally move into conformity with their actions, not the other way round. That's one of the myriad reasons being a spy sucks. If anyone reading was following the police infiltration of left wing groups scandal in the UK, with added sex and dead babies identities the unit involved had a policy of only using married men after one guy never came back. Probably gone native.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#118

Post by mynameishere »

300bps wrote: post #116
gboudrias wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term.

Protip to all non-sociopaths: You can't fake sincerity. Trying will backfire in the long term. You seem to know a lot about psychology. What do you call someone who doesn't recognize jokes?

What do you call someone who posts ancient, moldy quotes?

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#119

Post by Ensorceled »

JSZZHlmumeUE wrote: post #109
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. I suggest you reflect on this. It seems to me that you've convinced yourself that you are good at certain things but there isn't really any evidence supporting your beliefs. When I was younger, I actually used to think like you - that perf evaluation is easy and a good engineer (e.g. me) would be able to evaluate…

I've been managing teams for more than 20 years. Performance evaluation is easy, somebody is either performing well or they are not and a good manager can tell. One of the reason I like Agile is that if it's done right, the whole team can tell who isn't performing.

Performance analysis is incredibly complex and nuanced. Judging if somebody is performing poorly because they are unskilled or not managed properly or having marital problems is hard. Improving performance is even more difficult because it requires the analysis and a remediation plan.

Re: Microsoft does away with stack ranking

#120

Post by SnacksOnAPlane »

JSZZHlmumeUE wrote: post #109
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. I suggest you reflect on this. It seems to me that you've convinced yourself that you are good at certain things but there isn't really any evidence supporting your beliefs. When I was younger, I actually used to think like you - that perf evaluation is easy and a good engineer (e.g. me) would be able to evaluate…

This kind of thinking throws me into infinite loops. I think I'm not such a good developer, which makes me think that I must be a good developer because I recognize my limitations, which makes me think that I'm not such a good developer because I think I'm a good developer, and so on.
Post reply on HN