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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?

#61

Post by hyperpape »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #45
Metrop0218 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need something more quantifiable than that when you're running a giant organization... Your approach would absolutely work in a startup of 20 people or less, but try that in the 10,000+ man Operating Systems Division at Microsoft and you'll run into some crazy logistics problems.

hiring/firing/raises can be done in small groups by their managers. What's crazy about that?

Managers squabble over the best developers. They fight to transfer their worst developers to each other, and don't let talented developers go work on other projects that interest them.

Every group gets the same number of raises, regardless of their performance, or effective developers in poor groups get nothing.

Stack ranking sounds like a shitty system, without a doubt. But I don't think you can have a well grounded opinion until you think about the issues it's trying to address.

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#62

Post by berntb »

crazcarl wrote: post #46
Metrop0218 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think opponents of stack ranking generally overlook this fact. Yes, it's terrible if you have a 5 person team, but the data becomes more normal as you add more people.

How do you know the data becomes more normal as your add more people? Especially if you are performing the rankings independently on each individual. If you feel like your company is hiring against a certain set of high standards, are your employees at the low end of the 'normalized' curve holding you back as much as the people at the high end are pushing you forward?

If we put it this way, you answer your own question: :-)

>> How do you know the data becomes more normal as your add [data points]?

That said, yeah this is crazy.

The worst problem with stack ratings is not what it do (firing people which don't work out will happen, it is often good even for those fired).

The worst problem is that it destroys team culture as it is described at Microsoft: "if you're in a too good team, switch or you'll be fired." It gets hard for managers to build good teams when the individuals even have an incentive to sabotage each others. And so on.

Edit: The first part had a ":-)" on it. I think that is not interesting, compared to the idea of being in a team with people that have motivation to screw their team mates over. Like being in prison or playing the Paranoia RPG (an orc in Sauron's army?)

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#63

Post by rm445 »

cnahr wrote: post #38

It seems to me that stack ranking can only work for companies that are so attractive for new talent that any new hires are likely to be more valuable than the lowest-ranked current employees. Once a company is no longer so attractive, as seems to be the case with Microsoft today, you're actually pushing out better talent in exchange for worse.

Eh? Do you really think their pool of applicants is worsening quickly enough that a bottom-10% performer is better than the median new applicant? They still have bags of money to pay people, you know.

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#65

Post by Retric »

berntb wrote: post #62
crazcarl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the data becomes more normal as your add more people? Especially if you are performing the rankings independently on each individual. If you feel like your company is hiring against a certain set of high standards, are your employees at the low end of the 'normalized' curve holding you back as much as the people at the high end are pushing you forward?

If we put it this way, you answer your own question: :-) >> How do you know the data becomes more normal as your add [data points]? That said, yeah this is crazy. The worst problem with stack ratings is not what it do (firing people which don't work out will happen, it is often good even for those fired). The worst problem is that it destroys team culture as it is described at Microsoft: "if you're in a too good team…

Not all data fit's a bell curve. In fact most does not which is a real issue that's ignored by way to many people.

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#66

Post by CamperBob2 »

thwarted wrote: post #25
CamperBob2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. So don't complain when your kid gets expelled from the second grade for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "Bang."

That's not a problem with documentation, that's a problem with what is documented.

But documentation never shrinks, any more than production code does. It becomes a substitute for thinking. Zero-tolerance policies and stack ranking both seem like good examples.

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#67

Post by fizx »

brown9-2 wrote: post #6

The 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've wondered if recursively propagating down "bonus points" would be a fair way of solving this.

For example, Acme, Inc ranks on a 1-5 scale, and all things being equal, a manager will get (direct reports)x3 points to allocate for his performance reviews.

But Acme has a good quarter due to a strong engineering effort, so the CEO decides that Bob, VP of Eng, gets a 4, and he gets to allocate (direct reports)x4 points among his directors, who each get to allocate (their score)x(their direct reports), and so on.

I think there needs to be some adjustment to the equations, because it doesn't make sense that everyone under a superstar also should be rated a 5. But I like the general idea of having groups be accountable as a group, and having that propagate downwards into the organization.

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#68

Post by noir_lord »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #57
jellicle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers have a bias to like and want to keep "their" employees, because they know them, because they are friends with them. Even if Steve is objectively a poor performer, you know him; you met his wife; you saw pictures of his kids. He's a nice guy. If you fire him, you either don't get a replacement (bad) or you have to interview 20 people to find a replacement (also bad). It's hard to hire - what if you choose poo…

You've just described not one, but two bad managers. Steve's manager, who doesn't have what it takes to make the hard decisions and is to lazy to do job interviews, and the manager of Steve's manager, who won't let him get a replacement if he fires Steve, but is perfectly willing to keep paying for Steve. Now you can defend Steve's manager because he's nice to Steve, but if I had a dime for every employee who's pisse…

but if I had a dime for every employee who's pissed at their manager for not ditching the underperformer that's dragging the team down I would be rich.

I've worked places where every person would swear a different person was that person.

This stuff is hard, We've had corporations in the modern form for nearly a 100 years and we still havent reached a general solution which implies either everyone is an idiot or this is just a messy problem :).

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#69

Post by humanrebar »

hyperpape wrote: post #61
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hiring/firing/raises can be done in small groups by their managers. What's crazy about that?

Managers squabble over the best developers. They fight to transfer their worst developers to each other, and don't let talented developers go work on other projects that interest them. Every group gets the same number of raises, regardless of their performance, or effective developers in poor groups get nothing. Stack ranking sounds like a shitty system, without a doubt. But I don't think you can have a well grounded…

Let managers release under-performing developers to "the bench", where they can be picked up by teams that need some new blood. People on the bench are cheaper to "hire" than people from outside, so managers have an incentive to prefer picking them up.

Managers don't "let" developers do anything. They have to actually have leadership skills (or enough budget) to keep their good engineers around by choice. Effective developers on poor teams find more attractive offers. Sometimes this will involve bonuses or raises. Sometimes this will involve more influence over product direction.

Obviously some sort of ground rules are needed (significant others on different teams, no kickbacks).

Re: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's stack ranking system?

#70

Post by [deleted] »

brown9-2 wrote: post #6

The 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.

[deleted]
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