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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#611

Post by andrewla »

bradlys wrote: post #599
andrewla wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Microsoft in particular, stack ranking has always been used in the sense of trying to put together a rough ordering of employees at similar levels. But "stack ranking" in scare quotes at Microsoft referred to the specific practice of the 20/70/10 rule -- the top 20% were the standouts, 70% was fine, and 10% was "this person needs to be eased out". This was applied for any org with more than a certain minimum numbe…

This is pretty much what I see at almost every company I’ve been at in the last decade though… The review process is always toxic and has always lead to my peers in the industry being more likely to sabotage than help me since that’s the best way to look good in reviews. That with 80% of my peers being permanent H1B means they will do whatever it takes to stay employed. I would be happy to know big tech companies tha…

I would argue that Microsoft's original practice (without the 20/70/10) is actually pretty good. Have managers make subjective evaluations, merge them together at higher level meetings, and then work out compensation from there.

There's a big cottage industry of trying to back everything up with data, to provide actionable feedback, etc., and these end up being giant time-wasting cover-your-ass exercises, which always end in an uncomfortable non-working system for everyone -- "I did the thing you asked but my review is the same as last year, why aren't I getting promoted". Mentorship and growth has to be more than just "here are your goals". Peer reviews can be okay, but only if you force people to make judgments -- "rank these three people against each other" rather than "give these people a rating 1-10 in each of these five areas".

The subjective evaluation process doesn't work unless you trust your managers, though. And that invariable means that it doesn't scale.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#613

Post by krisoft »

randomdata wrote: post #609
lesuorac wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, all your baristas working a graveyard shift are going to be at the bottom of the stack ranking in terms of revenue/time. What do you now do?

What do you do in athletics? Do you tell the kids (graveyard shift) they aren't allowed to participate in sports anymore because they can't compete with the big leagues (peak hours)? Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

> What do you do in athletics?

Why do you talk about athletics? Baristas are not athletes. Coffee shops are not the olympics. You are stretching this analogy beyond its usefullness.

> I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others? Thank you.

To address the meat of your comment. It sounds like you are proposing to grade the baristas working the bad shifts and the good shifts separately in different "leagues". The problem with that is that assumes that you are aware of all the factors which form the different leagues. If there are clear "night time" vs "daytime" barista groups that works. but if you just assign baristas as scheduling works out then you will realise that some people (randomly, and through no fault of their own) will be assigned to the slower shifts. Will you fire a perfectly good barista who is meeting the expectations of your establishment just because scheduling worked against them in that evaluation period? That is what stack ranking did in the case of microsoft.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#614

Post by lesuorac »

randomdata wrote: post #609
lesuorac wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, all your baristas working a graveyard shift are going to be at the bottom of the stack ranking in terms of revenue/time. What do you now do?

What do you do in athletics? Do you tell the kids (graveyard shift) they aren't allowed to participate in sports anymore because they can't compete with the big leagues (peak hours)? Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

I mean you do tell the kids they can't participate (in that league). There are woman playing ice hockey but none of them have survived an interview (professional try out with an NHL team and so they've all been told no.

---

It's novel because it's not how its done.

It's a big part of the stack rank hate is that people just blindly rank everybody and then adjust compensation that way. Taking more granular detail into account just isn't done.

But also because you're hired to do a job. If you do the criteria of the job then you should get a satisfactory rating. Similar to test taking, if you demonstrate knowledge of the material then you should pass. If you got 99/100 questions right and everybody else got 100/100 then you shouldn't get an F despite you being the worse of the group.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#615

Post by randomdata »

krisoft wrote: post #613
randomdata wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do in athletics? Do you tell the kids (graveyard shift) they aren't allowed to participate in sports anymore because they can't compete with the big leagues (peak hours)? Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

> What do you do in athletics? Why do you talk about athletics? Baristas are not athletes. Coffee shops are not the olympics. You are stretching this analogy beyond its usefullness. > I'm surprised this idea is novel to you. Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others? Thank you. To address the meat of your comment. It sounds like you are proposing to grade the baristas working the bad shifts…

> Why do you talk about athletics?

Because that's what the discussion is about...? Did you forget to read the thread?

> Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others?

If words shown on a computer screen are putting you down, it's time to go outside. You've lost your sense of reality.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#617

Post by marcosdumay »

dblohm7 wrote: post #579
toyg wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the company seems fully baked I to LLMs with everything they do chasing that Them along absolutely everyone else . ChatGPT was an iPhone moment.

> Them along absolutely everyone else. ChatGPT was an iPhone moment. Old guy here, but it feels more like a Netscape moment than an iPhone moment. We'll end up with our pets.com of the LLM age, the whole thing will implode, and the few companies that were actually doing useful stuff with LLMs will survive.

Except that LLMs have way worse unitary economics than the web or a phone's app store.

What comes back to the old data-inefficiency of machine learning. There hasn't been visible improvement on this, and it is looking more and more as a fundamental limitation of AI.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#618

Post by randomdata »

lesuorac wrote: post #614
randomdata wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do in athletics? Do you tell the kids (graveyard shift) they aren't allowed to participate in sports anymore because they can't compete with the big leagues (peak hours)? Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

I mean you do tell the kids they can't participate (in that league). There are woman playing ice hockey but none of them have survived an interview (professional try out with an NHL team and so they've all been told no. --- It's novel because it's not how its done. It's a big part of the stack rank hate is that people just blindly rank everybody and then adjust compensation that way. Taking more granular detail into…

> Taking more granular detail into account just isn't done.

Where'd you dream up that idea? I operate a restaurant, so I at least have first-hand experience in overseeing barista-like workers, and I don't know how you could possibly ignore such details?

I'm sure I'm not perfect at it. I'm certainly not accurately capturing the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa. But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#619

Post by hilux »

toyg wrote: post #513
hilux wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On day 1 of the transition after Steve, the stock jumped like crazy & continued that momentum. Many people would interpret that as "investors had no faith in Steve Ballmer and were delighted to see his back." Do you have a different interpretation? Also, you seem to be implying that the trial was some external event, and not directly the fault of Bill and Steve. That is not how most people felt at the time.

> implying that the trial was some external event In many ways, it was. The political stars aligned "just so", in a way we've not really seen before or since. Many, many other companies got away with much more egregious behaviour (hello, Apple).

Apple does not have the percentage ownership of the market that Microsoft had with both Windows and Office. And to my knowledge Apple operates out in the open, i.e. they do not lie to everyone, and do not bundle shitty products with monopoly products in the way that Microsoft habitually did - and may still do.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#620

Post by throw16180339 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #377
pensatoio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm going to the US in a couple of weeks and I'm already abhorring the prospect of spending some time looking at the specific tipping requirements of the state I'm going to, to then spend a week awkwardly guessing if I'm tipping enough, too much, or offending someone in the process; while having uncomfortable feelings about the people serving me food, drink, tour guidance, etc. (on the one hand because they all seem…

If you don't want to think about it, just consistently tip 20%. It's generous and no one will complain.
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