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Fighting the Forced Ranking of Employees?
Allen asks: "The company I work for has a forced ranking system for performance reviews. Employees are ranked from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, in a bell curve arrangement. Department managers are required to identify: 10% as 5s (excels), 20% as 4's (exceeds), 50% as 3s (fully meets), 15% as 2s (partially meets), and 5% as 1s (requires action). In an department of 100 employees, this means that 5 employees must be identified and labeled as ones, and at least 20 employees as below average. The net result is every employee in the department is competing against their peers to increase (or maintain) their ranking. We're supposed to work together as a team, and support each other to get the product out the door, but the forced ranking system encourages us to instead stomp on each other, and stab each other in the back, in order to secure a higher ranking. That and, after working our collective rears off to get a new product out the door, several of us were given below average rankings that we believe are undeserved. How would you fight a forced ranking system at your job? I enjoy the technology I work on, and I enjoy working with my peers, but this forced ranking system is very demoralizing."
What company do you work for? Unisys has a 1-5 ranking system on a bell curve.
More than enough BS
change jobs. your company's main competitor might be interested in you.
So join 'em. You're going to have to learn the skills necessary to step all over your coworkers in order to claim your spot at the top. You can't beat the system, so you have to play by its rules, or walk out.
1.5 After having found a new job ...
Your burning some bridges here. While I don't disagree this is a nice action I'd be sure I have a place to work before I started complaining.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
The company I work for uses a similar rating system, but requires peer reviews to be supplied to your manager to be rolled into your official review. Normally, each person writes 2-3 reviews for his peers / managers, and they have 2-3 peers write reviews for them. This means that a large part of your official review is how much you helped other team members. It's kind of a pain in the ass during review period, but it tends to almost completely eliminate the backstabbing described in the original post.
Dan
I swear to god, you get the worst career advice on this site. No wonder everyone here always bitches about their jobs, or not being able to find a job, etc. You cannot have the arrogant attitude so many geeks have and expect to do well in the workplace.
It's a small world out there. NEVER leave a job without 2 weeks notice unless it's an emergency (or you're being sexually harasses, etc). That's your professional obligation, and if you ignore it, it may come back to bite you in the ass big-time. Never burn a bridge you don't have to, not matter how unfair, exploitative, or justplain lousy a former employer was.
You aren't burning bridges.
At this point, the bridges are *already* charred
hunks of ash held together by rusted nails.
Recognize that the corporation's personnel department
has placed your team on the far side of a chasm and
applied flame throwers to the trestle.
If this behavior is not corrected immediately by higher
level management, where "immediately" is "fast enough
that the question of retroactive pay adjustment never
has to come up" -- then the corporate management has
watched the bridge burn, probably roasting marshmellows,
and is refusing to build another.
Really. If you get into small groups, or have something whose distribution is non-normal there is absolutely no guarantee that the results will be normal, or even approximately normal. A sample standard deviation, from a small sample, will have an F-distribution, for example.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Next time you want to know about statistics, ask a statistician, not a bloody engineer.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.