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Microsoft's 'Cannibalistic Culture'
theodp writes "In the provocatively titled Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant, Vanity Fair offers a teaser for a story that will appear in its August issue on Microsoft's Lost Decade, which promises an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of Steve Ballmer. 'Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed — every one — cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,' contributing editor Karl Eichenwald writes. 'If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,' says a former software developer. 'It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.' Also discussed is the company's loyalty to Windows and Office, which induced a myopia that repeatedly kept Microsoft from jumping on emerging technologies like e-readers and other technology that was effective for consumers. Having seen an advance copy of the full piece, GeekWire offers its take on what it calls an 'epic, accurate and not entirely fair' tale."
I think your parable is very apt. I worked for Microsoft for five years and for three of those I was put in the 10% bucket. The worst was not to be singled out as the poorest employee. The worst was not that it was totally unfair, fundamentally wrong and without any proper motivation. The worst was the bullying that ensued. The managers had nothing that they could motivate it with, since there was nothing wrong with my performance, so they reached for every straw that they could find to try to motivate why I was the bottom performer. Besides pinning other peoples mistakes on me the most popular blame was to give me a really hard time when I did my job really well. Since I worked as a tester (SDET) this was really easy. Every time I found a really good bug (you know, the ones that companies like Google now give out cash rewards for) I got blamed for finding it too late and that it fundamentally was my fault that the bug was there in the first place.
The absolutely biggest regret I have is hanging in there for so long. It is so utterly destructive on your motivation, confidence, happiness and competence to twice per year getting it on paper that you suck and being bullied in between. You can ignore it for a while but in the end it gets you deeper than you could imagine.
One thing that is a bit surprising is that Google evaluate its employees four times per year compared to Microsoft's two. I wonder what consequences that will have...