Ask Slashdot: How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

jmcbain writes "I'm a former Microsoftie, and one thing I really despised about the company is the 'stack ranking' employee evaluation system that was succinctly captured in a recent Vanity Fair article on the company. Stack ranking is basically applying a forced curve distribution on all employees at the same level, so management must place some percentage of employees into categories of overperforming, performing on average, and underperforming. Even if it's an all-star team doing great work, some folks will be marked as underperforming. Frankly, this really sucked. I know this practice gained popularity with GE in the 1980s and is being used by some (many?) Fortune 500 companies. Does your company do this? What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Comments

Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to survive is not to play the game.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is not a dupe, the original story was about Microsoft and it's staff ranking policy. This story is about someone who went through that experience and is asking slashdot readers what their experience was of surviving similar situations.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Eraesr]

yours? Is that something in between hours, years and French days?

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

Both stories are about people who went through the experience of stack ranking. It's a dupe.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[piripiri]

Both stories are stories. It's a dupe.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[flyneye]

How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

Seldom! Reviews are the time that raises are brought up.
Betting most places are like that. Our "yearly" reviews come every 18 months, if at all.
Wanna see someone sidestep like a politician? Ask a suit " when are reviews coming?"

Re:Like nuclear war.

[flyneye]

From her to eternity.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

By how much pleasuring one gives to higher management by sucking their cocks.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[paiute]

Both dupes are duped. It's a trap.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[hal2814]

Indeed. I survive just fine using the Ty Webb method:

Judge Smails: Ty, how was your evaluation?
Ty Webb: Oh, Judge, I don't keep score.
Judge Smails: Then how do you measure yourself with other workers?
Ty Webb: By height.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[The Snowman]

How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

Seldom! Reviews are the time that raises are brought up.
Betting most places are like that. Our "yearly" reviews come every 18 months, if at all.
Wanna see someone sidestep like a politician? Ask a suit " when are reviews coming?"

In five and a half years, I have received exactly two performance evaluations. I also received one flat raise aside from that, not tied to performance: everyone in the company got 2.5%.

Three raises in over five years: doing the math, I see that my salary, adjusting for inflation, is only slightly greater than it was when I was hired.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[methano]

I used to work for lly, a big pharmaceutical company. Somebody there was a big fan of Jack Welch and they instituted that curve fitting thing. The big problem was that I worked at a remote site under a director at the main site in Indianapolis. So when they needed to get bodies to put in the bottom bucket, they always got them from the remote site. Eventually, they nuked the entire site. That's why I replied to "Like nuclear war" post.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[bjourne]

Disturbingly, there is a lot of truth to that statement. That's why formalized performance reviews are a good thing, otherwise height easily unconciously becomes the only factor taken into account. It also suggests that the best way for both men and women to improve their work performance is to wear high heeled shoes. The corporate world is a funny place. :)

Re:Like nuclear war.

[frosty_tsm]

How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance? Seldom! Reviews are the time that raises are brought up. Betting most places are like that. Our "yearly" reviews come every 18 months, if at all. Wanna see someone sidestep like a politician? Ask a suit " when are reviews coming?"

In five and a half years, I have received exactly two performance evaluations. I also received one flat raise aside from that, not tied to performance: everyone in the company got 2.5%.

Three raises in over five years: doing the math, I see that my salary, adjusting for inflation, is only slightly greater than it was when I was hired.

One former employer of mine was going to do annual performance reviews without any merit (or fixed) raises. That night I went home to polish my resume, which has lead me to my current (and much better) employment situation.

Some employers can't afford to give raises because the financials aren't looking so great. Remember that a raise today means they will pay X extra per year for each employee until they leave since formal pay cuts are not generally part of our culture. This is one reason why bonuses can be an attractive alternative for companies (less commitment). Maybe the stock options have potential down the road. Other employers are just stingy (penny-wise, pound foolish when it comes to what kind of workers they will retain).

Re:Like nuclear war.

[s73v3r]

One of the few good things about my previous company, or maybe just one of the many good things about my previous boss, was that he was very good at getting our semi-annual review done in a reasonable amount of time. It might be late from when the company wanted us to have it, but we're talking only a couple of weeks. And contrary to many of the other managers in the company, he actually put quite a bit of thought into the review. He might not put every negative thing into the blurb that the higher ups would read, but he'd definitely make sure that I knew he noticed it, and gave guidance on how to correct it.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[tompaulco]

Three raises in over five years: doing the math, I see that my salary, adjusting for inflation, is only slightly greater than it was when I was hired.
Wow, that is two more raises than I have had in 6 years. My salary, adjusted for inflation is much lower than when I was hired. And that is considering government numbers for inflation when actual inflation has been more like 15% a year.
I say raises, what I should say is adjustments. Raises are when you get something above and beyond a COLA. A COLA does not give you a raise, as your standard of living remains the same (or goes down because the government lies about inflation).

Re:Like nuclear war.

[flyneye]

Yup, things are tough all over.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, more and more people are arrested for selling drugs, who never previously even used drugs. Scams and prostitution abound fueled by homelessness which came from recent home loan antics. People will survive independent of the foolish legislation of their respective governments.
Just follow the dots and you know what part of government to blame and which Obama to ridicule for his foolhardy socialist philosophy.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a 2.5% raise every year for 5 years is far below inflation. You've lost considerable earning power buddy, you are poorer now than you were when you started. (Doesn't matter what currency you're being paid in or where you are living.)

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

To answer the poster's original question: "Does Your Company Do This?".

I've worked at Intel and, yes, they do this.

A friend of mine worked at LSI logic, he told me that they do this also.

Sucks when a company pushes the "work as a team" concept to know that at the end of the year, someone was going to get screwed anyway. Intel also had "trending" to help identify future rising and falling stars.
Did well in your past two reviews? You're a rising star! Did OK in your past two reviews, you're a falling star. Here, let me show you the door.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can identify with this. I used to work in a business development field organization. Our job was to work with customers, identify opportunities, help win. I was directly contributing to millions of dollars of new business each year. But because I was not located at Corp HQ, I was not one of the "in crowd", and got average ratings. All 100% horse squeeze, as Neal Boortz puts it.

Re:Like nuclear war.

[TangoMargarine]

So don't have a job?

Easy answer for non-americans

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What's the best way to survive this type of system?

It's called a union.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Thanshin]

Or bombing the car of the guy who proposed it.

But a union is better.

And if it comes to it, a union can hire the bomb guy.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Nerdfest]

From what I've seen, unions only ensure than people end up not being fired even if they *are* completely useless, while paying them the same regardless of ability. It's not a solution, just a different problem. A sane company would just evaluate their employees and keep them (or not) based on their individual merits.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Arancaytar]

But... but... socialism!

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Unions grow in power where employee rights legislation falls short of what people expect. Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.

They are the solution of last resort, that people turn to when there is no other way to protect themselves.

The correct way to deal with problematic unions is to have reasonable employee rights legislation and maintain it for long enough that nobody cares about joining unions anymore.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[amck]

Get involved in the Union.

Seriously. Any powerbase will be abused.
Unions are democratic (or at least are supposed to be) representatives of their members. You don't get to stand back and do nothing, and pretend the unions doing silly things aren't you're fault or you're problem.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mwvdlee]

What's the best way to survive this type of system?

A race for the bottom.
If everybody performs badly, they still have to label some as overperformers.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

My company doesn't recognise unions, so it doesn't help.We stack rank. We have high performing teams and telling someone they got a low score doesn't correlate. Additionally, after successive rounds of redundancy we've left ourselves with all "top performers" in roles we "have" to keep. How can you stack rank that?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[guises]

This is well said. Nobody wants a union, they add bureaucracy, inefficiency, and they cost their members dues, but that's where people are sometimes forced to turn when employee abuse gets out of control. They're not great, but they're better than the alternative.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[amck]

My reply had been to the GP, about union problems.

Anyway, if they insist on stack ranking, then hire (or transfer) someone in to be the bottom of the pile. Game theory is the only way to play silly games.

A previous boss of mine (in IT, an American employer) did something like this. Played internal politics and "transferred" someone from another group in the company (we shared our building with multiple groups from the same multinational). It was understood that the company would play silly games like this, and the person in question kept working for group B, but technically belonged to our cost centre, and was there as ballast to be made redundant when the 10% chop came around. He knew it, and was already working on his plan B (planning his own company, I believe, which would be ready the moment he got his redundancy money).

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[TimeOut42]

I agree, unions are awesome. I allows mediocre employees to receive the same compensation as the excellent employees.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Stargoat]

There also has to be some strong blame pointed at HR as well. HR budgets for certain amounts of raises (rises) and firings. They do not care what it does for productivity and employee morale so long as they stay within their budget.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Self employment.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ciderbrew]

We can do this is we all don't work together together.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Reschekle]

I don't think the concept of a union is necessarily bad. I know the long history of the workers rights movement and how badly employees were treated.

However, the states that have the highest rates of union membership tend to be the places that are the most liberal and tend to swing towards being very supportive of workers' rights and interests. Unions have not declined in those states and these are the places where out of control unions are seen the most.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ais523]

This could be the result of the reverse effect to the one you're implying. Unions can wield a huge amount of political power if they have a large enough membership (like happened in the UK a few decades ago); this tends to increase the chance of union-friendly politicians being elected. A bit like campaign donations in the US, just a different method of manipulating the outcome. Is it possible to check whether the out of control unions, or workers' rights support, came first?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

As with almost every problem the answer comes down to liberty. Unions are great IF they don't have laws written to give them special rights. A union should exist as a group of people freely associating to promote their self interests. But when laws are written to force people to join if they want to work in an industry that leads to corruption. This goes the other way too. There are some laws which prohibit employers from basing hiring on union status. That violates the employees rights as well. If there is a free union of electricians and they provide member training and other benefits and their members have a reputation of excellence an employer should be allowed to require employees join that union.

Problems always arise when you take something that is good when it's done voulentarily and use force.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[bazorg]

I don't know about ending the need for unions. We don't need to have permanent pain to go to the dentist and we don't need the threat of permanent litigation to have a lawyer retained. Why should we dismiss the services of unions when things are going well? When the litigation or conflict arises, it is certain that the company will have a legal representative, why should the employee think it's all going to be friendly and everyone will be complying with the relevant laws because the legislation is clear and fair enough?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Right, so use a government solution to the problem that is created by the government, the problem of lack of savings, lack of investment and thus lack of competition. The problem of barriers to entry into business, problem of licensing, problem of taxing, problem of regulating... you are going to solve that problem with more of the same.

Do you know what one of the definitions of insanity is? Doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes.

How about legalising freedom again, legalising competition?

Legalising freedom, as in freedom from government in business and money? How about shutting down the Federal reserve and thus allowing the people to set interest rates, so people can build up real savings and look for opportunities to invest into actual productive businesses?

How about allowing the market to regenerate by writing off the bad debts and not bailing out the companies that failed? How about not crowding out all investments by printing fake money that go towards banks, which then lend to the only entity that is capable of a nominal return in this market - the Treasury, because the interest rates are fake and no business and no startup can get a loan from a bank, because all real money is gone and there is only fake money and it goes from the Fed to the failed banks and from the banks to the Treasury?

How about getting rid of regulations and all income and corporate taxes that prevent people from investing, seriously downsizing the government to the point where it is actually affordable and can do only a couple of small things that really a society needs from its government (occupying the space that tyranny wants to occupy, while setting the checks and balances that would prevent the tyranny from actually growing again)?

Too hard I guess, the real fundamental change is too hard and it will not be brought upon by a conscious decision, it will only result from a complete collapse of the current system.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Gonoff]

Nobody wants a union.

You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Kookus]

Just like with healthcare, unless you're forced, you don't want to join. Who wants to spend 70 bucks of their paycheck every month for something they perceive as doing nothing for them? The power of the union comes from the collective. If your collective is only 25 to 30% of the working force, guess what? You're expendable.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Damn Auto-correct and my failure to proofread.

You are correct.

Should have read. - There are some laws which prohibit employers from basing hiring on union status. That violates the employers rights as well.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen, unions only ensure than people end up not being fired even if they *are* completely useless

Better someone useless stay on the job then the company have the hire/fire practices of most companies in my 'Right to Work' state (MN). There are companies here that hire people by the dozens and fire them before their 90 days are up for no other reason then they can. Good jobs, too, and big companies (United Health, 3M).

... while paying them the same regardless of ability.

Again, pay should not be a mystery based on some stupid agreement you have with your manager. It should be right out there in the open for everyone to see.

It's not a solution, just a different problem. A sane company would just evaluate their employees and keep them (or not) based on their individual merits.

In which world do you live? In mine 'sane' companies have only one responsibility - to the shareholders. Workers be damned. If they can get a few extra dollars per share by jacking around the employees then so be it. I wish I live in your rose-colored world, boy/

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[AchilleTalon]

Free unions would never work and never survive the first attempt to a strike. Those, not members of the union will claim the right to still work and the employer will finally just hire those which aren't member of the union or are not showing any interest to be member of a union. Sorry, but this game is a all or nothing game.

Corruption exists everywhere and isn't particular to unions which aren't free. That's an oversimplification to say so.

Corruption exists at the corporate level either.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Hognoxious]

- you can't violate somebody's right if you are not a government. Rights are a meaningless concept outside of the relationship between an individual and the collective (gov't). How does a person violate your right?

I have a right to free movement. Someone stands in front of me and intentionally blocks me from moving.

He's violating my rights the same whether he's a police officer, a store detective or a drunken beggar. Only one of those is p[art of teh gubmint.

When you make retarded shit like this up are you actually aware you're doing it?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[stewbacca]

Saying that a business or an individual who refuses to hire you because you are associated with somebody is a violation of your right completely mises another point. If you can force a person to hire somebody that the employer doesn't want to associate with, then you are violating the right of an employer to free association as well.

Which is why government has to step in with regulation via those pesky "protected classes". Sure, the business can't deny anyone of rights, but the government can by not regulating that business and forcing the business to comply with federal law.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[drooling-dog]

A union should exist as a group of people freely associating to promote their self interests

Unions aren't social clubs; they exist so that labor can deal with management on a level playing field in the process of collective bargaining. The purpose of "right to work" laws is not to promote "freedom" from association for workers, as the name suggests. Those laws exist to destroy unions by permitting workers to benefit from collective bargaining without contributing to the process. If you look at who promotes them, you'll find precious little evidence that they were motivated by any concern for the rights, welfare, or safety of working people.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Hognoxious]

The point, which you appear to have missed my several thousand feet, is that if you have decent management (or at least a set of laws which compel them to act in a decent way) there'd simply be no need for unions.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[bigstrat2003]

Most people (that could afford it) chose to get health insurance of their own free will; they didn't need to be forced.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Prof.Phreak]

Self employment.

This is spot on. You can't even be ``fired''---the worst folks can do is not extend your contract (just as bad for you, but technically, not ``fired''). I've also never seen consultants escorted out the door by security... yet I've seen that to TONS of employees on their pink-slip day. With corporations, its like that portal song, ``We do what we must because we can.''

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[stewbacca]

While I agree with your sentiment 100%, keep in mind that the types of industry that use Unions are those where the workers are viewed as expendable, regardless if they are highly productive or totally worthless. In the eyes of the working man, the big bad rich guy has plenty of profit to give said working man a small raise for being loyal and productive. In the eyes of the rich man, he can hire a low skilled 18-year old for half the pay. I see the point in both views (and am not making any judgment either way), which is why we need Unions and arbitration.

Personally, I'd never work in an industry that depended on their Union (which is why I'm a private industry technology educator and not in public education).

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[stewbacca]

Unions grow in power where employee rights legislation falls short of what people expect

Well stated. I've always thought, if government did its job properly, there'd be no need for unions.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[bigstrat2003]

Clarify, please. Because I think he's right: nobody wants a union for its own sake, they want a union for what it can do for them. If you're getting those benefits from something other than a union, then you'd be crazy to want a union.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[drooling-dog]

Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.

If you study the history of the labor movement and management/labor relations in the U.S., you'd realize how absurd that statement is. Owners, management, and labor are all eating from the same plate. It's the job of owners and management to keep the workers' share as small as possible, and this is best done by keeping them afraid of losing what little they've got.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[dpilot]

I'm glad to know that. I had been thinking that corporations could use financial coercion against people, especially in times of tight employment, but now you've set me straight.

It's good to know that the Golden Rule doesn't really exist, that only government can do bad things like that.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

Nobody wants a union.

You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.

1. Tell that to the UAW.

2. How long have you been waiting for an opportunity to say that?

If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently, why would I want to join a union? Yes, unions have their place (in particular where labor laws have been defficient), but their place is not universal (and in our recent history, they have proved to be detrimental, degenerating themselves from worker unions down to self-perpetuating cartels of nepotism.) I have no problems with unions in, say, Brazil. But here (the way many unions act), you bet I do have a problem.

Don't just look from the POV of your country's conditions. Look at it from our current conditions. We Americans typically get accused of looking at the world strictly from our biased eyes, but you don't seem capable of acting differently (at least in this particular topic.)

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you "speical"?

If I steal from you I violate your right to your property, I don't have to be a government to be violating your rights.

if I run a chemical plant and release toxic gas into your neighbourhood I can be violating your right to life.

If I abduct you and lock you up I can be violating your right to freedom of movement.

Governments aren't special. Companies or even individuals can violate peoples rights just the same.

When the government forbids someone from locking you up they don't "steal their right to freedom.". believe it or not the world does not revolve around you. other people have right too and sometimes those rights can outweigh other rights you'd like to have.

The right to property is no less artifical and no more important than the right to be free from discrimination or the right to life.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.

If you study the history of the labor movement and management/labor relations in the U.S., you'd realize how absurd that statement is. Owners, management, and labor are all eating from the same plate. It's the job of owners and management to keep the workers' share as small as possible, and this is best done by keeping them afraid of losing what little they've got.

This is true (and originally identified by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations"). However, the point of unions wasn't just simply to increase wages (and in many cases, it was not at all). It was first and foremost, about better working conditions (.ie. not being required to work on a coal mine 7 days a week) and protection from unreasonable termination (.ie. because you refused to or physically couldn't work another sunday after working 7 days a week for months.)

It doesn't matter what the genesis of the unions was. What matter is the role of unions with respect to the private enterprise once reasonable labor laws are in effect TODAY. At that point, stewbacca's statement is right: a union's place is to be in partnership with companies, not to act as enemies. After all, it is companies who supply their jobs, and labor laws ensure abuses do not take place. So absent of corner cases and violations, a union's insistence in seeing a company as its enemy is simply not acceptable.

Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

In which world do you live? In mine 'sane' companies have only one responsibility - to the shareholders. Workers be damned. If they can get a few extra dollars per share by jacking around the employees then so be it. I wish I live in your rose-colored world, boy/

My experience in the US has not been like that. True that companies have responsibility to the shareholders (and I've seen my share of layoffs), but I've never this methodical cannibalism against workers (specially more so with talented workers.) I won't say that it doesn't exist, but to presume that this is the general modus operandi of the private sector is a bit of a stretch. Simple explanations to perceived problems sound appealing. But their appeal does not guarantee their soundness.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Greyfox]

Unions gave us weekends, ended child labor and are one of the reasons so many employers offer health care. I hear a lot of whining here about 60+ hour work weeks. That's one of the reasons you unionize.

About 10 years ago a bunch of IBM employees got bent out of shape about changes in the pension plan and threatened to unionize. They were picketing and everything. I've never seen upper management's butts pucker faster than when talk of that was going around. It was a while ago and I don't recall exactly what happened, but I think some concessions were made and the union talk died down.

I'm pretty sure every IT shop on the planet is terrified of this happening. While unlikely because most IT workers are also lone gunmen, eventually someone is going to push their employees a little too far. It'll be interesting to see what happens when that happens.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[jellomizer]

Actually, I have seen Unioned companies more apt to layoff workers than non-unioned ones. Unions self interest is based on increasing the number of Union Members, so it will tend to agree at the bargaining table, to layoff the expensive skilled workers, so it can bring on twice as much unskilled labor. For the unskilled labor there is the usually 90 days, if we like you we will keep you other wise you are out, which means after 90 days if there is any question on the employees skill, they are out, because it makes a situation where it is too risky to take a wait and see. Also because the company needs to disclose all its workforce decisions to the Union, they need to take very detailed records, and a stricter policies of work conduct, to prove why you choose what you did, creating an environment where employees need to go threw a lot of red tape.
You move from a system of what you do right will reward you to a system what you do wrong will fire you. A good Union employee is one who does what he is told to do and nothing more.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[1u3hr]

- you can't violate somebody's right if you are not a government. Rights are a meaningless concept outside of the relationship between an individual and the collective (gov't).

Complete rubbish.

Individuals can deprive others of rights, and do so frequently.

If you kill me, you have deprived me of my right to life. If you imprison me, you have deprived me of my right to free movement. If a father refuse to send a child to school, he has deprived it of its right to education. Etc, etc.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Let me get this straight. There are non union members that want to work for a company and the company wants to hire them. This is a two way voluntarily exchange. You somehow claim you have a superior right to a job with that company so you initiate the use of force to prevent those workers from working and prevent the company from hiring. And you claim this is good?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Unions aren't social clubs; they exist so that labor can deal with management on a level playing field in the process of collective bargaining.

Fine. Do it without the use of force.

The purpose of "right to work" laws is not to promote "freedom" from association for workers, as the name suggests. Those laws exist to destroy unions by permitting workers to benefit from collective bargaining without contributing to the process. If you look at who promotes them, you'll find precious little evidence that they were motivated by any concern for the rights, welfare, or safety of working people.

I am against "right to work" laws as well, I had a typo in my original post. You are right as to their purpose. They are a violation of the employers rights to hire who they want to. If an employer wants to only hire union members they should be free to do so. If the employees in a company organize a voluntarily union and negotiate a contract with an employer that states they will only hire union members that is a voluntary contract and should be upheld. But in that negotiation an employer should not be forced to bargain with the union. If they want to fire everyone and start over with new hires that is their right as well unless it violates an existing contract.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[1u3hr]

Well stated. I've always thought, if government did its job properly, there'd be no need for unions.

Business have lobbyists to influence government to pass legislation favouring them. They form associations specifically to do this. How are individual workers supposed to have their voice heard, let alone taken notice of if they don't form a collective to speak for them to both government and employers? Without unions continually exerting pressure, workers will lose more and more rights.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[JBHarris]

The difference you seem to forget is that the police not only has a literal gun, he has the figurative "force of the law" behind him when he's doing the violating. If the beggar starts to use force to keep you from your freedom of movement, you can use force to stop him. If you use force against the "gubmint", you lose...every time. This is the point you missed.

I have as much power as the drunken beggar or the store detective, but I don't have as much as the officer. If you want to dig a little deeper, the constitution lays it out pretty clearly. "Congress shall make no law" or similar language is found throughout the bill of rights (and the same concept is implied to the infinite other implicit rights not enumerated). It doesn't say that your mom or your priest or boss will keep you from saying certain things, just that congress won't keep you from saying certain things.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate culture outside their software and IT departments is injecting catalytic poison directly into the bloodstream of the tech industry.

A [responsible] union or professional association would cause some deadweight loss from administrative overhead and defensive lobbying, but it would also do a lot to counter some of the endless idiocy generated by people entrusted with too much of other people's money and not enough of their intelligence. I am well aware that companies seeking to hire skilled labor are loudly complaining that there is a dire shortage of qualified workers. But these companies axed their training programs in the 1980s or in any of the subsequent recessions, and then they have the gall to ask for employees who have n years of experience in the exact technologies that their company uses AND do not promote from within.

In the face of this madness, it really takes a union to proclaim that yes, a year of experience in Java is equivalent to a year of experience in C#, and vice versa. It takes a union to tell an employer that any software engineer worth his salt can learn your specific technology stack from back to front before you cut his first paycheck, but you'd better be prepared to pay extra for that guy. The union can also tell them that if you really want to save money on a code monkey that only knows one thing, we can train one for you, but you will have to fund the training.

Otherwise, we as individuals basically have to hunt for companies that DON'T do stupid shit, and they are becoming increasingly hard to find.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... Go Union! I worked for the Post office and Auto Industry!

Then you can sit on your fat ass and get paid the same as the guy who busts his.

What could go wrong?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody wants a union.

You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.

How's that 20+% unemployment working out for you and your union right now?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with unions is when they treat their members as labor units. Instead of trying to get their members a good working environment (Whatever you define that to be), they start dealing their members as something to sell.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all union contracts are that way. Where I work the union contract pay is the MINIMUM amount a worker will be paid. There are other incentives for productivity. I am a union employee, but only 1/2 of my pay is the contracted amount the rest is in incentives, commissions, and merit pay.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, unions are awesome. I allows mediocre employees to receive the same compensation as the excellent employees.

Sounds like someone's working too hard.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Best of luck with that. I worked tirelessly to get one voted in at my company, but during the contract negotiations, the company just stonewalled. They knew that all they had to do was stall long enough to frustrate people and get it voted back out.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Ah. The old free rider effect argument.

I see that you didn't even answer any of the questions I posed most importantly why do you think you have the right to interfere in the voluntary association between an employee and employer?

Your argument could be applied to all types of criminals that use force to get their way. Examples:

There is no way that hot chick would sleep with a bunch of slobs like us so we gang raped her.

I'm lazy and have no self control and I can't save any money. So me and some guys got together and robbed some rich guy. He didn't need the money anyway.

Homosexuality is wrong so me and my buddies beat the crap out of those queers.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Quila]

Unions also become a problem when they become self-serving, more interested in the union itself rather than the people they represent.

Unions become a problem when they become political machines, because they while they represent their workers on one front, they could be lobbying against them on another (using the workers' own money even).

And, of course, when they work against the public good. Take teacher unions. They don't give a damn about the kids, they represent the teachers as they were formed to do. But whenever the interests of the kids conflict with the interests of the teachers, the unions will logically work against the interests of the kids.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not. Statements like that are written by people who have not studied the subject and are not practiced at critical thinking. They believe that common sense and what seems obvious to them at the moment already constitute a sufficient understanding of the issues, precisely because nothing has ever happened to challenge them on this.

"I already know all the important things" is a very common mindset among people who have rarely been challenged and are not self-motivated to study philosophy, law, history, or anything that would really engage critical thinking abilities.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The Screen Actors Guild is proof that it doesn't have to be that way.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Aquitaine]

Unions are democratic

If I don't have a choice about whether to join or not, the fact that you hold an election to decide who gets to be in charge doesn't make it democratic.

I don't have a beef with unions. I have a beef with any organization that is permitted to count me as a supporter and garnish my paycheck without even asking whether or not I would like to be a member. I don't care if you're saving baby unicorns. If you are, you should have no problem convincing me to join.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[spiffmastercow]

Nobody wants a union.

You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.

How's that 20+% unemployment working out for you and your union right now?

Rather well, compared to how it would work out in the US. European countries tend to have social safety nets and such, meaning that, if you lose your job, you don't have to go die in a ditch somewhere.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Well......
If you don't want health insurance, I see it as Dawinism in action really.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[_8553454222834292266]

Get used to replies like that. The standard argument used for force these days is "but I need it to get something i really want!". Nobody will ever address the issue of what right they have to coerce others.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[nosferatu1001]

And in sane countries Employers are not able to fire you without cause

Given the incredible imbalance in the employer employee relationship this acts as a check on companies abilities to fuck with society more than they already do.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[spiffmastercow]

Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.

Sometimes they have good reason for seeing them as an enemy...

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[tehcyder]

We should never have let the fucking Mayflower leave port, but should have blown it out of the water with the tragic loss of all aboard.

At least now I'd be lectured to by pompous twats writing in French and platitudes sound much better in that language.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[dlp211]

You do know that you are never forced to join the union right, not in a legal sense at least. A company may hire anyone it wants, but as an employee you may be required to pay the union as you receive benefits directly derived from the unions existence.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[tehcyder]

Let me get this straight. There are non union members that want to work for a company and the company wants to hire them. This is a two way voluntarily exchange. You somehow claim you have a superior right to a job with that company so you initiate the use of force to prevent those workers from working and prevent the company from hiring. And you claim this is good?

It's better than the alternative, which is having no unions, or unions with no power to do anything

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[radtea]

Unions are great IF they don't have laws written to give them special rights.

Unlike corporations, then.

Unions exist with special legal status precisely because corporations exist with special legal status.

A corporation is not a "a group of people freely associating to promote their self-interests": it is an inherently coercive organization protected by the full legal muscle of the various Companies Acts around the world. When a person employed by a corporation interacts with someone outside the corporation they are protected by a shield of laws that completely over-rides the ordinary operations of free behaviour.

So, if you really want unions to not have special legal protections, you need to eliminate the special legal protections given to corporations, which means you need to eliminate corporations as such, and go back to the situation before 1850 or so when the first modern Companies Act was passed in Britain. That system was unwieldy and inefficient, as no single entity with quasi-individual legal status (the corporation) could do anything like sign contracts, etc.

Yet for some reason I have never heard anyone who makes the kind of arguments you do against unions point any of this out. Why is that?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Grishnakh]

And what happens if the whole economy collapses because not enough people are working and contributing to that social safety net? Just look at Greece for instance; everyone's getting largesse from the government and doing very little actual work to pay for it, so they keep asking for loans and bailouts. Safety nets only work if enough people in the population are working to pay for it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[bwintx]

At least now I'd be lectured to by pompous twats writing in French

... who fart in your general direction.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[tehcyder]

If employers should have the right to fire everone and start over with new hires, then the workers should have the equal right to hang the fucking employers from the nearest lamppost. Dog eat dog, eh?

Unions exist to introduce some semblance of fairness to the "contract negotiations" between employer and employee, which are otherwise ludicrously one-sided. You, like other rightwingers/libertarisns/whatever you call yourselves today want to enforce the accumulation of wealth in a few people's hands by making it impossible for the majority of working people to obtain a decent wage or reasonable working conditions.

The end result of too much oppression is violent revolution by the masses, I'd have thought you morons had read enough history to know that the only thing keeping capitalism going is its ability to relieve pressure and not deal in absolutes.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

, they have proved to be detrimental, degenerating themselves from worker unions down to self-perpetuating cartels of nepotism.) I have no problems with unions in, say, Brazil. But here (the way many unions act), you bet I do have a problem.

Detrimental, degenerating, cartel of nepotism. That's just what unions are like in Brazil (look into CUT and Força Sindical), which is exactly where our last President came from.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[DragonWriter]

I agree, unions are awesome. I allows mediocre employees to receive the same compensation as the excellent employees.

I've worked in several places (in the US, even) that were unionized, and none had policies (whether as part of the union contract or otherwise) which forced that. They all required justifications for a wide array of decisions, which might have the effect of levelling salaries with lazy, unmotivated managers -- but those managers probably wouldn't be making salary decisions that would really reflect actual performance if they had a free hand to do so without justification, because if they were doing the work so that they really had a supportable position on who was performing and who wasn't, justifying the decisions wouldn't be any substantial extra work.

Same with the related myth that unions make it impossible to fire poor performers.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[stonecypher]

I have a right to free movement.

When you make retarded shit like this up are you actually aware you're doing it?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

He's violating my rights the same whether he's a police officer, a store detective or a drunken beggar. Only one of those is p[art of teh gubmint.

- wrong. The drunken beggar is not violating your right, he can't do it, because there is no such relation between you and the beggar as a right.

If the drunken beggar was a government employee while conducting official government business, then yes, you'd be correct.

Other than that, both of you have exactly the same rights under the law, and none of you can commit a criminal violent act against each other without the justice system getting involved, that is correct.

A right is the power of the individual against the collective, without such power, the individual has nothing and government - the collective has everything.

If a drunken beggar tries to physically harm you, you can protect yourself, it's legal and it should be, and if you kill him in the process, that's self defence.

If government officials try to stop you and you try to use self defence, they will likely kill you, but if they don't and instead you hurt or kill some of them, then self defence will NOT apply UNLESS the government officials actually were proven to be criminals while on duty (it's possible, rogue cops are nothing new).

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

I consider it an honor to try to spread the message of liberty.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Then fix the problem. Why do they perceive the union as doing nothing for them? You need to show them clearly what the union will do for them.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[magarity]

You've correctly identified this as a problem in game theory. Alas, it is the same as the prisoner's dilemma. If you convince everyone else to slack and then you actually work, you are guaranteed to be the overperformer and get the raise/bonus. So everyone ends up promising to slack while working to try to stab the others in the back. This is also why every time Opec gets together to fix oil prices it never lasts more than a year.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

If you kill me, you have deprived me of my right to life.

- wrong. If I kill you I am not depriving you of any 'right' to life, because between you and me, we never had any such agreement, I didn't sign a contract, neither did you, that we have any such agreement.

If gov't kills you without a fair trial and all, that means the government has violated the law, which is in the Constitution. Well, it's not really supposed to be in Constitution, it's your right that government cannot violate by default, but the concept of a 'right' only is meaningful when you are talking about an individual and his relationship to government (the collective).

But unfortunately they decided to come up with all these amendments, that really confused a lot of people, making them believe that your rights are actually listed, but they are not, they are everything that the government is not explicitly allowed to do to you.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So that's the contract and the Federal government is only legitimate as long as it is not in violation of the contract.

That is why the US federal government is no longer legitimate, hasn't been in a long time.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mounthood]

Anyway, if they insist on stack ranking, then hire (or transfer) someone in to be the bottom of the pile. Game theory is the only way to play silly games.

"The first rule of any game is to know you're playing one" -Sandy Lerner, co-founder of CISCO, about being pushed out of the company

from Something Ventured

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[spiffmastercow]

And what happens if the whole economy collapses because not enough people are working and contributing to that social safety net? Just look at Greece for instance; everyone's getting largesse from the government and doing very little actual work to pay for it, so they keep asking for loans and bailouts. Safety nets only work if enough people in the population are working to pay for it.

And that would be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that Greece has been distinctly irresponsible with their money. France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, etc. are all welfare states, and they're all doing relatively well. You need to get over your preconceptions and recognize that social security and work ethic are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ep32g79]

You sure about that?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[1u3hr]

- wrong. If I kill you I am not depriving you of any 'right' to life, because between you and me, we never had any such agreement, I didn't sign a contract, neither did you, that we have any such agreement.

I don't require an agreement with you, or anyone, to have right to life. Otherwise any asshole could deprive me of any right at any time. Doesn't leave much meaning in the word "right" if it's contingent on you allowing me to have it.

Let me guess: you're a libertarian? Anyway, you're clearly an asshole.

That is why the US federal government is no longer legitimate, hasn't been in a long time.

And probably a loonie with a basement full of guns, waiting for a chance to go out in a blaze of glory when the feds come to collect an unpaid parking ticket..

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Rhys]

I too fear our socialist asphault (or concrete) underlords. Don't let the roads get you too boy.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[HornWumpus]

Firing == killing?

If the employer had the right to kill troublesome workers then the employees have the right to hang the owner.

The right to quit is the equivalent to the right to fire.

The problem most leftest have is they still believe in 'social Darwinism' in the sense the believe 'socialism' is inevitable. They don't realize that Marx was flat out wrong and his whole definition of capitalism is a straw man. Example of such mental flatulence 'I'd have thought you morons had read enough history to know that the only thing keeping capitalism going is its ability to relieve pressure and not deal in absolutes.' Capitalism is the default. There has never been a system that has been able to extinguish it. They can only criminalize it. It goes on right now in N.Korea, Cuba, Venezuela etc.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[science_gone_bad]

I agree also. My 1st introduction to a union was at a large telecomm. I didn't understand them at all, and was wondering how friends I had made could hate me when a strike was getting ready to happen (It was because I was on the non-union employment side). I was talking with my father about the experience, and he; being a history buff; answered this way.

Unions came into being during a time when US labor was merely slave labor to the Robber Barons of the 19th century. They did really good things in getting some sanity injected into the US when 7 day/14 hour day work weeks were pretty common.

{Sound familiar to the death march software dev practices of today????}

In the 90's when Unions were just starting to be REALLY dismantled, he said that the main companies still having Unions were those that "really deserved to have them"

Think about that ... !!!!

Unions of the past might be outdated, but it may be time to think of a new kind of union to try and get some sanity put back into the IT world.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Smauler]

wrong. If I kill you I am not depriving you of any 'right' to life, because between you and me, we never had any such agreement, I didn't sign a contract, neither did you, that we have any such agreement.

So to have my rights violated, I must have had previously signed a contract with whoever is violating my rights? I've never signed such an agreement with my government. Seriously, where do you come up with this stuff?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[funkylovemonkey]

Holy false equivalency batman. That was a staggering example of logical fallacies. Yes, yes, a union negotiating with management for benefits like health care is exactly like someone being raped by a bunch of bullies. You're brilliant argument convinced me.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[phantomfive]

Who wants to spend 70 bucks of their paycheck every month for something they perceive as doing nothing for them?

I don't. And I resent people like you trying to force me to. If you think unions are so great, then spend your time convincing others that it's worth it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[rwv]

Well, I would hope HR and management in general try to find an appropriate balance of employee morale, productivity, and budget. When customer demand is high and revenues are bigger than operating expenses this is easy. When revenues drop it's tougher. When companies are asked by shareholders to maintain 10% year-over-year profit growth indefinitely eventually the budget will break unless there are massive firings which lead to (long term) hits in morale and productivity... so don't do that.

So the budget isn't the main source of blame. Year-to-year changes in the budget, though, just need to be carefully managed.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[HornWumpus]

Companies have to work hard to find employees that 'DON'T do stupid shit'.

It's only reasonable that you do the same.

Also: When you learn something, it belongs to you. (You might owe someone for the training costs, but the knowledge is yours.) It's reasonable to expect you to be responsible for making your own strategic learning choices. You don't necessarily want to be trained as your employer wants you trained anyhow. What if your PHB decided to go all mySQL tomorrow? Would you want to work with POS software or would you want to move on?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[greg_barton]

I agree, unions are awesome. I allows mediocre employees to receive the same compensation as the excellent employees.

As opposed to stack ranking, which allows excellent employees to get the same evaluation as mediocre employees.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

A union using force to stop someone that wants to work for an employer that wants to hire them is exactly like rape.

Using force to either make someone do what you want or prevent them from doing something voluntarily with another consenting person is all the same.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

I don't. And I resent people like you trying to force me to. If you think unions are so great, then spend your time convincing others that it's worth it.

I can convince you in five minutes that it's "worth it".

Do you have weekends? Sick days? Paid vacation? Employee health insurance? A safe workplace?

Are you paid fairly for your work?

If so, it's because of unions.

If you don't like weekends, sick days, paid vacation, health insurance and safety in the workplace, then a union is not for you. If you don't want to be fairly paid for your work, then by all means, you should never join a union and don't go to work for a shop that has taken a vote and decided that they would be unionized. Nobody is forced to join a union.

Now, some people want all those things without having to be a member of a union. They don't want to pay the $14.50 a month in union dues, but they still want weekends, sick days, health insurance, paid vacation, fair pay and safety in the work place. Such people are known as "freeloaders" or "moochers" who want someone else to do the work but still want the benefit of that work.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[marcosdumay]

I have no problems with unions in, say, Brazil.

Funny that you are saying that from the US. Sometime check the labor protection laws of Brazil.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

Ah. The old free rider effect argument.

Yes, it's an oldie but a goodie.

And true.

Homosexuality is wrong so me and my buddies beat the crap out of those queers.

Ah, so you are a Republican. The GP was right.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Xtifr]

Funny, but I'm sure you don't believe any of those people were hired because of union contracts. They were hired because someone had a perception that their well-known names would help persuade the public to spend money. Having a famous name that helps sell movies is a skill of sorts, and it's one of the few that Paris Hilton has ever displayed--she's a first class attention whore*--and, like it or not, that's a valuable skill in Hollywood.

* No, I don' t think she's any other sort of whore, nor do I think it's appropriate to criticize women for being promiscuous when men get admired for the same thing. And, in fact, I do actually admire people with the balls to admit their promiscuity, even if it's someone like Hilton. There's plenty of reasons to dislike her, but her sexual behavior isn't one, unless you're a puritanical little twat who isn't fit for grown-up society.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think unions are so great, then spend your time convincing others that it's worth it.

No.

What, shocked that I would say no? Well it's obvious you wouldn't believe a word I would have to say. We already went through a period in history where people learned first-hand that having unions is better than not having unions. Therefore, you have obviously already decided that history and anything I or anyone else could say is wrong or some such bullshit. Therefore, the only method left of trying to convince you would be to relive those times. And I'm sorry, but your refusal to accept what history has to teach us is absolutely no reason to revert back to that time.

You are like those morons who refuse to accept the importance of the various amendments within the Bill of Rights, and would much prefer to repeal them all, undoing all the good that has come about from the past 200+ years.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

From what I've seen, unions only ensure than people end up not being fired even if they *are* completely useless, while paying them the same regardless of ability. It's not a solution, just a different problem.

From what I've seen...

You must not have seen very much. Union members can be fired just like anyone else, but there has to be a formal and fair process to do so. Instead of some petty supervisor firing someone just because he doesn't like his looks, there has to be some process for getting both sides of the story. These stories about incompetent people who are protected by the union are really extremely rare compared to the total number of union workers, and even in those cases, a complete review of the facts usually tells a much different story.

There has been an organized, extremely well-funded campaign going on for at least the last 40 years to destroy organized labor through FUD, political corruption and brute force. If you go back to the Wall Street Journal and read the op-ed (and some of the news) section from the mid to late 1970's, you will see the clumsy beginnings of that campaign. It's pretty stunning really.

Even the examples of unions being taken over by organized crime and used to the detriment of the members was only a small part of the organized labor movement, and according to at least one historian, a lot of those union takeovers by the mob were done in collusion with management.

Concurrent with the campaign against unions has been an all-out attack on middle-class incomes, fair labor practices in the absence of unions and deterioration of the political influence of the middle and working class. So today, instead of employees realizing how their real income is in decline, they are mad because members of a union's income is as much in decline. So by manipulation and "divide and conquer" strategies, you have poor slobs saying, "why should firemen and teachers get a pension" instead of asking, "why am I not getting a pension if I work for a company for 25 years?"

It's stunning really, and it's an example of how easy it is to manipulate people by creating an "other" and then focusing anger on that other.

Nerdfest, don't let yourself be manipulated.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the second libertarian that I heard talking with some sense and not with slogan.

I'm not on your boat, so to say, but I respect the idea.

Sadly there is lot of prejudice going on here.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

And what happens if the whole economy collapses because not enough people are working and contributing to that social safety net? Just look at Greece for instance; everyone's getting largesse from the government and doing very little actual work to pay for it, so they keep asking for loans and bailouts.

You need to look a lot closer at the situation in Greece and the rest of the Eurozone.

The people of Greece aren't getting any more "largesse" from their government than the people of Germany. The Greek workers don't work fewer hours than German workers and they don't retire earlier than German workers.

The situation which has led to the financial system's collapse in Greece has more to do with the financial sector than it does with "lazy and greedy" Greek people.

Safety nets only work if enough people in the population are working to pay for it.

Actually, that's not true. The number of people working is less important to a social safety net than the GDP.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

so now you have two entities that have more rights then people.

great. so we need a third entity that has more rights than those two entities, plus people.

oh yea. we already do. that's the government.

and it deems it's survival is more important than anything else. period.

and what about your rights as an individual? FUCK YOUR RIGHTS.

get in line behind the plumber, because corporations, unions, governments, and people with guns, have more rights than you.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

And that would be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that Greece has been distinctly irresponsible with their money.

Yes, but be careful. It's the Greek financial sector that has been distinctly irresponsible, more than the Greek people.

Just as the 2008 financial collapse in the US was not caused by people suddenly becoming less productive, but by an extremely irresponsible financial sector.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Yes, it's an oldie but a goodie.
And true.

That's two people that didn't respond to the question.
Why do you think you have the right to interfere in the voluntary association between an employee and employer?

Homosexuality is wrong so me and my buddies beat the crap out of those queers.
Ah, so you are a Republican. The GP was right.

Wow. Were you not able to keep the statement "Your argument could be applied to all types of criminals that use force to get their way. Examples:" in your head while reading the examples?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

There is naturally an advantage in negotiations that lies with the employer (owners). The reason for that is because it is their capital at risk. The owners of the company have their savings(capital) tied up in the company. Everything there to help you do your job like computers, machines, air conditioning, pencils, ect are all provided by the company. You just show up. If the company folds tomorrow you may be out of a job but the owners of the company will be out much more.

Also you expect to get paid at the end of your pay period. If you aren't paid you will most likely sue or quit. But the owners have no payday. If the company doesn't make a profit they don't get paid. You expect to get paid at the end of the week regardless of the companies profit.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm for right to work laws because I saw how they were used by unions to entrap and profit from workers. Having known people who were willing and able to work but unable to pay the up-front union dues and were therefore denied a job, I'm not willing to give unions that much power.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[scot4875]

I consider it an honor to try to spread the message of liberty.

previously...

There is no way that hot chick would sleep with a bunch of slobs like us so we gang raped her.

I'm lazy and have no self control and I can't save any money. So me and some guys got together and robbed some rich guy. He didn't need the money anyway.

Homosexuality is wrong so me and my buddies beat the crap out of those queers.

So you spread that message by setting up strawmen to attack?

--Jeremy

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the economy and employee. Your "punishment" for getting fired might be to lose your house, most of your savings, and be unemployed for a few years (or more). That's kind of a big deal.

Companies have plenty of leverage with many employees, and a large negotiating advantage.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

- wrong. If I kill you I am not depriving you of any 'right' to life, because between you and me, we never had any such agreement, I didn't sign a contract, neither did you, that we have any such agreement.

Do you ever wonder why you get so many negative mods? It's because of incredibly idiotic shit like this. Didn't even bother reading the rest of whatever tripe you composed there.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mvdwege]

Funny, those 'out of control' unions have no negative impact on productivity. Of the top 10 states with highest union participation, only 3 score below average in productivity growth (Alaska, Nevada, and Michigan).

Sources: Wikipedia and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. True, the Cleveland numbers only go up to 2004, but I assume that union participation has not changed significantly in the intervening years. If anyone has more recent numbers showing otherwise, I'd like to see them.

Mart

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a choice on whether to join a nation, either. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mvdwege]

I looked up the numbers and posted them elsewhere in this thread: of the top 10 states with highest union participation, 7 score average or higher in productivity increases.

So yeah, the anti-union stories are mostly propaganda.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

You personally didn't, but the Constitution is the document that was signed when the original colonies joined the union.

Think about this: in a monarchy you don't actually have rights, you are property of the state or of the king, whatever.

In a society without any government, there are no rights, that who has more guns wins.

In a society that decided to put together a lawful government with limited authority over you, you do have right, specifically because the authority of the government is limited.

Now think about this: with the latest developments in USA about the ACA (also ironically known as the Affordable Care Act, ironically, because every name of every legislation passed by government can only be correctly understood by totally reversing it, so the care will become unaffordable), so with the ACA many people believe that the court ruled that government has unlimited taxing authority. BUT unlimited taxing authority literally gives government unlimited power over people, and thus all rights are gone. Why? Because gov't can tax you into anything it wants, so it doesn't have to legislate.

Is that what people want - to have all rights removed? And when I say 'rights', I totally mean the power of the individual under law not to be abused by government in any way that is unauthorised by the Constitution.

-

Now, the people who believe that SCOTUS gave the unlimited taxing authority to the Congerss are WRONG. I will have to write a journal entry on this later, but here are the main points:

1. The majority opinion stated that the only reason that the Mandate is Constitutional is because it is a tax, but also because it is a SMALL tax, so small that it does not force anybody to change behaviour AND because this tax is NOT enforced in the law (so far IRS has no power to enforce the collection of this tax by any means, like garnishing your wages or throwing you to jail).

This means that in principle if the tax (fine) is raised from its current level (and it will have to be raised, otherwise ACA is completely unworkable, everybody who has to pay for insurance under the ACA will cancel insurance and only 'buy' it when they absolutely need to and then cancel again, once done with the bills) so if the tax is raised, the mandate becomes IMMEDIATELY unconstitutional and ACA has to go back to the supreme court!

Of-course in practice it's not going to happen, the lower courts will misinterpret what this is and will rule that raising the tax is constitutional and the SCOTUS will deny hearing it again, so in practice this doesn't matter anymore, they found a loophole to pass ACA and now they won't bother with what they have to do technically to keep it legal, just like how they implemented the income tax (which is still illegal today, it is only legal as a tax on corporate profits, not an 'income' tax and not a personal tax).

2. Majority opinion stated that the mandate tax (fine) is NOT a direct tax based on a completely faulty notion that it only applies to a small number of people who are currently uninsured and will not buy insurance in the future. This is wrong on many points. First, direct tax means a tax that is forced upon a person directly and that person pays directly to the government. The direct tax must be apportioned to be legal though, that's why Roberts said that this tax is not direct, which makes it something else - excise tax or a duty or import. It's not a duty or import, so it's an excise. BUT how can this tax be an excise, like a sales tax, if the person who is forced to pay it, is only forced because he is NOT participating in commerce, he is NOT buying something (insurance)?

3. The other point is that SCOTUS found that the commerce clause doesn't apply to make mandate legal. That's interesting, because simultaneously the majority opinion stated that the mandate tax (fine) is not a direct tax, while stating that the commerce clause doesn't apply.

So that's a contradiction, either the commerce clause applies, and thus the excise t

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pooh666]

This is a great post. I do wish there was a more clear public distiction between the traditional union, and the base right to collectively bargin. Many people I know spit at the idea of unions, but they don't seem to realize that without some form of collective power, most of us, get hammered by divide and conquer. The other thing to realize is that now days, it does no good unless this collective power is global. Pockets of resistence just get stepped over.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

you should read this comment I made, it applies

Society came up with the idea of rights when it decided that the people will not be ruled by monarchs, they will not be property. This required people to set the law above the government, otherwise this would never have happened on its own.

The law above the governments sets the LIMITS TO AUTHORITY for what government can do, and those limits to authority stop where your 'rights' begin, but your rights are a meaningless construct outside of that situation.

Your 'rights' only mean something when there is a law above government, that prevents it from abusing you in ways that are unauthorised, that's what really a right is - limits to the government that it cannot abuse you unless it is specifically authorised, the reasons and the manner in which this can be done to you anyway (depriving you of property, liberty, life).

If you think that concept of 'rights' exists between 2 people, then you clearly don't understand what this concept means and where it came from. Between 2 people there are no rights, there are only guidelines and feeling of self-preservation, that's all.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Here is for the slow-witted. The only tripe here is written by the likes of you.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[scot4875]

Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.

Your bias is showing. You seem to think that the only rhetoric is that companies are the enemy of the people and that there's no corresponding rhetoric about the evils of unions.

--Jeremy

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

I was trying to use reductio ad absurdum and I may have ventured into the straw man category. I was trying to get them to think about why they claim to have the right to make someone do something they don't want to do or prevent two consenting people from doing something they want to do.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[PopeRatzo]

That's two people that didn't respond to the question.
Why do you think you have the right to interfere in the voluntary association between an employee and employer?

OK, let me help you out. The relationship between employee and employer is not really a "voluntary association" as much as it is a very asymmetrical relationship. And the thing that give unions the "right to interfere in the voluntary association between an employee and employer?" is a free and fair election among workers deciding to form a union. A union is an aggregation of labor the same way a corporation is an aggregation of capital. And ultimately, it came down to unions forming because there was no other way to fix the situation. At the time of the beginning of the labor movement, the nation was experiencing a similar growing disparity of wealth and incomes, and, as has been proven over and over, disparity in income beyond a certain level creates an inexorable breakdown of social institutions. After a certain level of income disparity, societies become very sick at all levels. There is tons of research supporting this, in studies over 2/3 of a century, replicated again and again. And after three decades of organized attack on the labor movement, similar conditions which led to the necessity of the previous labor movement are starting to arise again today.

If you are really, honestly interested in getting an answer to your question, and in good faith care to learn something about the importance of the right of labor to aggregate, and why it is in both the employer's and the employees' best interest as well as society's best interest, for such aggregation to take place, start with this very recent link.. I'm willing to take the time to provide you with a lot more information, which will answer your questions, but this is a good place to start.

Were you not able to keep the statement "Your argument could be applied to all types of criminals that use force to get their way. Examples:" in your head while reading the examples?

Can you understand that the examples that the original poster was using, about raping "chicks" and beating up homosexuals, and the way he phrased those examples, said more about his own opinions than any argument he was trying to advance? I'm betting you can see how if he really was trying to advance that argument in good faith he didn't have to phrase those examples that way. There is a great deal of subtext in the things people write. All sorts of things get revealed in the words we choose.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[scot4875]

You just pulled that entire comment out of your ass, didn't you? And also without a hint of irony, in that what you've described is exactly what most employers would love to be able to do to their workers?

--Jeremy

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

I agree. A corporation should have no rights above what the individual owners have.

If you are curious here is a paper by Walter Block and J.H. Huebert on the subject that is really some infighting on the subject.
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-huebert_defending-corporations-2009.pdf

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mhajicek]

Just in case you're not trolling, it would be a simple matter for an individual to violate your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or your right to free speech, or any of a large number of rights. All it takes is a little directed violence or financial pressure. One of the primary purposes of government is to prevent that from happening as much as possible. Sure a business cannot create a law (directly) but it can make rules (formal or otherwise) for its employees. Your boss could violate your right to free association by firing, demoting, or threatening anyone who associates with people of a particular race, religion, or political viewpoint.

If you can force a person to hire somebody that the employer doesn't want to associate with, then you are violating the right of an employer to free association as well.

I agree with this.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[mhajicek]

That thar's terr'ist tawk ya know.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

This goes the other way too. There are some laws which prohibit employers from basing hiring on union status. That violates the employees rights as well. If there is a free union of electricians and they provide member training and other benefits and their members have a reputation of excellence an employer should be allowed to require employees join that union.

The problem is, it never, never, ever happens that way. The situation would be an employer looking at someone who is a member of a union and deciding not to hire them because they are a union member, because they don't like treating their employees humanely.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

you can't violate somebody's right if you are not a government.

Bull fucking shit. Of all the retarded crap you post, this takes the cake. It is entirely possible for private entities to violate your rights, and idiots like you not recognizing that is what leads to most of the abuses in the world.

You completely ignore that employers DO have power over people, and they CAN use force against them. Perhaps not physical force, but definitely economic force, which is just as powerful.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No, it does not violate any employer's "rights". All it does is stop them from imposing their will on others. That is NOT a violation of rights.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No, he's violating your right. You saying it isn't so doesn't make it true. He is directly impeding your right to free movement.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No. Just no. Your entire worldview completely ignores the fact that we are not just a bunch of individuals, but we are together members of a collective society. You are not an island unto yourself.

If you want to live that way, then go live by yourself in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

No, he is not violating my right.

Society came up with the idea of rights when it decided that the people will not be ruled by monarchs, they will not be property. This required people to set the law above the government, otherwise this would never have happened on its own.

The law above the governments sets the LIMITS TO AUTHORITY for what government can do, and those limits to authority stop where your 'rights' begin, but your rights are a meaningless construct outside of that situation.

Your 'rights' only mean something when there is a law above government, that prevents it from abusing you in ways that are unauthorised, that's what really a right is - limits to the government that it cannot abuse you unless it is specifically authorised, the reasons and the manner in which this can be done to you anyway (depriving you of property, liberty, life).

If you think that concept of 'rights' exists between 2 people, then you clearly don't understand what this concept means and where it came from. Between 2 people there are no rights, there are only guidelines and feeling of self-preservation, that's all.
--

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yes, because those other people still insist that they get all the benefits that the union has provided, without any of the responsibility or expense.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

1). He answered the question you posed.

2). Your examples are so stupidly bad as to not be relevant. And are quite offensive.

You've just shown that you have absolutely no rebuttal for his argument.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

I don't know what the hell you are talking about. Rights are a construct that is only meaningful as a relationship between individuals and the collective.

You don't have rights in a monarchy, you are a slave, property.

People had to get away from monarchy and set up a government that had limits to its power, and the limits to the power of government is what allows people to have their so called 'rights'. The law that limits government power is the Constitution and by abusing the Constitution and allowing all kinds of unconstitutional decisions to be upheld by courts, the government removes your rights, takes them away, because the only thing that a 'right' is, it is the barrier between the force of government violence and your life.

This is absolutely not the dynamic found in relationship between any number of individuals that are not each other's government.

Yes, an individual can kill you, no that does not mean it's a violation of any right, it is only violence directed towards you, and we authorise the government to deal with individuals, to take away their rights if they direct violence against other individuals.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

You're not spreading any message of "liberty", though. You are spreading a message of allowing others to use force to dominate. You're spreading the message that employers should be free to dominate their employees, and use economic force on them. You're not for liberty at all, you're just for pushing your worldview on others.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No it isn't, and by trying to say so, you have just proven that you don't have any actual arguments.

All you are saying is that you're perfectly fine when the employer uses economic force to make others do what they want (want to actually live and survive in this world? You need a job. And sadly, many people do not have perfect choice of their employers. Therefore, employers have huge amounts of power over their employees, and wield that force against them), but when the employees try to band together and even out some of that power, you're against it. You are completely against the employees having any kind of power whatsoever. And that makes you completely and utterly AGAINST liberty.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Why do you think you have the right to interfere in the voluntary association between an employee and employer?

Because it's not a 100% voluntary association. You are REQUIRED to have a job to survive in this world. Therefore, the employer is always going to have a large amount of force over you, because they control your very livelihood. If you don't do exactly what they want, then you fucking starve. Does that sound voluntary to you?

Until we get to the situation where one does not have to actually have a job in order to live, your argument has no merit.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

So laws forcing people to join unions are bad, but corporations requiring people join certain unions is good? Oookay...

Maybe in 20 years down the road you'll reach the only sane conclusion: humanity's animalistic nature promotes corruption

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Fine. Do it without the use of force.

Employers first. Why do you insist on having this double standard? An employer can fire anyone for just about any reason they want, including giving no reason whatsoever. How the fuck can you not say that is force?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

And it's my body, my time, and my effort at risk. So I don't buy the "It's their capital!" argument. Try again.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

The right to quit is the equivalent to the right to fire.

No it isn't, and to pretend so is absurdly laughable. They are not even close to the same thing. Firing someone means that person no longer has an income, and means that they might not be able to have food, shelter, or clothing. Someone quitting does NOT have that affect.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yet you rally against unions, and say nothing about the huge fucking abuses of power that employers tend to commit.

There is an imbalance of power, even without corporations. You refuse to recognize it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.

That happens because Companies themselves have largely refused to see employees as someone they are in partnership with, and rather view them as "resources".

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently

That's just the thing: In the US at least, they typically don't.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

I like how you point at Greece, but you ignore the rest of the continent that has just as good, if not better safety net, and are doing fine. Why didn't you bring up Germany?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Employers acting like complete and total shitbags, abusing workers, has absolutely NOTHING to do with government.

If I'm just starting out on my career, I likely don't have any savings anyway. Does that mean employers should be able to walk all over me? According to you, it does.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Unions work better in Germany because most German companies value their employees, and don't simply see them as "resources", like a lot of companies over here do. The main reason a union might look at the company as the enemy is because the company started looking at labor as an enemy first.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

You have complete choice. You know about the union when you take the job. You are free to not take the job.

Seriously, I hear conservatives bitch about this all the time, but when people are talking about other problems with jobs, they always retort with, "You knew what you were getting into when you took the job." Why is union membership different?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

If you think you are abused at one employer, it is your absolute right to quit and find another job and this has absolutely nothing to do with government, but what you do fail to realise is that your employment opportunities are very limited because of all of the things I mentioned in the comment you are replying, because there is so few employment opportunities, and that has everything to do with government, that kills opportunities with inflation, taxes, regulations.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

It's difficult to have a conversation when we can't agree on the meaning of words. The definition of force that I use is "to use violence or the threat of violence to make someone do something they wouldn't do voluntarily."

I'm not sure what you mean by economic force. Can you explain?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

There was a time in which many trade unions provided all of the training in their field. People actually wanted to hire union welders and electricians because these were the people that knew what the heck they were doing.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

Yes. It is the logical conclusion of the freedom to associate. You have to first realize that all laws are backed by the threat of the use of force. So using force to make people join a union is bad. But a company that makes it a condition of employment that you must join a union is fine since no force is used. They are making an offer to either not work for them or if you work for them you join the union.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

What if you don't pay the dues?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yes, he is violating your right. Otherwise you're admitting that there's no such thing as private property rights, because no one else agreed to respect your rights, and therefore any and all points you have made are invalid.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

It's the same thing as force, but instead of using violence, you're using economic coercion, like the threat of firing someone, to do something they wouldn't do voluntarily.

This is a pretty basic concept, and to not recognize it exists nullifies just about any point you'd make about "liberty". Violence is not the only force out there, and you can do severe harm to someone through means other than beating them up.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

If you think you are abused at one employer, it is your absolute right to quit and find another job

Theoretically, yes, that is possible. However, for various reasons, it's not always realistic. That is why you people fail to realize. If someone is not able to be without a job for a prolonged period of time, which is ALWAYS the risk you take when switching jobs, does that mean that person deserves to be abused by their current employer? Fuck no. But you would say that yes, they do deserve it, because you don't believe anything should be done to stop it.

And No, it is not just government. Employers colluding in an area, making the opportunities there just as shitty, is not a fault of government. When you constantly blame government for everything, you blind yourself up to the myriad of problems out there, most which have absolutely nothing to do with government.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ClickOnThis]

Let me get this straight. There are non union members that want to work for a company and the company wants to hire them. This is a two way voluntarily exchange. You somehow claim you have a superior right to a job with that company so you initiate the use of force to prevent those workers from working and prevent the company from hiring. And you claim this is good?

Unions are certified to represent workers by an election, or in some jurisdictions by a majority (or more) of the workers opting-in to join the union. Once a union has satisfied this requirement, it becomes the legal representative of those workers. Then the union negotiates a contract with the employer. That contract may, or may not, allow the employer to hire non-union members into jobs that the union represents. There's no "force" going on here.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

I read the article and I disagree with most of it. The main point seems to be that a person has to have a job therefor the employer has much more power over the employee. That just isn't true, especially in the US. Anyone is free to be their own boss. You can mow lawns, clean houses, or even move to the woods and live off the land.

The reason having a job is preferred by many people is in a well managed company the specialization of labor allows everyone to be much more productive then they could be on their own. This means they will all be better off working together than if they tried to survive by themselves. The one place I agree with the article is where they say you do give up some of your freedom to be an employee. But we do that all the time and it is fine as long as it's voluntary. If I want to stay married to my wife I give up my freedom of calling her names or sleeping with other women. I still have the legal right to do these things, ie I can't be put in prison. But she doesn't have to put up with it. It's the same with an employer and employee. An employer might require you have sex with someone, pimps are known to do this from time to time. But most people choose not to be prostitutes.

Now don't take this to mean I approve of employers acting like scumbags or mistreating employees. Being a libertarian is like being an ACLU spokesman. Sometimes you end up defending the rights of scumbags.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ClickOnThis]

I am against "right to work" laws as well, I had a typo in my original post. You are right as to their purpose. They are a violation of the employers rights to hire who they want to.

When I read this, I laughed so hard I almost spit coffee on my computer screen. "Right to work" laws enshrine an employer's ability to hire who they want to. You're trying to claim the opposite? Then either you're spectacularly deluded or you are deliberately trying to spread doublethink. You go on...

If an employer wants to only hire union members they should be free to do so. If the employees in a company organize a voluntarily union and negotiate a contract with an employer that states they will only hire union members that is a voluntary contract and should be upheld. But in that negotiation an employer should not be forced to bargain with the union. If they want to fire everyone and start over with new hires that is their right as well unless it violates an existing contract.

Unions aren't much help for their members if an employer can simply pretend they don't exist. There is a reason that a union's ability to represent its members is protected by laws.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Wow you are dense. Private property right is a right of the individual not to have his property seized by the government without going through the lawful procedures that are established in the Constitution for such occasions.

An individual trying to steal from you or kill you or engage in some other act of violence against you is not in violation of your rights, because the concept of a 'right' does not exist on individual level, the right is the limit that the government cannot step over, that's when the concept of rights is established.

For violent acts against people we do decide to punish people, but that punishment is not in response to a 'right violation', it is only response to violence with the rules defining that one person cannot for example kill another without repercussions.

Again: right is a limit to government abusing you in ways that are unauthorised to the government, there is no other principle by which a right can be defined. The very principle by which a right is defined is derived from the understanding that under a totalitarian system, a monarchy or any other system where people are NOT in fact equal under the law is not a good system. The system that people do prefer (supposedly) is the one where people ARE equal under the law. Equality under the law requires that government has limits to what it can do to any specific individual, because one individual can be above another individual by law, then there can be no limits as to what government can do to an individual.

Rights are limits that are not supposed to be crossed by government authority.

Another individual that is not a government employee hurting you is not a violation of any rights of yours, it's a violation of criminal code, that's it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

And No, it is not just government. Employers colluding in an area, making the opportunities there just as shitty, is not a fault of government.

- of-course it is. These companies face no competition, and it's not only rules, regulations and taxes that prevent competition, it's also inflation - fake money, which sets interest rates at levels that are unaffordable by ANY business. The natural rate of interest at this point probably crossed into triple digits already, the only entity capable of getting credit is government, so it crowded out all investment and the only way that gov't can still get credit is by printing the money that is used to provide this credit.

Then this money is laundered through a system of banks and Treasury bond sales.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[trout007]

So am I using economic coercion if I tell a store I'm taking my business elsewhere if they don't change something I disagree with?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's true that your interpretation of rights may have been the case at its origin, the concept has evolved over time. Prior to the development of the concept of rights and for some time after, slavery (ownership of human beings) was an accepted practice. However since then, freedom from slavery (which regards interactions between individuals and not between an individual and government) has been accepted as an inalienable right.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Unions are like communist governments.
They claim to be for the people, in the end they destroy opportunities for the people, protect its upper echelons, and their leaders are often caught in corruption scandals.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Around here, unions are associated with lazy drunks who don't want to get fired. Really, I've seen people come to work drunk, punch in, leave to go to the bar during work hours, but the employee can't touch them because the guy is in a union.

Corruption goes both ways.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ppanon]

That's only true if they die before they can reproduce. Now USA infant mortality rates are very high for a 1st world nation in large part due to the way healthcare is provided, but that's not due to decisions made by the infants, so it's only indirect selection and not strictly Darwinian. Many people in the USA who don't get health insurance just can't afford to get individual plans when their employer doesn't pay for a group plan. Those people that deliberately choose to avoid it because they prefer to spend the fee on non-essentials also still have a pretty good chance of begetting offspring before they get really sick so it's often still not Darwinian.

Now, some young buck deciding not to wear a helmet before getting on his donorcycle? That's Darwinian.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[networkBoy]

?!?!
From health care difference to union rebuttal in one sentence? I'm missing something.
I buy healthcare because it makes sense for me to do so. You do not buy health care because you do not tink it makes sense. I see no reason to force you to buy health care (but I am anti-union in tech).

But:
just like in a union free shop, where similar people of similar capabilities and similar time on the job may have quite different pay because one negotiated better at hiring time, I expect that you will accept that since you did not buy healthcare you will foot the bill when you go to the ER with a broken arm and not shirk the bill.

Please mind, I do not know you, and I have no reason to think you would shirk the bill, but plenty of people do.
-nB

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[networkBoy]

you picked the worst of the examples to use, as my one experience with a union shop was eerily similar to being raped by a bunch of bullies.
But, yes i think his examples are a bit extreme.
-nB

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ppanon]

Detrimental, degenerating, cartel of nepotism. That's just what unions are like in Brazil

I think his point was that in Brazil, employee legal protections may be so few that having a union and the associated waste, overhead, and corruption is the lesser of two evils.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ppanon]

Well actually, it's also that there's large swathes of Greek society that have huge tax exemptions that limit government revenue as a portion of GDP. Generally per-capita government expenditures haven't been that high compared to the rest of Europe, and Greeks have one of the highest hours-worked-per-person ratios in Europe, so their financial situation isn't because too many people are lazy and sitting at home collecting welfare.

Hmm, professional and upper classes paying low taxes due to exemptions and loopholes, thus decreasing government revenues while deficit and debt go up. Why does that sound familiar?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[HornWumpus]

I've known of and worked for many employers that were dependent on their employees (truck number = 1). Sucks to be them when the employee finds something better. Yet nobody proposes instituting required continued employment when companies plan badly.

Even when I was a regular employee I had savings/investments/paid for stuff. I was not dependent on my employer. I have found jobs/contracts in busts and recessions before and I will again. When I was so young I had no liquid emergency buffer, I had shit for expenses (fact is I still have low burn vs most morons). It's not what you earn, it's what you keep.

I don't change at all when I hire a sub vs getting hired. My right to free association trumps any 'right' to continued employment, absent a contract.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

70? how about 350?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Grishnakh]

Yes, exactly. But again, it's still the people's fault (meaning the lower and middle classes), because they allow it to happen when they have the power to vote for change. I don't know about Greece, but here in America, a large chunk of society worships rich people and think they shouldn't have to pay taxes because they're special, they're "job creators", etc., and that all the taxes should be paid by everyone else (including themselves, if they're not rich). For some, it's because they just worship wealth and whomever has the most of it, for others it's because they think they're going to rich pretty soon (and there's lots of overlap there).

As for the Greek working hours, I do have to question what the heck they're spending all their time doing, because I sure don't see many results. Germans, French and Italians produce all kinds of exported merchandise: cars, high-end industrial equipment, aircraft, software, and food and wine. Way over here in North America, I have tons of food in my pantry that says "Made in Italy". But what do the Greeks make? I think I got a small pack of Greek cheese a while ago, but that's the only thing I can think of; their main industries appear to be food (mainly for internal or European consumption) and tourism. That's not a recipe for a strong, first-world economy, that sounds exactly like a lot of poor third-world countries in Central and South America. Just because a bunch of people are working long hours doesn't mean they're going to be prosperous if they're just doing menial jobs, when their neighbors are building $100M aircraft and billion-dollar cruise ships.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[phantomfive]

I expect that you will accept that since you did not buy healthcare you will foot the bill when you go to the ER with a broken arm and not shirk the bill.

Normally I would be happy to, but now that I don't need to worry about coverage for pre-existing conditions, I have no real reason to get insurance in advance.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[phantomfive]

I appreciate the attempt.

It's not convincing. For example, many places don't have unions (most places), and they still get weekends, sick days, paid vacation, and health insurance. It is hard to believe that these would go away without unions, because they haven't, especially in my industry.

Note, I am certainly not anti-union, and I certainly appreciate them historically, and if I feel there is a need, I will join one, I just don't see a need right now. Things change, once unions were necessary, now they are not.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[KingMotley]

Ah yes the union. Of course if the union came in, that all star team would get about the same pay as the all crap team. Gotta be fair and all.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Grishnakh]

Germany can afford their safety net because they have a giant per-capita GDP, thanks to excelling in lots of high-tech high-value industries. There's tons of high-value stuff made in Germany, much of it exported. What do the Greeks make? It seems that tourism is their biggest industry, just like various banana republics in Central America.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

Companies have no rights. If you want rights stick with a sole proprietorship and don't hide behind that corporate shield.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

This is liberteritard bullshit. People can violate rights just as much as any government. The Government is not some mythical creature, it is people, like you and me.

Aside from that, there are numerous court cases establishing that people can violate rights and people can be punished for violating other peoples rights.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

So you are saying that in the absence of a government there is no private property? You can say the same thing over and over again, it's still wrong. People can violate rights. Stop trying to make use Gov vs. People, the beauty of the US is the Gov is the people. As long as we keep the playing field level, which corporate personhood has upset.

Human Rights -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

Your world sucks, get some medication so you can step into the real world. You can even wear your goofy tinfoil hat.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

You don't have rights in a monarchy, you are a slave, property.
The Magna Carta is knocking on your door waiting for you to study it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[1u3hr]

If you think that concept of 'rights' exists between 2 people, then you clearly don't understand what this concept means and where it came from.

So it seems you think that the concept of "rights" only exists as defined by the American constitution. And thus, only for Americans since 1776.

Guess what, we're not all Americans, and the concept exists elsewhere. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights .

So: I still don't need your agreement to have and exercise a right, and if you think you can ignore my rights because we haven't signed a contract, you really are beyond any concept of civilisation or morality. Which is why we need governments, to protect members of society from predators who think might makes right..

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Sarius64]

Waiting for an example of the Union without a history of corruption in America. Waiting...

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Sarius64]

Teacher unions in California beat women up in front of cops, which ignore it. They also pull eight-figure loans to finance initiative campaigns based upon the ability to extract mandatory dues from people who simply want to work without the boot of a brown shirt union pig stealing their money.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Sarius64]

Yep, force people to vote for YOUR union. Track their families down and threaten violence. Beat women up at rallies in front of television cameras and the cops, with no arrests. What a great life you pathetic bitches. I know my family gave their blood since the 1600's for this America so you can be a fucking legal gang of thugs. I've yet to hear of a single union that doesn't break the law outright to operate. Most unions SUDDENLY have private voting once they have the lock. Who watches the watchers? No one.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Sarius64]

Here's a Marine getting arrested for holding up a sign at a union rally. Cops dragged him away. July 4, 2012.

http://www.libertynews.com/2012/06/04/pro-walker-marine-arrested-at-union-rally-speaks-out/

According to the police citation, which Willoughby read to me over the phone, Willoughby (seen at left at a Tea Party rally) is accused of the following: “During a political rally, subject raised a protest sign above his head in a manner that created danger to the public. Subject’s actions caused a disturbance during a political rally.” The citation carries a $185 fine and has a July court date. Mr. Willoughby is not in jail, but says that he will fight the citation on the grounds that he did absolutely nothing wrong and was exercising his free speech rights.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[tehcyder]

The problem most leftest have is they still believe in 'social Darwinism' in the sense the believe 'socialism' is inevitable. They don't realize that Marx was flat out wrong and his whole definition of capitalism is a straw man. Example of such mental flatulence 'I'd have thought you morons had read enough history to know that the only thing keeping capitalism going is its ability to relieve pressure and not deal in absolutes.' Capitalism is the default. There has never been a system that has been able to extinguish it. They can only criminalize it. It goes on right now in N.Korea, Cuba, Venezuela etc.

If you think that the economic system we have in the West is pure capitalism, you are seriously deluded.

My point is not that we are heading inexorably towards some Marxist utopia.

All I am saying is that the influence of "socialist" ideas has led (amongst others) to the following:- government unemployment benefit, government minimal pensions, free universal healthcare, anti-child labour laws, anti-discrimination laws, the legalization of trades unions, the imposition of health and safety at work regulations including fines for companies who kill their workers or damage the environment, a progressive tax system, votes for women, and so on. (Yes, I know these don't all apply to the US, I am from the UK).

A hundred and fifty years ago all these would have been radically socialist/progressive or whatever you want to call it. By gradually adopting a mixed economic and social system (part capitalist, part socialist) Western countries have generally managed to keep the majority of people from expressing themselves in violent revolution.

Your black and white view of the world, in which you are either totally free market capitalist or North Korea, is absurd. Even the US is different in many ways from the Victorian laissez faire approach.

Marx's unsurprising mistake was to take the grim conditions of Britain in the mid Nineteenth century and assume there would be no internal change. Fortunately, there were sufficient numbers of stubborn people with the progressive vision to see that you could have a fairer, more decent society without having to kill all the capitalists first.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

But what do the Greeks make?

They make plates, but for the domestic market only. Its the very definition of the Broken-Window economy.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Private property rights only exist to protect your property against government seizing it.

As to an individual stealing from you, that's a violation of a RULE, not of a right. The rule is: murder, rape, steal, etc., you are going to be punished.

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO PUNISH IN A GOVERNMENT? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU PUNISH GOVERNMENT?

That's the entire reason for the concept of what a right is - you can't punish a government, you can't do anything to government postfactum, you can only establish the strict relationship between the individual and the collective, have the so called 'rights' by default and give gov't authority that can only violate the rights under very strict and limited conditions.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[JBHarris]

I would rather be crazy than correct in this regard, but unfortunately I'm right. There are special laws that prohibit using force to preserve your rights against government or government agents. Treason comes to mind, also assaulting a federal (or state) officer. The government may be populated by people like me and you, but those people hold powers that you & I don't hold. The power to levy taxes, the power to close businesses, the power to imprison people. I can't build a jail and start populating it with people that I have found to be in violation of laws, only government and government agents can do that.

Go punch a guy in the face at a gas station...you will get 30 days in jail for assault. Then, go to a local IRS office and punch an agent in the face..in five years when you get out of prison you can tell me about how he's just a person like anyone else.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Yeah, Magna Carta didn't do shit, the people held the King hostage in order to force him to sign it, in any case this is not something that gives the common people equality under law, the bishops, the barons, etc., they still were the owners of the people.

The USA revolution against the King was the revolution against nobility, against taxes without representation and for the rights of the people whose rights don't really exist in a system where the law does not recognise the people as equals (under the law).

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Between you and I there are no 'rights', we are supposedly equal individual, neither is nobility and even if you are nobility somewhere else, it doesn't matter to me.

The concept of rights does not apply in a relationship between 2 individuals, but this does NOT mean that there is no 'morality' at play. In fact morality is a concept that is much OLDER than anything known as a 'right', so something for you to think about.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

Just look at how unions operate in Germany for example. They work in excellent synergy with the private sector. The rhetoric of companies being the enemy does not do any services in these modern times.

Your bias is showing.

Nice strawman. Since you assume I have a bias, then it must be so. How can I possibly post a counter-argument against such flawless logic.

I seem to think that the only rhetoric I veiledly attribute to you for the sake of strawman building is that companies are the enemy of the people and that there's no corresponding rhetoric about the evils of unions.

--Jeremy

There. Fixed that for you.

Independently of whether anti-union rhetoric exists, it does not condone or justify the rhetoric that employers are the enemy, a rhetoric that many of you slashdoters seem to relish all to readily.

When you see anti-union rhetoric, then you address it on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, when you see anti-employers rhetoric, you address it on a case-by-case basis as well.

The kind counterargument you are making pretty much justifies the "they are idiots, so I'm going to be an idiot, too" modus operandi.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Compaqt]

Well, but why is that? Let's say 75% of the workers are members of the union, and 25% are, as you say, "freeloaders".

The union negotiates a salary package, vacation days, health benefits, union input before termination, etc. But that only applies the union members.

The "freeloaders" are on their own, and will have to accept whatever the company offers.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

Unions work better in Germany because most German companies value their employees, and don't simply see them as "resources", like a lot of companies over here do.

Exactly. When a employer does not see a union as the enemy, the union should reciprocate in kind. In essence, the rhetoric of "employers are evil" or "unions are evil" are more suitable to 3rd grade verbal fights.

The main reason a union might look at the company as the enemy is because the company started looking at labor as an enemy first.

Not necessarily. For example, how did the Big Three in the auto industry looked at unions at the enemy? Auto workers for decades were the best paid machinists in the world. The AWU pretty much latched on the Big Three like a tick to a fat cow. Now, there is a lot to blame on the Big Three management for the way they mishandled overseas competition, but the AWU had a lot of blame on it, demanding perks that were no longer justifiable (and balking like spoiled brats, with the "employer is the enemy" mantra when things went south when the globalization shit hit the proverbial fan).

A better example, how does the "employer started it first" justifies the behavior exhibited by the NYH longshoremen's union refusal to certify fairness in its hiring practices? How does it justify that you will never get a job as a tugboat crewman (in almost any union-lobbied port) without being related to a union worker? Or longshoremen union workers verbally assaulting the media and destroying private property, acting like thugs? How much employers' culpability is required to justify such acts?

One cannot have an objective analysis of the pros and cons of union-employer relations without first dropping any facade of innocence by either party.

Another example is the Rosario silver mines in Honduras (where I lived in the 80's). The Rosario company gave excellent salaries to the workers (relative to salaries in Honduras at the time), and many other benefits. The company treated them well, but the union insisted in raises to the point that the company could no longer operate in the country.

Despite economic evidence to the contrary, local part-time Che Guevaras of the time, from the comfort of their University cubicles away in the capital insisted that the unions could and must push the envelope. Strike after salary increase after strike after salary increase. Finally the company had no choice but to close operations. The triving mining town with its company-built school and clinic soon turned into a ghost town, with miners having no recourse but to join the millions others that live in poverty (after decades of solid, stable jobs.) The union leaders and the university che-guevaras? They are doing well, thanks for asking.

Don't be so quick to say who started first in general terms. Any generalization that you can think of (regarless of what side of the fence you sit on), I can guarantee you to find a counter-example.

Generalizations like this (employers started it) are excellent simple justifications for quasi-romantic ideals. But if you are honestly for objective analysis of things, that shit doesn't apply.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

Detrimental, degenerating, cartel of nepotism. That's just what unions are like in Brazil

I think his point was that in Brazil, employee legal protections may be so few that having a union and the associated waste, overhead, and corruption is the lesser of two evils.

Pretty much that's my point (and I know from first-hand experience because... tada, I was born south of the border). Sadly, the point is typically lost in the degenerate quest for emotional rhetoric that is so common among slashdot posters. Kinda makes me wonder wtf is in there to even try. It's like trying to teach chess to a pineapple.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[luis_a_espinal]

If existing labor laws protect me sufficiently

That's just the thing: In the US at least, they typically don't.

Yes they do. For comparison, go work south of the border. I know, I was born there, and I know what it is to work as a cargo mule for rich patrons. People who complain the US labor laws are not sufficient need to take a trip to a less developed world for a reality check. Granted that there are other countries with somewhat better laws, but to use that and say our labor laws are not effective, that's just being deliberately obstuse.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[1u3hr]

You've redefined "right" to something like a contract.

Since we don't speak the same language, we will never be able to communicate, let alone agree. So we're done here.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

So you are saying that in the absence of a government there is no private property?

Pretty much. In the absence of people agreeing that such a thing as private property exists, it does not. And that group of people, coming together to determine a set of rules for them all to live by? That's a form of government.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Basically, what you're saying is that Might Makes Right. If I have more guns than you, I am entitled to take what is yours, and you can't do shit to stop me.

That is a horrifying, disgusting world to live in. And I guarn-damn-tee that if you found yourself in such a world, within 5 minutes you would be begging for a government to bring some semblance of law and order.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yes, yes you are.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yes you are. However, you have to recognize that there are differing levels of power between you and the store, and between your employer and you. Odds are the store has lots of other customers, so you deciding to go elsewhere has very little impact on their bottom line. Same with your employer. Odds are they have a line of people waiting to do your job. Meaning your power in that relationship is hugely diminished, giving them the ability to use large amounts of force against you.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Yet nobody proposes instituting required continued employment when companies plan badly.

Because such a thing would be laughably retarded, because even though you have a few anecdotes that say otherwise, the fact of the matter is that business still holds most, if not close to all the power in the working relationship. Your refusal to acknowledge this shows that you have no idea what you're talking about, either that or don't give a shit about anyone else.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No, they don't. I don't give a shit what kind of 3rd world comparison you want to make; the US is NOT a 3rd world country, so comparing it to one makes you look like an ass.

Compare the US to other, first world countries, and you'll see that I'm very right.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

No, it is not because of government. It is because of the actions of the companies.

Your obsession with government as being the root of all evil blinds you to the evils committed by others, even to the point where you assign blame for their evils on an unrelated entity.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Exactly. When a employer does not see a union as the enemy, the union should reciprocate in kind. In essence, the rhetoric of "employers are evil" or "unions are evil" are more suitable to 3rd grade verbal fights.

I'll agree with that, however it has been shown that the employers were the ones to start the "seeing the other side as the enemy" bullshit, especially in the US. I really don't care about your 3rd world comparisons, as the US is not a 3rd world country.

Now, there is a lot to blame on the Big Three management for the way they mishandled overseas competition, but the AWU had a lot of blame on it, demanding perks that were no longer justifiable

Like multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses for executives? Why is it always the employees who get blamed for "unjustifiable perks", yet you never mention anything about executive compensation?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[s73v3r]

Basically what you're saying is you wanted to cherry pick something that supported your rhetoric, and damn anything that conflicts with it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

I didn't redefine anything, you have no idea what the word means. A right exists only as a relation between individual and a collective.

Between 2 equal individuals the concept is completely meaningless.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[roman_mir]

Without monarchy or dictatorship, the people are free to establish a gov't if they so desire.

Between 2 individuals there is no such concept as a 'right', it is completely and utterly meaningless outside of the relationship of an individual to the collective.

WHO do you think you are going to complain to, if there is no government and I beat the shit out of you and shoot you in the head and take your stuff?

What do you think, that an abstract concept of a 'right' makes ANY DIFFERENCE to me under circumstances if there is no government?

So get this through your thick stupid head - if there is no government, then there is NO AUTHORITY except for some private protection force and if that's the case, you can't wave some paper with anything that says: 'my rights' on it, it is worth precisely zip.

The rights only exist if there is a government, if there is government established by the people and the people decide that under the law they are equal in that system, then yes, there are rights that individuals have by default that the GOVERNMENT cannot step over.

But again: who, do you think, gives a SHIT about your idea of a 'right' outside of a government that is set up with that purpose in mind?

And that is the entire point that you still can't understand, even as it is chewed up and placed squarely into your dumb mouth, you still can't get it.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[HornWumpus]

The fact that you think that (and I assume live it) shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. Either that or you think outcomes should be equal (by law?).

The vast majority of people are lousy employees/workers. Of course they have no power as their boss could give a shit if they quit. The root of that problem is idiots who don't want to put forth any effort. Not bosses who realistically asses the value of their staff.

People that can't be bothered to learn useful things are going to have tough lives. That is how it should be. They exist as a warning to others: Don't be like them, don't do the things they do.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[HornWumpus]

I just want to add. Requiring employers to keep staff they no longer want to employ _is_ laughably retarded.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ardle]

Using (the) force (of making someone's family's health and well-being dependent on their undermining of their co-workers' need for the same) is like forcing someone to rape someone else - but while you're *not* there ;-)

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ppanon]

Actually, the greeks (and spanish, and french) make a lot of that Made in Italy olive oil. Same with some high-end Italian shoes, handbags, etc. where production has largely been moved to China. Not everything marked Made in Italy is really/completely made in Italy. It's like Made in the USA cars that are just assembled from parts made in China, Mexico, and South America, or that Nexus Q thing. Like the USA, Italians are pretty good at branding and marketing. Even with "German" products, more and more are only designed in Germany as well, although that's less than in the case of the USA.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that economic coercion is only effective because it is backed up by the threat of violence. Don't pay you taxes and see how long it takes for that "econmic coercion" to be backed up by men with gun who haul you away to jail.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

Yes, and if he punches you in the face he will go to jail just the same, which is my point, but go ahead and argue with yourself.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

WHO do you think you are going to complain to, if there is no government and I beat the shit out of you and shoot you in the head and take your stuff?

sounds like a damn good way to get strung up by a posse...

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[JBHarris]

He didn't assault a federal officer, I did. 18 U.S.C. 111.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Gripp]

It is hard to say for certain, but I would imagine there was at least originally some amount of demand for employers to give these benefits for fear that people would just join unions and they would have to anyways. Maybe someone with more time than I could take a moment to compare worker rights and treatment before and after unions; see if there appears to be a pattern.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Grishnakh]

Do you actually have a real point to make? Doesn't seem like it. The fact is, Germany produces high-value goods, Greece doesn't.

Or are you one of those people who think everyone should get the same pay no matter what their job is?

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[ardle]

Name a sane country ;-)

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[pnutjam]

Not more then one years imprisonment, and only if you are assaulting them because of or during their official duties.
Learn to read.(5 years, maybe for aggravated stupidity...)

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Unions are self organized and created by the workers. Employees don't hire a union. The workers themselves FORM a union.

Re:Easy answer for non-americans

[Anonymous Coward]

What country are you from? Where did you learn words like puritanical and twat if you don't know that being an attention whore is nothing to do with sex or promiscuity?

An attention whore is someone who tries to garner attention from everyone in any way possible. It's a perfectly good way to describe Paris.

How to survive

[BSAtHome]

"What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Find another job where they treat you as a human being.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

This. A hundred times this. So many times I hear people complain about their situation and how they can survive it. When the easiest and most powerful option is to just walk away from it. What's the point of just surviving it. If you want a better work environment. Look for one or create one. It's possible, people do it all the time. You just have to want it. If you don't then suck it up and live with the crap.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

This. A hundred times this. So many times I hear people complain about their situation and how they can survive it. When the easiest and most powerful option is to just walk away from it.

Sure, people can just forget silly things like bills, student loan payments, medical insurance, and hell even food. A lot of people simply can't afford to quit or look for a new job (I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor).

What's the point of just surviving it.

Surviving is good. Surviving means your alive. Often times the only real choice people have is to survive.

If you want a better work environment. Look for one or create one. It's possible, people do it all the time. You just have to want it. If you don't then suck it up and live with the crap.

Bullshit. First off most people don't have the capital needed to even think about starting their own corporation (which is what your implying). Second off, even if they did have the capital starting out any new business is VERY risky. Doubly so in this market. It wouldn't make economic sense for most people to try and start a business when your already competing with juggernauts. People would lose everything.

Lastly, it simply wouldn't work if every one had their own company. No one person can run a company, you need other people to assist and preform daily activities, but once you do that you're in a position to be the bad guy, and the cycle starts all over again.

Re:How to survive

[u38cg]

If you work at a company where innovation is seen as a good thing, it's not impossible to form a working party and produce a mandate for change. Involve HR, produce some case studies, dig out some research, and present it to the board. If doing this wouldn't fly, start making phone calls.

Re:How to survive

[Nursie]

If you're working for MS then you have options beside "suck it up" and "starve in a stinking pit"

Re:How to survive

[91degrees]

I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor

That's surely a sign that you really need to leave! Look for other jobs. Apply by email. Don't answer the phone at work at all.

Re:How to survive

[dbIII]

Well I can get to the board because I work for a very small company where the entire workforce could sqeeze into the boardroom, but how does somebody that has been working for less than a decade in a place with thousands of employees and an insane ten or more level structure get anywhere near the board?

Re:How to survive

[Johann Lau]

Ever seen zebras (or other animals, but I like zebras ^^) cross a river in Africa? They pile up, the alligators wait, then some zebras start crossing, at which point all zebras try to cross as quickly as possible, while alligators pick a few off (like eating zebras in a river). End result? A few dead Zebras; instead of all of them dead, because they were stuck on the wrong side of the river. If each zebra did what you consider the smart thing to do, they'd all die.

And guess how even the pitiful rights employees have today were achieved for the most part? By people taking risks for what is right, instead of being part of the pressure against others by not doing so. That's right; because if NOBODY would take shit, employers would have no choice but respect their workers, or they would have none. But as it is now, they can choose from a huge pool of spineless, shortsighted people. (shortsighted because the trouble with selling your soul is that it doesn't end up making anything easier or better)

Surviving is good. Surviving means your alive.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

-- George Orwell

Often times the only real choice people have is to survive.

"Freedom is what we do with what is done to us."

&

"Whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery."

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

Lastly, it simply wouldn't work if every one had their own company.

Yet that, family businesses if you will, is how everything started out. Seemed to work just fine when we though the moon was something to eat, and sacrificed virgins to placate volcanoes and whatnot. I can totally see why it wouldn't work today though! No, wait...

The system is designed broken and creates shortage, so change the system. But don't you fucking dare say the natural order of things is slavery, and that man can only exploit man. Speak for your fucking self.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer sets these game rules. If effect this puts you in competition with your colleagues. A good alternative to improving your performance to be above them is to trip up your colleagues. I always highlight my team colleagues mistakes, I never help them out of a hole, I try to instigate their failure. I have never been ranked in the bottom 10%.

anon.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs had a better system. He would just fire employees on a whim and Apple is the biggest capitalised firm on the NYSE.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

Smarmy comments aside, I'd have to say that it depends on where the company ranks you. As long as you're doing your job, and the company respects and awards your work, who really cares if they're applying some stupid bell curve to everyone? Sure, high performing groups get gigged, and low performing groups have a bunch of do nothings that skate. That's just life. BAE did this, not only for reviews, but for raises as well. So the top 10% or so got a "big" raise, the middle 80% got a standard raise, and the lowest 10% got no raise. When the HR people rolled this policy out in big group meetings I raised my hand and asked "How do you replace the people in the bottom 10%?" -- "What do you mean?" replied the HR rep. "Well, I replied, if the company ranked me in the bottom 10%, I'd leave." They seemed baffled by this. Why would I leave a perfectly good job? Because, I replied, the company doesn't value what I'm doing.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, people can just forget silly things like bills, student loan payments, medical insurance, and hell even food. A lot of people simply can't afford to quit or look for a new job (I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor).

If someone were mediocre or worse, this would be a concern. If someone was much better than mediocre, but working in a company that failed to recognize this due to arcane management practices, then changing jobs would be an obvious, easy choice.

Re:How to survive

[coastwalker]

Game theory and logic suggest that you are correct. Sabotage your fellow workers whenever the opportunity presents itself. Whisper slanderous lies to your boss about fellow workers, give the impression that you think they are pedophiles, spouse beaters and communist druggies. Play their game and destroy their company.

Re:How to survive

[gmahan]

Absolutely agree.
Back when I worked in the cards technology department at Citi, Mitchell Habib implemented a similar system when he took the CIO position. I had a new job within 2 weeks. Not because I felt like I was a bottom performer. In fact, I was told that I was a top performer, and they would often bring me in on projects that were lagging, in order to get things done on time. But I absolutely despise these kinds of systems, and I could foresee the huge morale hit that would take place when it was implemented. I wasn't the only top-tier guy that left...a small handful of us who had been around the block a few times saw what lay ahead and went on to greener pastures.

And if you don't know how things shook out with Mitchell Habib and Citi, take a look here.
http://www.thereblogging.com/ThereBlogging/19D0F00D-C731-4B7E-B1D5-21455389D7EF.html

Re:How to survive

[hal2814]

"Sure, people can just forget silly things like bills, student loan payments, medical insurance, and hell even food. A lot of people simply can't afford to quit or look for a new job (I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor)."

Well, you've obviously already forgotten saving so sure, why not? But ideally, you just wouldn't tell your new employer you were looking until you had a written offer. Some companies will initiate termination if they find out sooner than that, but they are few and far between as long as your job search doesn't seriously impact your work day.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

Game theory and logic suggest that you are correct. .

Don't use a term like game theory unless you've actually used the approach to come to your conclusion. A first order look at things MIGHT prove you right, but those sort of underhanded tactics frequently catch up to you, hurting you in the end.

Re:How to survive

[foniksonik]

My understanding of these systems is that they are simply budgeting protocol.

Company X plans to allocate Y funds to a bonus incentive pool. They have 5,000 employees. How do they distribute the payout?

This is where ranking comes in.

There are a known quantity of employees at various plan levels. There are a known quantity of teams of qualified employees.

Do the math to come up with an annual bonus payout and include that in your budget and your SEC filings as a component of operating costs. Keep a small buffer for surprise superstars.

It's not possible to do the math if you payout soley on merit unless you budget the highest payout for all employees. That is not rational and could hurt the company.

So ranking it is.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

In my company, how you work as a team, how your team ranks you, how other teams rank you or your team, is everything. Every single person I have worked with has always tried their best to help. Being a Negative Nancy would make you stand out in a bad way.

Re:How to survive

[jellomizer]

Umm... Can you stop protesting stupid here...
1. You don't like your job, look for a new one... 99% of the time people can do that while keeping their existing job. They leave their job when they get hired. You look for a new job and then Quit. that way you can pay your bills.

2. Not to sound like a right wing nut. But surviving is the easy part, america already has a Social Security infrastructure to help people survive. We have 10% unemployment however we don't see 10% of the population dying off in the streets. Even in a tough economy you don't need feel like you are getting abused, you still have the right to grow.

3. The Parent also said "Look for one" which doesn't mean you need to start your own company... On the same vain you can Create a better work environment without having to leave your existing company. Most of the time the company wants to change its own environment but no one is willing to stand up and help push it. It may be just as easy as being a little more supportive to the new guy, do the little more extra, help the other guy out more. Try to encourage more team work in your environment

4. As the company owner, you don't have to be the bad guy. Being the boss isn't always about giving orders and punishing people. It is about supporting your workers giving them direction.

Re:How to survive

[rock_climbing_guy]

Sure, people can just forget silly things like bills, student loan payments, medical insurance, and hell even food. A lot of people simply can't afford to quit or look for a new job (I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor).

Post your resume on any job site - use an assumed name.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets say there are two groups A & B. Group A is great, products in on time under budget, everyone the best at what they do. Group B is just OK. People just do their job. So the "bottom" member of group A (because there has to be a bottom member), call him Stan, will get less then the top member of Group B, call him Joe. Stan can be a better employee in every way over Joe, but will never get more then Joe.

Even if the company were to give group A more then group B, because of how company allocate $, Stan is screwed.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a sign at the a protest that said 'Fuck Capitalism' while I don't disagree it doesn't address the real issue at hand, and, understandably ruffles certain peoples feathers. The rallying cry that should be uniting us all is: 'Fuck every system that has ever existed, and lets create a better one'.

Re:How to survive

[Grishnakh]

On the same vain you can Create a better work environment without having to leave your existing company. Most of the time the company wants to change its own environment but no one is willing to stand up and help push it.

I totally disagree with this. If you're just a lowly peon, attempts to change the work environment are generally not well-received, because you're basically saying your boss and his boss are doing a bad job, and this makes them look bad, so they're not going to be very receptive. If you have suggestions and bring them to your boss and he likes them, that's another matter and can work, but if your boss doesn't like your ideas, you either need to shut up or find a new job. Going over your boss's head is usually a good way to get terminated.

Re:How to survive

[jellomizer]

Because you are doing it wrong. You are pushing the work to your boss to make the change. As I stated examples, to help change the environment the first step is to make sure you don't push it down to others. You fix the environment in your team, as best as you can... If this change makes things better, it will trickle up to your manager, who may take credit for it or not, however he has model of a system that works, which he can bring further up.
Going to your boss and say this is wrong we need to fix it, causes problems. Much of a bad environment isn't because of a policy, but due to people pushing down the bad environment over time.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be just as easy as being a little more supportive to the new guy, do the little more extra, help the other guy out more. Try to encourage more team work in your environment

But don't do that if your company uses stack ranking. The guy you help would have been the bottom 10%, so someone other than him is going to get fired. Probably you, since everyone who understands game theory was busy working while you were helping others.

In fields where people get more done as a (non-backstabbing) team, competition should put stack-ranking companies out of business.

Re:How to survive

[marcosdumay]

I know, and have worked for, some employers who would initiate termination if the found out one of their employees was seriously considering moving to a competitor

Now you got to some sensible thing for the government to regulate (either directly or through unions). While asking for regulations on the evaluation method will make people laugh on you, that thing you cite as "normal" is a real problem.

Re:How to survive

[Baby Duck]

I wouldn't tolerate it. If a college professor told me he would grade the class like this, I'd ask for my tuition back, preferably directly from his paycheck.

Re:How to survive

[Grishnakh]

Huh? If you start doing things on your own initiative, then you're going over your boss's head by definition, because it's his job to manage everything and know what's going on. That's a good way to get in hot water.

You seem to think that being in a company is like being in a democracy. It's not. It's like being in a feudal dictatorship. The only change you can do in a company without ruffling feathers is something that affects you and only you, and doesn't affect your deliverables (meaning you have to do it on your own time, so it doesn't affect your schedule).

If going to your boss and saying "this is wrong, we need to fix it" causes problems, you have a bad boss and you need to find another job. A good boss listens to input from his underlings, because they're the ones actually doing stuff; in a modern work environment, he's not supposed to be the expert on everything, he's just supposed to facilitate things. But he's still the boss, so doing things without telling him (unless it's all on your own time as I said before and doesn't affect anyone else including your team members) is a recipe for disaster.

Re:How to survive

[Anonymous Coward]

You fix the environment in your team, as best as you can... If this change makes things better, it will trickle up to your manager...

Oh, The Trickle Up theory! Yes, it makes perfect sense, that's exactly what motivates Occupy Wall Street.

Going to your boss and say this is wrong we need to fix it, causes problems.

I don't know where you Trolls are coming from, and who is giving you guys mod points (no I'm not the GP). Just a VERY disappointed person who happens to have an interest in logic and reasoning.

Re:How to survive

[u38cg]

Given you made it to slashdot, you probably have one of those computer thingies on your desk. Ask your nice IT people if you have a thing called "e-mail". It lets you get right in touch with them.

Re:How to survive

[dbIII]

Given you can write you've probably heard of this thing called reading, and can probably do a little bit of it. If you practice you can get better at it and may be able to handle an entire sentence while still remembering the start of it. You may then understand how your little condescending post backfired to the point of being worth this condescending post.
Look, just reading the fucking posts you reply to before kicking off bullshit that's manifested in your head after seeing a keyword or two. It makes the place more interesting than line noise.

Re:How to survive

[u38cg]

Sheesh, off you go and have a herbal tea or something. Senior people in large organisations still mostly read their own email and if you have something sensible to say to them, say it. Believe it or not, they appreciate it.

Tell 'em where to stick it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got some serious skills, tell them to stick it and go work for a smaller company that's been around a while. Right now it's an employee's market so to speak with respect to certain technology skills (I've been off the market over a year and still get 10+ recruiters calling me a week, and I'm not all that great at all!). My thinking is that you've got more choice than they do, and that after you and hopefully everybody reading this reply, and then some, tell their HR departments that this kind of performance review bullshit is why you're leaving, things may eventually change.

If employers start seeing their very-hard-to-replace talent walk out the door because of draconian, 30+ year old management paradigms, they may be forced to change.

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[Xacid]

Wait, how is it an employee's market?

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[g1zmo]

Because he's on the sucker list of 10 different shitbag recruiters.

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[Grishnakh]

Because certain skills are in high demand in the tech industry, so if you have those skills, companies will try to recruit you. The OP already said this.

Yes, the job market really sucks right now for people with no skills, or who only know how to work retail or wait tables, or who have other professions that aren't in high demand, but many tech jobs are open right now, such as mobile software development.

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[c 0xFF]

It's always an employee's market for the top talent, who are usually in demand regardless of the rest of the job market. The trick is knowing whether or not you're in that special pool. A lot of people think they are ... most are wrong.

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that there's a strange tipping-point when it comes to finding a job. I was literally top of my class in college, but couldn't even land an internship at a second rate company.. recruiters just filtered me out without even giving me a chance at a technical interview.

Then, after 4 years of working at some scuzzy sub-subcontract house for $55k, I managed to finagle a job at a major, well-respected tech company using some personal connections (well, I finagled the interview, and my mad code interview skillz won me the job). As soon as I changed my LinkedIn profile to say I worked at Major Tech Company, I started getting unsolicited e-mails from recruiters at basically every tech company every couple of weeks

I think there's a ton of work out there and it's an employee's market, but only when you look extra desirable to the employers out there. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the best way to get your foot in the door is, other than practicing code interview questions/writing open source code until your brain sizzles and then using personal connections to get an interview somewhere

Re:Tell 'em where to stick it

[radtea]

If employers start seeing their very-hard-to-replace talent walk out the door because of draconian, 30+ year old management paradigms, they may be forced to change.

This hope--that employer behaviour will be changed by employees leaving--is, unfortunately, empirically false. And companies like Microsoft have so much money in the bank and such a dominant market position that it'll take a generation for the company to fail despite the bad management.

Don't base your actions on "common sense" or "logic": base them on facts, on what actually happens in the world. Not what you think ought to happen. Wisdom is the realization that most of what we think ought to happen is utterly unrelated to what actually happens

For example, in the BP spill in the Gulf, the people who made the really bad decisions that caused the blowout were on the rig, and some of them were killed in the explosion... but that doesn't stop the unenlightened from saying that putting the decision-makers at risk for their bad decisions would prevent that kind of thing... it makes perfect sense, but just happens to be completely wrong.

Get even

[BSAtHome]

1. quit job
2. build start-up
3. ???
4. Profit!
5. hire jerks that gave you bad stack result
6. treat them stack performance game
7. Revenge!

obvious answer

[chentiangemalc]

be in the top percentile, then no problem. duh. you just have to over-achieve compared to the rest of your team. i guess for some people that's motivating, for other's it is not. but it seems to be pretty common across large enterprises.

Re:obvious answer

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Only it doesn't work, because this type of system ensures that only the top percentile remain in the team in the long run, meaning that last year's top performances become this year's average target.

In short, if you're an overachiever, you'll raise the bar for everyone else, including yourself. It's a self-defeating system.

Re:obvious answer

[91degrees]

You don't raise the bar for everyone. The median remains the same no matter what happens at the extreme.

Re:obvious answer

[shentino]

And that is most likely exactly what the PHBs want.

Re:obvious answer

[Fjandr]

Overachieving isn't guaranteed to get you a high ranking. It's a political game, much like popularity in a high school. It's not about how well you perform, it's about who you know.

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Only it doesn't work, because this type of system ensures that only the top percentile remain in the team in the long run, meaning that last year's top performances become this year's average target.

In short, if you're an overachiever, you'll raise the bar for everyone else, including yourself. It's a self-defeating system.

And that is most likely exactly what the PHBs want.

Is it really? It's nice to have brilliant people on your team but brilliant over achievers are a rare commoditiy. In the real world most of the heavy lifting is done by average people. What the PHBs want is to sift out enough of the best among the average achievers with as many overachievers as possible mixed in to fill all vacant positions at the lowest possible pay rate. The PHBs will also display a marked preference for people who have little idea of what their skills are worth in $$$ and who will put up with being abused by management because defending yourself against abuse is "socialism".

Re:obvious answer

[c0lo]

In short, if you're an overachiever, you'll raise the bar for everyone else, including yourself. It's a self-defeating system.

Nope... only need to run faster than the some of co-runners, no need for over-running the tiger.

(I can't believe I wrote the above, even if "logically" sound. I refuse to compete with anybody else but myself... the colleagues are there to collaborate with them!!!)

Re:obvious answer

[wisty]

Also, MS hires good people. If you are competing against other good people (not useless dolts), then it's hard to win on ability alone. It's far more effective to do a reasonable job, and suck up to your boss / make your boss look good / advertise your "achievements" to your boss's peers, etc.

Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The point, of course, is that by making employees compete you don't need to order them to give you free extra-contractual work (ie, routinely working hours longer than those advertised), they'll do it of their own accord in an attempt to score better. And that gives a ratchet effect. Possibly good for the company, if hours worked and what you're measuring is all you really care about, but a terrible economic decision (because the lost leisure time is almost certainly worth more than the extra production).

Re:obvious answer

[Xest]

This doesn't work though.

I can give you a real world example. My partner was a retail manager for a well known denim retailer, and was consistently the top in the country each year in terms of year on year growth no matter which store she was assigned to. The problem is only one manager was allowed to be graded 1 on a scale of 1 to 5 or whatever it was. She obviously deserved it as she was the one consistently performing the best, but this had issues.

If it was given to her year on year, the other managers felt they had no chance and just had no motivation to excel themselves because they were only going to get a 2 anyway - they could try really hard and almost do as well as her, but not quite, so why try when they'd get a 2 regardless? The worst part being these grades were linked to your annual rise, so no matter how hard you tried you'd only get a smaller rise against her.

So the management figured well hey, we need to motivate the other folks, so we'll give it to them for how hard they tried, rather than actual results, and so then it's my girlfriend who despite her stellar performance instead suffers and gets a lower payrise. Then she has no motivation to really continue to outshine, because she's not gaining anything for it, in fact, someone that performed worse than her is getting a better reward than she did.

Of course, the solution may then be to increase the number of people who get a 1, but then at that 1/2 boundary you have the EXACT same problem. Those who try real hard can never quite catch the top performers so are not motivated to do so. Really, the only solution is to instead rank people based on a sensible balance of effort and performance without any cap on how many can be deemed to be top performers. If you extend it to say 5 out of 30 people can have the top grade, then what happens when your survival of the fittest type management system gets the 6 best managers in the country in? well, the 6th one will fuck off elsewhere because they'll be getting shit on relative to the others. It'd be far better if all 6, or all 7, 8, 9, or 10 could get equal reward so that you retain the 10 best managers in the country, rather than stick yourself permanently with only the 5 best, letting the other 5 fuck off to your competitors.

The problem with your theory is that yeah, it works great for the top person, but what the fuck is the use in a system that means that 29 of your 30 staff just have no reason to be motivated? That's a complete failure of management.

I've personally not had a problem being in the top percentile myself, but I'd absolutely fucking hate to work under this system because it'd mean everyone around me was unmotivated meaning I'd be carrying the team - I want my coworkers to be motivated, I want them to do well, to be praised, to be given reason to care about their job, because that makes my life easier regardless of whether I'm a top performer, or a bottom performer.

At the end of the day these braindead systems exist because of inept managers who are either hiring the completely wrong people, or don't have the balls to tell someone truly inept, lazy, or incompetent that they're fired. These managers either can't actually figure out how well their staff are performing, or how competent they are, or they can, but just don't have any spine to do what's required to deal with them, and so they give them this absolutely failure of a crutch to try and automate the process for them but it merely serves to destroy motivation of those who can perform by giving them reason not to.

If you hire good managers you don't need this kind of crutch, the good managers will know who deserves what praise and reward, and who needs to be fired.

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

In this fortune 500 company I work at, the boss said he WILL raise the bar for everyone and that's why he does it.

Re:obvious answer

[setrops]

This is so true :-(

Re:obvious answer

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Only it doesn't work, because this type of system ensures that only the top percentile remain in the team in the long run, meaning that last year's top performances become this year's average target. In short, if you're an overachiever, you'll raise the bar for everyone else, including yourself. It's a self-defeating system.

On top of that then there's the issue of actually measuring who the top performers actually are. Ok, with some jobs that might be fairly straight forward. However most of us here are techies, how do you measure the performance of a software engineer or quality assurance. (I ask because I know some of the people in the company get rated highly because their managers talk them up and the company gets this fantasy about how great they are. Should I mention I have a QA person now that basically had me waste months of company time "fixing" stuff that wasn't actually broken? But since this ones a top performer there's no way I was allowed to not fix it.)

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont forget to back stab those around you. You are competing against them, not working with them for the greater good.
That might explain some of the M$ bugs we have seen.

Re:obvious answer

[Billly Gates]

Also, MS hires good people. If you are competing against other good people (not useless dolts), then it's hard to win on ability alone. It's far more effective to do a reasonable job, and suck up to your boss / make your boss look good / advertise your "achievements" to your boss's peers, etc.

Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.

I keep seeing this over and over that they hire good people. Everyone wants to only hire good people and why would good people with a poor rating at places like this work at such a place? Good people choose where they want to work. Bad or entry level people on the other hand get chosen by employers and have to suck it up just to get a job.

Also after you have a termination on your application or resume many places refuse to hire you or you work in another shitty company that can't find good workers who are willing to put up with the crap and lower pay even if you are a good performer but didn't make the metric. It makes you look incompetent and ruins your career. That is not really fair to the worker and his/her family.

I will even go further and say studies show when you turn your office into a dictatorship you do not even have to fire the lower performers. The good ones will simply quit leaving the bad apples who are desperate for a job to stay. Do you want to weed the out the bad apples? Or do you want to retain the cream of the crop? You can't have both in such a situation.

Re:obvious answer

[foniksonik]

Your GF should have been promoted to a trainer of other managers, given a raise and been told that she now only meets expectations and is competing with other top retail management trainers. Now she's responsible for creating more copies of herself.

They also need to break that group up. Make it a regional challenge so there are no more than 10 peers in a group at least. 5 is ideal. Then set the bar for top performance at or just above the best in the group the prior year.

Re:obvious answer

[Xest]

"Your GF should have been promoted to a trainer of other managers, given a raise and been told that she now only meets expectations and is competing with other top retail management trainers. Now she's responsible for creating more copies of herself."

Which is exactly what she ended up doing. But how does that help the problem? someone simply fills her place and you still have the exact same problem again with the person who filled the space left by her exit.

"They also need to break that group up. Make it a regional challenge so there are no more than 10 peers in a group at least. 5 is ideal. Then set the bar for top performance at or just above the best in the group the prior year."

So what happens when you have a region where there happens to be 3 extremely talented managers? You've still got the exact same problem.

It's a broken system, you can't fix it by changing the parameters, the fundamental problems all still exist. The only solution is to use a more rational and forward thinking method of grading people that does away with these fundamental flaws altogether. What if someone has had the odds stacked against them because there's been a flood in their area but they still managed to break even? do you punish them for not achieving growth? The point is this - everyone's circumstances are going to be unique, so lumping them all into the same system is a recipe for failure - someone is always going to get treated unfairly and that has completely the opposite of the desired effect, it demotivates them. You can't escape the fact you need competent managers that can judge people based on their, and their store's unique circumstances.

Re:obvious answer

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

At the end of the day these braindead systems exist because of inept managers who are either hiring the completely wrong people, or don't have the balls to tell someone truly inept, lazy, or incompetent that they're fired. These managers either can't actually figure out how well their staff are performing, or how competent they are, or they can, but just don't have any spine to do what's required to deal with them, and so they give them this absolutely failure of a crutch to try and automate the process for them but it merely serves to destroy motivation of those who can perform by giving them reason not to.

I think the term "manager" has been severely overloaded in the modern corporate world. I think there are at least three different types of management:

1) Budget management - bean counting and other forms of paper-pushing
2) People management - acting as a buffer between your team and the rest of the company, as well as dealing with issues internal to the team like personality conflicts, motivation, career path, etc
3) Product management - mostly technical and creative work all revolving around the life-cycle of a product from creation to end-of-life.

I think that a lot of the dysfunction in modern corporations comes from the intermingling of these distinctly different jobs under the common rubric of "management." You end up with people applying bean-counting processes to people-handling situations and the result is nearly guaranteed failure.

Re:obvious answer

[Xest]

I think you're absolutely right.

One example that comes to mind is when I've been lead developer on projects before I've had headaches where the project manager would keep getting in my way because he was under the assumption that as he had manager in my title it gave him permission to try and tell my team what bugs to prioritise etc. when he had absolutely no clue what they even meant.

Really, project managers for example should be called project facilitators. That's what they're really there for, otherwise they get ideas above their station and just cause problems. I'd led a project perfectly, getting it to a position where it would've been ready 2 weeks before launch, but ended up shooting over for absolutely no reason than the project manager actually added cost to the project unnecessarily, for example, by demanding we add in features which none of our requirements gathering had shown a need for, no one would ever use, and ultimately, no one ever did end up using.

Thinking about it, the term "facilitator" would go a long way to solving a lot of said problems if you replaced manager with facilitator in these people's job titles. When they understand they're there in a support role, and not a management role, things run far more smoothly.

Re:obvious answer

[guibaby]

I had a similar experience. Same system, large company. I usually get a 1 or 2. There was another person who deserved a 2. In order to give him a 2, they had to give someone (me) a 3. In order to give me a 3, they had to justify it, so my supervisor wrote a bunch of crap that was just plain false in my review. When I wrote my response, I copied my next two levels of management. I really didn't have a problem with the number. That's just the game.(even if its wrong). But there was no way I was going to let him write lies about me, that might be read by a future supervisor. After meeting with his manager and several hours of making my supervisor look like and idiot, they ended up changing all of the wording in my review. Later, my supervisor was promoted. I still walked away from the whole thing jaded and I am not nearly as motivated anymore. I am not sure if that is my fault or theirs.

Re:obvious answer

[Xest]

It's theirs, and you did the right thing.

I'm not sure where you live, but in the UK, you'd be putting yourself at risk by not challenging it.

Here in the UK, if you get stellar appraisals but get sacked anyway because of an inept/threatened/jealous manager then you can challenge it in an industrial tribunal, and good appraisals would make sure you win your case. There have been a number of scenarios whereby people have been able to hold up good appraisals as evidence that they are not the problem.

If you allow an unfair appraisal to go against you and choose to just ignore it, then you're putting yourself at risk of unfair dismissal with absolutely no recourse for compensation.

If I've learn anything it's that what goes around comes around. When I worked in public sector some years back I suffered the same kind of thing, I was young and naive and even let them lead me into thinking that maybe I was the problem. I eventually left and my career has absolutely flown along in the time since to the point I'm far more senior, far better paid, and far more respected that my bosses were in public sector. I understand their department is currently facing the axe also and I don't expect their job prospects are good having just sat lazily vegitating spending their time attacking anyone competent enough to make them look bad for about 20 years of their careers.

It sounds like the best thing you can do is get out and move on. A change of scenery is a good thing if things get to that point.

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I love those types of guys. Why not just shoot at my feet and yell, "Dance!"?

Re:obvious answer

[HapSlappy_2222]

As a former project manager at a mid-size production facility, I think what should have happened is YOU should have been given the temporary title "Lead Dev / Release Manager for Project X" and this jackass should have sat the bench; or given you an assist. It's obvious you knew more about the project lifecycle and requirements than he did.

Project management is actually a very welcome management position if filled with the right person; your story could have been about ANY management position filled by a power-hungry jerk. I found PM to be, easily, the most valuable way for me to "manage". It was my job to keep track of the details the production folk didn't need on their shoulders, and it was my job to keep sales off of production's back. I got to set original expected timelines based on every other team manager's input and requirements, and then help them achieve these goals. I technically managed the production team, but I rarely had to do any more than direct my production managers, or fill in at another part of the team if we had a crunch time situation. Because I started in production, I could perform every task the production team did, albeit a little rusty, so it was easy to fill gaps in coverage when appropriate.

Sure, a whole lot of that is "facilitating", but that is what ALL management should be. A major reason management exists is there's a spot where the "project facilitator" (or any other manager) has to be able to pull rank. Sometimes, for business reasons, product features simply must be left out, or a new one patched in, and you need someone who can cause change without debate. A good PM isn't any happier than you are about it, and will have fought tooth and nail to keep to the planned schedule, but this is the perfect role to filter these types of mandatory changes through, rather than interrupt a production team's job: production.

Of course, whenever any manager pulls rank, it must be for a very, very good reason. I think it should be a requirement to briefly state why you're pulling rank to change the entire projected timeline, mothballing a project, or putting folks on an entirely new project. Details are optional, but a clear, solid reason behind the change is not. Unless you're getting shot at, putting out fires, or running an ER triage, there's always time to take 5 minutes to explain why your team's job just changed.

Re:obvious answer

[Greg Hullender]

This is only weakly true. The quiet overachiever always gets rewarded, unless he/she is "overachieving" on the wrong project. (Very important to work on important stuff--not just stuff you think is cool.) The toxic personality who gets a lot done but alienates everyone he/she works with--that's the one who gets screwed.

--Greg

Re:obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.

Also, the survivors have to deal with the guilt and shame of what they've done to others, to get their "success". Which explains why some survivors get outraged at the idea that they've done anything wrong or that the system is unfair.

Re:obvious answer

[radtea]

Of course, the solution may then be to increase the number of people who get a 1, but then at that 1/2 boundary you have the EXACT same problem.

No, the solution is to measure people against objective criteria, not by "ranking" them against each other.

I see no reason why the best performer amongst a bunch of losers should be rewarded in the same way as the top performer on average or exceptional teams.

Rank-based performance metrics are management failure, pure and simple. They are the product of "managers" who think "a good manager can manage anything, even something they know nothing about". They can't, because unless you know the field you have no way to apply objective metrics to the people on your team, and therefore no way to hire, fire, reward or punish anyone that isn't arbitrary and ultimately destructive.

Re:obvious answer

[Fjandr]

The quiet overachiever only gets rewarded if their team lead goes to bat for them, because nobody else even knows their name.

Re:obvious answer

[Fjandr]

Also, the quiet overachiever on a team of overachievers still gets a 2.0 in a forced ranking system.

Change job, you cant win.

[miffo.swe]

The only solution is to get another job because you cant win. You can get higher up but by then all you really do is internal politics, stabbing your friends in the back and running around PR-campaigning for yourself. Work, not so much. If you really like politics, lies, distortion and stuff, get a job in politics instead of masquerading as a coder when you in reality is doing politics full time.

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[fatphil]

Agreed. The only way to win is not to play.

I've just finished a job with what used to be a great company and more importantly with a great team with common sense (immediate) management (so no bullshit metrics). The whole atmosphere in the team was to share all knowledge, 100% cooperation, no competition. Holes in knowledge were filled very quickly, everyone loved work, and everyone ended up an over-performer. (So kudos to the recruiters for getting the right kinds of people who thrive in that kind of environment in on the project.)

I suspect I'll not find a company like that again, which is a real shame. (Having said that, the seeds of a start-up are forming...)

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[andruk]

I'm looking to work for a startup (although I currently have a job). If you ever get up and going, hit me up for my resume.

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[Corbets]

I'm looking to work for a startup (although I currently have a job). If you ever get up and going, hit me up for my resume.

Really? He talks about the experiences he's had with a high-performing team, implying he'd like to get them all together to form a startup, and you think a random post on Slashdot without even a hint of your area of experience, let alone your qualifications, are going to get him to chase you down for a CV?

Man, you don't have to worry about the bell curve problem, you need to start with the basics. ;)

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[ls671]

me too, me too please...

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[sonamchauhan]

And me too!
Don't know about you, but the idea of a 100% cooperation, no bullshit metrics team sounds really good. No matter what the industry.

Re:Change job, you cant win.

[fatphil]

Alas, we lost half of the team, including some of the best ones, last year. They were snapped up by big names (intel, google, nvidea, TI, ...) almost immediately. However, some of the stragglers are actively talking about still continuing to do the same old stuff the same old way. I'm guessing "3. profit" will not be included in our equations any time soon, if ever. The best we can hope for is that people actually want to hunt us out, and come on board.

That's easy.

[marcello_dl]

1. create dummy identities in your team
2. make those dummies look underperforming compared to you (I know, this is the hard part)
3. next stack ranking comes, they get in the pool, so you are above average.
4. profit!!!

I believe this technique is called "stack overflow" and I bet it will work for microsoft for another 30 years at least.

Benner Model

[pvt_medic]

I work in healthcare and the model often used is Brenners Novice to Expert. This looks at the development of an individual in their practice. While a great model since it allows one to compare themselves to themselves and looking for improvement, it also promotes team work. Of course this is a little difficult to apply many software firms. Another model is using a 1-5 scale, where 5 is exceptional, 1 is unsatistifactory, 3 meets criteria, 4 is exceeds criteria, and then they tally these for whatever metrics used and divide to get an average. Comparing staff to each other does not develop team work and only works in competitive environments like sales where you want people to outdo each other.

Yes, and it sucked!

[Madman]

At a former employer I joined a team that was under-performing. I worked hard to get things back on track and I did my absolute best. At my bonus meeting my boss told me that I had done a great job and I was the best performer on the team by far, but he had to give a certain number of people a good review, some a fair review, and one an under-performing review. He didn't do this by job performance but by length of service, and since I was a new guy he gave me the poor review so I got almost no bonus! After that I didn't work so hard....

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

After that I didn't work so hard....

This should be a lesson to you: next time don't work so hard from the beginning.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[dkf]

Performance review outcomes purely on the basis of length of service? That's abysmal! Sure sounds like you had a very good reason for making them your former employer. What a bunch of total jerks.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[fatphil]

Oh, man, that sucks. At least it's a /former/ employer.

I remember a job 10 years ago when the "metrics" were rolled out one year. I had basically taken over the work from ~8 student workers, and had spent almost all of my time rewriting clumsy buggy code with tight maintainable code. In so doing, I was working at about -5 kloc/year. Therefore I was the "least productive" person remaining on the team. My manager laughed as he delivered the news. We laughed. However, my request for them to "stop even taking meaningless metrics" was met with "sorry, ain't ever gonna happen".

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Thanshin]

After that I didn't work so hard....

This should be a lesson to you: next time don't work so hard from the beginning.

Exactly. Make it impossible to underpay you; achieve negative productivity.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Higgs Bosun]

Performance review outcomes purely on the basis of length of service? That's abysmal! Sure sounds like you had a very good reason for making them your former employer.

Noooo, "Former employer" sounds like he passed up a ticket to easy street. The longer you work, the better your job performance despite working less hard! And if your initial performance reviews are going to suck anyway, then don't work so hard at the start either. Give them what they want and game the system for your benefit!

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have threatened him that you'll quit. (if you were in a situation to say so).

Similar thing happened to my sister (who was the newest in the team). She was given below average rating and she fought. She rejected the rating in their internal system, pushed back and said she'll quit if they are unfair.

(in a different team, someone who was obviously performing bad was given a better rating. Every one knew that she deserved better and the system was flawed).

She was not convinced with the offer of "better rating next time". Finally, they gave her better rating .. (no idea how they adjusted the 'distribution'). Well, the rating reflects in salary too.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Madman]

I almost handed in my notice then and there but very soon after they announced that the whole team was being made redundant so I waited for the payout instead. So I ended up getting my bonus in other ways.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[N1AK]

You were either managed by a retard or there's more to this story than you're aware of or sharing. Stack ranking came about because some people don't manage performance and this forces them to differentiate. In the vast majority of groups of (as a arbitrary line) 20 people or more there will be people performing at very different levels. If a team genuinely includes 900%+ great employees then the results for the team should speak for themselves because you should be achieving results 4x or better than an 'average' team.
Sure it has downsides, there's no system that doesn't. I'd rather work somewhere with stack ranking than where everyone is treated equally regardless of how poorly they perform.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[cmat]

An excellent reason to ask what expectations and metrics will be used in the review process ahead of time. You can't play, let along, win the game unless you know the rules. It's also a nice hint: no rules == time to look for another gig.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[KermodeBear]

Performance review outcomes purely on the basis of length of service? That's abysmal!

Sounds like a typical union to me.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

At a former employer I joined a team that was under-performing. I worked hard to get things back on track and I did my absolute best. At my bonus meeting my boss told me that I had done a great job and I was the best performer on the team by far, but he had to give a certain number of people a good review, some a fair review, and one an under-performing review. He didn't do this by job performance but by length of service, and since I was a new guy he gave me the poor review so I got almost no bonus! After that I didn't work so hard....

Sounds like you had all of the drawbacks of a union without the benefit.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

After that I didn't work so hard....

This should be a lesson to you: next time don't work so hard from the beginning.

Exactly. Make it impossible to underpay you; achieve negative productivity.

This is called the "Greek Method"

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[HapSlappy_2222]

He's still on the payroll, accruing value year by year. Someday he'll be a top-tier asset. It's only "former employer" because he no longer does work for them; just collects a paycheck. Go tenure!!

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar result under different circumstances: my former employer had a group of 8 people that I joined. Two more folks were added in the next 18 months bringing the group to 11. Three years later, I was cranking out most of the projects that actually shipped to customers (some folks got to work on projects that got "archived" because management changed their mind). But the market wasn't great as the dotcom bust was running rampant. So they "right sized" 4 of my coworkers to "better align with the market". That year they also instituted their version of stack ranking at review time.

My boss rated everyone well since the 4 that were gone were the lowest performers. Upper management threw a hissy-fit as they didn't believe that we could all be above average. They wouldn't take the story that the 4 lowest performers were already gone. They over rode my manager's appraisals and gave the longest term employee the exceptional rating and the last hired the below average rating with the rest of us called average.

BTW, within a year the company was delisted, the entire group I worked in was gone (along with much of some other groups), etc. And of course upper management was worried about why their bonuses weren't very good even though they were doing an "excellent job" of running the company in rough economic times.

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[HornWumpus]

Atul? Li? Is that you?

Re:Yes, and it sucked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Madman,
Your manager was/is an idiot. My first year at Microsoft, i had 5 different managers, and i was the #1 hire of 21 applicants -- got the worst review ever even though I was in the top 3 of 100 employees, 30 of the employees were there +3 years. Performance and promotion promises by management were spoken, written down, and violated as a practice and HR was there to shut anyone up.. a police state.. therefore, learned a lesson from the teachers.. SMART -- specific, measurable, achievable, results oriented, time specific. I setup my management and HR on three test in an 18 month period, and they failed all 3 -- therefore -- they lied 3 times to as a top performer because seniority and politics was involved above my head... therefore, I sat down with HR showed the history, and gave them an ultimatum -- give me a new job in 45 days or I am gone to HP or Intel. the HR rep.. can't share her name -- baulked.. I replied.. $100k in training and you will go down in history was the worst HR person ever.. -- 20 days later, had a new job, promotion, new building, office, and within 1 year within management and 5 years later retired.. ps. that was episode 1 of 5 with HR and management, and yes, Bill was a real person then, Steve was real, and Frank was alive.. and the Seattle Kingdome was a company party.. many of my colleagues left Microsoft within 18 months -- because of the BS posted.. a few stayed...

Microsoft made me who I am today - richer for awhile, and wiser forever..

We just discussed this

[cpu6502]

Search for Microsoft's 'Cannibalistic Culture' a mere few hours ago.
And my company evaluates each person. Most people get an average score. Plus a standard inflation-based raise.

Grand poobah

[Savage-Rabbit]

What's the best way to survive this type of system?

Set up your own religion like L. Ron Hubbard.You could also found your own Fortune 500 corporation but that's more work. Which ever path you choose it boils down to the same truth, if you are the grand poobah you don't have to perform, only punish your underlings for not doing so.

Gamify

[eennaarbrak]

Does your company do this?

Yes.

What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Gamify. At my company, what makes things even worse is that to be considered in the top 20%, you have to show initiative and contribution *outside* of your core responsibility. This involves:

• - Attend all social events. Even better if you can get yourself onto the organizing committee, because you will inevitably get to talk to various team members. Also, it is a really good excuse if you fail to deliver on your core responsibilities (which is inevitable if you want to maintain your "extra-team" influence.
• - Start supporting a football (or whatever applies to your region) team, regardless of how dull and pointless you think sports is. Choose one that is doing well (you must look like a winner!), but not the same as the boss - you need to engage with him and show him how "independent" your thinking is. It is incredibly satisfying to have the boss, or the boss's boss, stand at your desk to discuss the weekend's results - and you are magically remembered later as a person that "contributes outside of your team".
• - Always mention in the hallways to managers and developers from other teams how incredibly difficult your team's deliverables are, and how smart your team members (i.e. you yourself) have to be in order to simply be in it.
• - Yeah, do get involved in other teams, but don't overdo it. Try to sit in on design sessions - then it looks as if you are part of the "solution", but you don't actually have to do the actual work. Leave those for the guys in the trenches who will get the "middle of the road" rating, because they are not involved outside of their teams. If the project goes badly, tactfully remind the boss that you did mention these risks during design, but the development team must have screwed it up somehow.

Whatever you do, absolutely never, ever get your head down for long periods and just get things done. That is the road to, at best, an "average" rating. You see, by doing your job well, you are simply doing what is expected of you. It does not matter how complex or easy your job is - no one knows or cares. All they see is someone doing their work.

Re:Gamify

[captainpanic]

A 10 minute talk during your coffee break with your boss can influence your rating just as much as that report you've been working on for 4 months. Your boss will spend about the same time on both (10 minutes).

Re:Gamify

[antifoidulus]

Come on, you made this list and didnt include George Costanza's accidental discovery of just leaving your car parked in the parking lot 24/7? Your boss will always think you are at work

Re:Gamify

[eennaarbrak]

Come on, you made this list and didnt include George Costanza's accidental discovery of just leaving your car parked in the parking lot 24/7? Your boss will always think you are at work

Haha, good one. A friend of mine has a similar one - always leave a coat hanging on your chair, for the same reasons.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so true, but it doesn't work if you're in a "global" company, where your jackass of a boss is in a different timezone, doesn't know how to use email, has a bimbo of an assistant who doesn't do her job and he never answers email unless it's from the CEO or another VP that he fears. Oh, and he never attends his own weekly staff meeting, so he can't approve the travel requests that you've put in to come schmooze with him.

Luckily I have enough FU money stashed away to just quit and do my own thing.

Why do they always lay off the bosses with common sense and keep the shitheads?

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

A few additions and elaborations:
-wrt to the sports, find a selection of teams that overlaps but doesn't mimic (the best is if you went to a school that has a sports rivalry with the boss's
-Learn to play golf well enough to not slow down a foursome, but not well enough to win on a regular basis.
-Always support your boss in public, even if it's just project group meeting. Register any criticisms privately after.
-Whenever you've been introduced to anybody in upper management, make a point of saying hello to them whenever you see them thereafter (and don't be embarrassed to re-introduce yourself as necessary). Find out a topic or two that will allow you to make small talk with them, say in the elevator. If you don't know, or are uncomfortable in making small talk, learn, it's a really useful life skill.
-As long as you're sitting at the table, no matter how deadly a meeting is, resist the urge to check your mail etc, regardless of who else is doing it.

Re:Gamify

[elp]

I knew of a guy who would always get to work well before everyone, and always leave well after, but then take 3 hour lunches so it just looked like he worked like a demon.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

For fun, do you work at a Big 4?

Re:Gamify

[JasterBobaMereel]

Thus showing that the system depends not on performance but on other metrics that are mostly nothing to do with work

So the people who are good but not willing to play leave
The people who are average play the game or leave
the poor performers play the game in order to stay employed

So your team ends up with poor performers, some average performers, and maybe one high achiever... and you have lost all the other high achievers and most of the average... and your team performs worst because of this ...

As with all performance evaluation systems Be careful what you measure as that will be what people do....

Re:Gamify

[wolverine2k]

You don't by any chance work for ST-Ericsson, do you?

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

I think almost every company I've worked for does some sort of "calibration" on performance reviews. They look at the A-Team and say "there are 5 top performers there", and then "calibrate" three of them down to "met expectations" so they can make the budget stretch. What they don't do is look at the B-Team and say "hang on, these 5 guys suck" and then "steal" some budget from B-Team to give to the A-Team. Instead, they'll either over-bonus someone in the B-Team, or else they'll just not spend that bit of the budget (which is all but impossible in most companies). So ultimately, "calibration" rewards mediocrity and penalises performance. It's this stacked whatnot, but by less transparent means.

Having said all that, I've only really worked in one place where I thought I was in the bottom bracket for my team. That place used to tell you what your bonus could be at the beginning of the year, so they'd already built it into the budget for your employment. I didn't enjoy working there, but they did pay me an on-target bonus, which I thought was actually very fair. I think most other people in the team thought the same of theirs too. I guess the big difference at this place was they were hugely "on the up", so weren't worrying about the costs too much.

Personally, I make sure the salary is enough to be happy with, and treat the bonus as, well, a bonus if I get it. I've lost out on bonuses because other people in the team "needed it more" than I did, and without exception this has started the clock ticking for me to leave. You can't really change the system, and whilst a bit of gaming is always a good idea, I can't be arsed to make it my life's work (and sometimes you see those that have done still get screwed over).

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly what my company does as well.

Being an active and valuable member to your current assignment isn't enough...there's three levels to progression through the company, and being a good worker is NOT enough (after all, you are "limiting yourself" to an "individual-based" performance). Constant expansion outside your day-to-day work is expected, and the annual goals you set for yourself better show increasing contributions towards being a corporate-contributor or you just don't "fit the corporate culture".

Having to pester your customers (who REALLY hate it) for potential addtional contractual work, sitting in after hours at corporate proposal writing/review sessions, etc is infuriating to those team-members who just want to do their job, charge their 10 hours a day to the contract, and go home without being berated to attend after-hours sessions.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as contractor at a government site, so unfortunately, the end-of-day security check would catch the coat on the chair ploy. But it's a government site. I chug along at about 20% of my capacity and *still* get rated as team MVP. This is not a joke. The only thing with more ridiculously low expectations than government contractors is being an actual government employee.

So I suppose one way to survive the stack rating system is to simply work on a team of total incompetents and be barely adequate. It's not like the raise they give you will compete in any way with the new job you will eventually seek out to avoid working with total incompetents, anyway.

Re:Gamify

[Grishnakh]

Something like this happened to me at my first job. They had flexible hours, so I'd come in a little late (like 10AM), and leave after everyone else, only working 8 hours plus lunch break. My boss had no complaints. Then I decided I'd like to get home earlier so I could do stuff in the evenings, so I started getting up early and getting to work early, like 7AM. Again, I worked 8 hours plus lunch, but now I was leaving while my boss was still there (as he was showing up around 9AM), so he complained that I was leaving too early. So, I went back to my old schedule of getting to work late and leaving late, and he didn't complain any more.

Re:Gamify

[Grishnakh]

Because the shithead bosses usually have the gift of gab; they're good at talking and schmoozing with the higher-ups and BSing them so it sounds like they're doing a lot of managerial work.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

...Whatever you do, absolutely never, ever get your head down for long periods and just get things done. That is the road to, at best, an "average" rating. You see, by doing your job well, you are simply doing what is expected of you. It does not matter how complex or easy your job is - no one knows or cares. All they see is someone doing their work.

Sadly, you hit the nail on the head there.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

If your boss is that bone-headed, I'd recommend leaving, unless there's something at work outweighting such bone-headedness.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that would at least explain the quality of the code I see from ST-Ericsson.

Re:Gamify

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same experience, but in reverse (I was coming too late according to my bosses).
So I made a point of never being late, but I actually worked less and left much more earlier, and was usually more tired during the day (because when I had trouble sleeping, I usually came in later, and that was not possible anymore).
In the end, everyone lost.

Re:Gamify

[Grishnakh]

Yes, that's exactly what I did, after a short time.

How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

[Anonymous Coward]

poorly

Works great in a fast-growing organization

[drphil]

..but leads to really bad behaviors in a static or shrinking organization.

The large company I work for has just scrapped it after about 10 yrs when HR finally heard the pleas of managers.

Survival when the org is static or shrinking includes understanding what is the "currency" of your manager and *all the other managers* who have teams that are pooled with yours. Get known as a high achiever not just with your manager but the others. At least in our company there would be an annual meeting of those managers at some point to work out the rankings in there respective organizations to have the parent org come out to the required distributions. Horse trading ensues. Being known by your manager's peers helps you in that meeting.

Easy answer

[Zsub]

Performance measurement is for sissies. Getting along with the boss/owner, that's where it at.

Avoid being black-mailed

[Confused]

This might be a difference in work-place culture, but whenever I choose a job I always only considered the fixed salary part for comparison. If I was happy with that, the job is ok. If I need some bonuses to make a decent living, it was re-negotiation time. The nice consequence of this is, that I don't care much about the rigmaroles with performance reviews to decide on the bonus. That makes me very relaxed and whatever comes in is just a nice bonus and nothing I really need. In the end by not caring, I swim along with the average, but I still can tell them to get stuffed if the idiocy becomes too rampart. And being the one to stand up and voice what everyone is thinking sometimes makes you popular or someone to be consulted beforehand.

In the companies I worked for, the more formal and stupid the system was, the easier it was to gamble. I liked best the system with self-defined yearly goals, where the road to success was in the skill to formulate impressive sounding goals where the non-performance was hard to verify. Or to be part in projects that get shut down because of reorganisation before being delivered. That never got me top rates, but before going through the hassle of digging through the bones for some real data average success and bonus (or slightly above average, if I bickered too much about my valuable contributions) was assumed independent of the actual performance.

For me that gives the best results for a minimum of exposure to the whole idiocy.

Re:Avoid being black-mailed

[AwesomeMcgee]

Hah- Yeah the goals full of specific projects thing is where I'm at right now. It's great, I just put a bunch of crap about completing a hand full of things that I know are low priority and going to get cancelled before they go anywhere so I don't have to worry about them trying to figure out if I completed any of my goals because I couldn't have since management changed their minds about doing them, so I get the obligatory A for effort!

Re:Avoid being black-mailed

[chthon]

Is that you, Wally?

Re:Avoid being black-mailed

[Confused]

No, I'm not Wally, but he's my hero. From the whole Dilbert comics, Wally's attitude is the most practical, although Alice's with her unrandom violence has also lots of appeal. Unfortunately, this tends to be too much physical work to implement.

Make your own company

[Bragi Ragnarson]

I walked away from my first and only full-time employer and established my own company. Now I have a 20+ programmer team, we are doing nice software for customers and we are building our own PaaS (shellycloud.com). I only employ people I like working with. No managers here :)

It is an system well adapted to microsoft

[Coeurderoy]

This ensure that the company only keeps burnt our overachiever and political sharks.
With a little bit of luck it'll drive them into the ground.

And anyway anybody working for microsoft deserves "advanced corporate management techniques" being applied to him or her.

Re:Quit

[Thanshin]

Don't put up with that shit. Vote with your feet and quit your job. Stop being a bitch.

Or, depending on your region work opportunities and your physical appearance, start being one.

The best way to survive...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is be the best.

Re:The best way to survive...

[CSMoran]

... is be ranked the best.

FTFY.

My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on a company that follows this aproach

They had a fixed percentage to put into above the average, result:
- some years a few good people had an average evaluation -> good people get frustrated -> good people leave ...
- some years a few average people had a good evavluation -> good people that last year got an average evaluation get frustrated ...

They also had a fixed percentage to put into bad evaluation, result:
- some years a few average people had a bad evaluation -> average people get frustrated -> average people leave ...
- some years a few bad people had an average evavluation -> average people that last year had a bad evaluation get frustrated ...

From year to year there seems to be a group of good people, lets say 30%, that try to get into the 20% openings for "good evaluation" the result is 10% will always get frustrated and consider the system unfair because they consider themselfs above average.

Everyear, a lot of people (perhaps 40%) are not incentivated to fight for good performance because they are not good enough or not willing to sacrifice personal time/life to achieve that mark, nevertheless they are good enough to have an average evaluation, they just go with the flow ...
For these people the system has no impact whatsoever ...

All in all, the system seems to have some advantages but I'm not sure the advantes are greater than the disavantages.

How to survive?
What are you aiming for?
To be on the average evaluation, you usually don't have to do much, after all you must be better than the bottom 10% or 15% ...
To be on the above average evaluation if you are on a star project on the company and if you are good you have a good change to get a good evaluation, if you are on a marginal project, don't even try it you will have to work 2x has hard as someone on a star project to get a good evaluation.

And offcourse there are politics, some people will get a better evalution not based on performance but on social connections ...

Between the people that don't care if they get fired, the people that won't fight to get to the next evaluation level and the people that would fight to have a good performance even withough the system in place, this system is only having impact on 25% of the people.

Work is......

[Anonymous Coward]

..... how well you and your manager get along!

Brown nose anyone that is above and and if possible, be the rat on anyone you work with in a politcal correct way!

You don't have to perform well if your manager is oblivious or when he favors you over others.

In modern working society you do not have to perform, as long as you can make it look like it.
Respond a lot on emails, follow the lines and all is good or make yourself valuable in a legacy system so that you cannot be replaced.

Besides that...... it is just hope that shit won't overfloat you if you do not work according to mentioned system.
I have been in many international companies (including Google) and as a tech this is what I learned!

We don't

[CHJacobsen]

The company i work for doesn't really do performance reviews in the sense of giving a score. If you're good enough to remain employed after the trial period, management assumes you're capable of doing your job unless given a specific reason to reconsider. Since they know this, whenever an employee underperforms, management's initial assumption is that it's their fault. This has worked remarkably well, and employees overall stay significantly longer than the industry average.

We have regular evaluations, of course, but they are not comparative and mostly serve to give advice on how an employee can improve their job as well as giving credit for what they do well.

Re:We don't

[91degrees]

whenever an employee underperforms, management's initial assumption is that it's their fault.

This seems to make sense. A lot of the time, employees underperforming is the result of them not knowing what to do and not having a clear process to find this out. Management taking responsibility will typically solve this problem. The solution is to give more direct support to the employee.

Personally I find I'm a lot happier at work when I'm producing software that I know is beneficial to the end product. I like to feel useful. I also like to feel that I'm not going to become unemployed. If I'm doing something that seems unlikely. I assume most people feel this way.

Here's how we do it...

[Balthisar]

I think we're still a Fortune 10 company... we manufacture consumer products globally, and have a global performance evaluation (PE) process. I will be as generic as possible in the terminology. Oh, I'm a manager who conducts PE's, and also a volunteer on the personnel development forum (PDF) for non-management personnel.

For PE's, we have a top-tier level that's limited to 15% of the eligible pool. In my department so far this year, we've not nominated enough people to meet that 15% (we're in a new region, and all of the local employees are new). Then there's 70% to 85% of people that are achievers. This bracket is slightly open because there's an allowance of 15% of under-achievers and non-performers. The key is, we're *not* forced to bracket anyone into the lower tiers. And like I said for the top tier, we're not forced to bracket people into that tier, either.

Our system makes sense. Not everyone can be a super-star; even when everyone is a super-star, there's always a small percentage that have a little bit of an edge. And because we're not forced to rank anyone as under-achievers, we recognize that even the weakest link might be carrying his or her weight -- and carrying weight (do your job) is all we ask!

To prevent abuse, all of the top 15% and the lower 15% (if any) all go to the PDF committee that I mentioned I'm in. There, my fellow managers and I review the proposals for the highest-achiever rankings, and we all have to agree. Basically, you can't screw your way to the top, or other methods of brown-nosing.

And as a low-level manager (organizationally-speaking), I'm subject to the same process at my pay grade. And I'm fairly happy with it.

Re:Here's how we do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like several governments are heavily working to protect your little monopoly.

how many lawyers and lobbyists do you have parked downtown district of columbia 24/7/365?

Racing rats

[91degrees]

This pretty much guarantees a rat race.

Everyone tries to get ahead of each other. This can work, if the metrics are totally objective, but they rarely are. Even if they were, it's a high stress way of doing things. Only a certain personality type thrives under constant stress. These people will usually leave and set up their own business

Re:Racing rats

[dkleinsc]

Also, an important rule to remember is that if you win the rat race, all you have is the privilege of being chief rat.

Binary Contractor Performance Review

[jobsagoodun]

Being a (scumbag) contractor, my performance reviews are very simple and binary - a) all ok, please carry on/do new project b) not ok, goodbye!

Re:Binary Contractor Performance Review

[Registered Coward v2]

Being a (scumbag) contractor, my performance reviews are very simple and binary - a) all ok, please carry on/do new project b) not ok, goodbye!

I have the same one, but we still use force ranking. As the sole employee, I must decide which 15% of my body to get rid of. I leaning towards my left foot. While the choice is easy now, I fear as the years pass they will become more difficult.

360 degree reviews

[brockamer]

On my team, we use a sort of 360 degree review process. The people I manage meet with me and my boss on a quarterly basis, and we use the time basically to check in on any issues we've identified, check on any goals set in the last quarterly review, talk about training / certification progress, listen to any concerns they bring up with people / processes / environment, etc. At the end of the review, I leave the room and the employee gets to talk to my boss about me, without me in the room. Then I come back in, my boss leaves, and we talk about my boss without him in the room. My boss and I aggregate and anonymize the top 2-3 things that people mention about us, and that becomes a part of our reviews.

Count yourself lucky

[Big Hairy Ian]

My firm does evaluations by making you take of your shirt you are then rated by the number of stripes on your back :(

Why do you care?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest question is why do you care?

If they're firing or setting salaries based solely on this curve, then sure, that sucks, but are they actually do that, or is this just to assist them as one component of performance evaluation over time?

If it's the former, then you're working for idiots, and you should leave.

Re:Why do you care?

[ledow]

That's my basic response.

If this matters to you, talk to your employer. If they push it through without taking on board your concerns - that's precisely how much you are worth to them.

That doesn't mean quit if they don't give in (that's up to you), but either they will listen and adjust (and thus, problem solved), or they will ignore EVERYTHING you do (and thus, lots of energy not wasted trying to get them to change).

Do you really think a huge company will just arrive at such a scheme overnight? Do you really think they will take kindly to you knowing better than whatever CEO instituted or approved that scheme? Do you really think they care that some people are marked as underachieving when they are not. If they did, they wouldn't have such a scheme already.

Make your concerns known (if you dare), and then suck it up. Either play the game or get out. That's a business rule that applies to 100% of such schemes, no matter what the size of the organisation. And the fact that you are in that position means that your predecessors and co-workers sucked it up when it was first proposed or they joined the company.

best way to survive

[Surt]

Within: Is to remember that the ratings are subjective. Make friends. Particularly make nice with the boss. Then perform competently so they have no reason to downrank you, while having reasons to rank you above the other competent people.
Without: Is to leave for a place that uses a sane management system. There are plenty. Some of them are eating Microsoft's lunch right now. People who are actually competent software engineers are in extreme demand right now, there's no shortage of jobs for that skillset. A recruiter can get you a list of a few hundred positions for you to choose from on a moment's notice.

Popularity

[dcrisp]

Probably the best way is to be popular within the group or at least NOT unpopular. As a popular person, your manager will see you as sombody who gets along with everybody else. This is espeically important in a "Star Team" group where all members are performing brilliantly. The manager will look at the people who get along and rate them higher than the people who are a little different. The manager will grade down the 'unpopular' staff because they always seem to be in conflict or the naysayers or such.

The above was my personal experience. I learnt pretty quickly in my career that I didnt really "fit in". whilst I got the work done I always got lower gradings on these kinds of things.

I would like to say that its something you can change but often its not somethign you can conciously change. Its your personality. it's who you are. there is no real changing of that. The reality is probably that the only way you could improve your rateing is move to a department where there are people less popular than you.

Hmm. wow that sounds really dodgey, doesnt it! :) Excuse me, I have to go and put in a job application that's just come up on the companys internal job board.

Kill it with Fire

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

What, too obvious?

Get sacrificial lambs

[Anonymous Coward]

When interviewing, look for potential team members with a poor work ethic, marginal technological aptitude, and bad interpersonal skills. The rest of the team will have to pick up the slack, but the lamb will get the bad rating for 2 years and be canned.

Assess the situation and act accordingly

[NilleKopparmynt]

The quick answer is quit as soon as possible. This would make the system not work especially well. The problem is that this approach is not taken by everyone so the real answer is to assess what is happening and maybe stay if there is a future for you. If there are good motivations for the bad review and a reward and recognition if you improve plus a fair and honest system then it might work.

If you realize that the reviews are based on other things than your performance and you are screwed no matter what you do then the only thing you can do is leave and leave early. This is because in a system like at Microsoft there is a big value in a person who accepts a bad review and still stays.

I used to work for Microsoft and my biggest regret is that I did not quit much much earlier.

It doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best "evaluation" is that I don't overpromise sick schedules or deadlines, and my boss knows I'm very capable software engineer and trusts me and knows my skills. He also does his best not to interfere with my job, just like we (the engineers) don't go tell him how to deal with clients.

Occasionally he does give me responsibility to handling technical (and non-technical) stuff with clients without his supervision so I/we get to do something else once in a while than just code, and best "performance" for that are happy clients and succeeded projects.

To be honest, I wouldn't work in a place where the management doesn't trust their employees. Why did you hire people you don't trust in first place? This good trust and respect between the people in our workplace makes up a really good atmosphere to work in, and jobs get done efficiently because everyone is very proud of what they do, and know they get respected for it. Not mentioning nice bonuses like flexible working times (if you have personal things at some days to take care of, you can do it and make the hours back on some other day or sometime later).

In a nuthshell, the management is cut down to bare minimum in this company. Tip: the best places to work are small companies with 30 or less people - you get known personally to everyone, and likely make very good friends there too. Small, tight team also drops out a lot of stress to please some random middle-amangement guys and lets you fully concentrate on your actual work.

Quitters Sometimes Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit.

Quit Early.

Quit Often. (no wait, that doesn't make any sense)

Just Quit.

My old company used a stack ranking system and as others have said, it sucked. So I found a much better job at a much better company and it has worked out very well. When I left the old company I had an exit interview and I told HR straight out that the ranking system was a large part of my decision to leave. The woman interviewing me said she'd heard that a lot and I got the impression that HR hates it as much as the other employees due but it's coming from the very top. It's just a way for them to cut costs by guaranteeing that they don't have to give bonuses or raises to 25% of employees, regardless of performance. There's no way to win the game but you don't have to play.

Rotate the low ranking, like latrine duty

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Most managers who I have worked for try to rotate the low ranking around. No one gets it often enough to come up on the HR radar. They were always happy to have a couple of people who knew that they were low performers, so that they didn't mind getting stuck with it every once in a while. And even the best folks can have a bad year over time. Think of it like pulling latrine duty.

The best managers I know foster an atmosphere where everyone's work counts the most, not a bunch of folks competing against each other. If I landed in a project where every single person had personal ranking as the top goal, I would get out.

Immediately.

Re:Rotate the low ranking, like latrine duty

[AwesomeMcgee]

It may not come up on the HR radar- but it will come up on a persons radar. I have in every job I've had been given above average performance reviews, if once ever somebody gave me a below average review, I would leave, it would be clear I do not belong. And that's one above average engineer lost due to "latrine duty"; I would not call this a "good manager". But this is the problem with the whole system.

No, not quite like that

[Kjella]

Most competence systems I've seen has a 1-5 performance rating where 3 is performing okay, 4 well and 5 exceptionally. On occasion there's a 2 for underperforming and very rarely an 1 which is basically fail but it's rare because you shouldn't get promoted to that level if you aren't already performing like one. That's usually reserved for total mishires or people who've had some kind of personal breakdown. Saying that X% of your workers are underperforming is saying that your hiring process fails X% of the time - that figure should be close to zero.

Of course before that there's usually a set of skills that your employment level should have, so the demands on a "Senior Developer" is different from a "Junior Developer". Usually these are set up in a competence matrix, so when they're looking at possible promotions they can say yes, you're coding at a Senior Developer coding level but you lack skill X which is required to be a Senior Developer. Skills development is related but actually quite distinct from your work performance, you can have done your job excellently but done very little to improve your skill set.

Sane companies also look at professional development, if you're a first year Senior Developer whose performance has improved but still is below average you're probably a better choice than the 5th year Senior Developer whose performance has declined and is now equal to yours, those two are connected. It was probably a better idea to promote him to an okay performing Senior Developer than for him to be an overachieving Junior Developer. That's another reason 5s are so rare, if you are that good you should be in a position with higher demands.

That said, when it comes down to it managers can pretty much manage to tweak the rating however they want. That said, even the worst of managers want to look good to their team/departments bosses and customers. If they know you're critical for them to deliver on time and in good quality, you'll survive most of the office politics. But without trying to kiss too much ass, make sure your boss knows what you're doing for him. Don't expect him to find out on his own.

Network.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Network.

Find the smarter people who are better-connected than you, ask if they know why your idea is dumb. Get them thinking about it. Let it percolate.

Re:Network.

[Rogerborg]

Better connected people will just swipe your idea and present it as theirs, with an option to blame you if it fails. That's how they become better connected.

Re:Network.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Better connected people will just swipe your idea and present it as theirs, with an option to blame you if it fails. That's how they become better connected.

First, the right well-connected people will usually give you some credit even if it works--and even if they don't, they remember you, so you have a great connection if it works. Second, wouldn't you rather work at a company that works right, even if you don't get the credit for it?

Re:Network.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no. If a company doesn't give credit where credit is due, it is not working correctly, by my definition of "working correctly".

Any management that will cheat you a penny will cheat you ten thousand dollars, if they get the chance.

Re:Network.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather pump gas then work with people like this.

If my fellow employees are so pathetic as to think this is acceptable then that tells me one of three things:
1. They don't give a shit and are willing to throw others under a bus to get ahead -- not a nice working environment.
2. They are too chicken shit to speak up or "man" up -- yeah, that's the people I want to work with.
3. Management is lost, beyond hope -- impossible working environment, run before they beat you down; and beating you down is what they want to do as it works to their favour in this environment.

I'm guessing this is why these companies like to hire young people, they want people in the #2 category, and the odd one that fits #1 they make into management? Shit, what a depressing thought, I'm f'ing happy I don't work for a company like that (and never have, and believe me, never will).

Re:Network.

[u38cg]

âoeIt's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.â --Var.

The implementation is the problem, not the concept

[roger_pasky]

Most of the problems raise when big numbers are translated to small teams. Probably, a 10% of a big corporation staff deserves to be fired, but that's not appliable to 10% of every team. Maybe several teams deserve to be fired alltogether (boss included) and some teams deserve an extra-bonus (ok, boss included), but the big numbers should achieve those global percentages.

Bad bosses apply the corporate percentages top down without changes because it is easier to manage and they can say "I'm not mean, it's the rule" but he is part of the problem. The spreading of the percentages should be distributed through the organization weightened according to the contribution of the teams and sub-teams, so there could be an uneven punishing policy, which is counterintuitively far much more fair.

Join a startup

[johnjaydk]

This kind of management stupidity can only thrive in a company that's able to survive despite it's management. That means reasonable large and mature.

Basically, You need a stable field to play games on.

Now a startup is unstable, fragile and rapidly tanks if people play games. Plus the whole ting is focused like a laser and causes players to stand out like a sore thump.

The question on where you'd thrive is really simple and depends on whether you're a player.

Try being a manager who has this imposed on you ..

[niks42]

First-line managers who have to deliver against HR policies like this have my every sympathy. I was made a manager in a certain very large IT company. I managed a team of mixed fixed-term contractors, contractors and permanent staff. My manager came to me at the start of the new year to tell me that during the upcoming staff performance review, I had to make 15% of my permanent staff a 1 performer, 75% a 2 performer, and 10% a three performer. When I complained that I didn't have enough permanent staff of a low caliber (c'mon now, I was doing the hiring!), I was quite neatly told that if I couldn't make up the numbers from my workforce, then it would be OK as from his level he would meet his overall target for 3 performers by making ME one.

Actually, that's what ended up happening, not that any of my workforce found out about that 'deal'. I lasted a further four years of management in increasingly Kafka-esque circumstances until I decided that I should stop trying to rise up the ranks of management, give up and go back to being a techie. I've never regretted the decision, and I can sleep at night.

It's easy

[oneandoneis2]

My performance is simply marked down as "godlike" for all categories and we're done.

I don't know

[mrsam]

I have no idea how my current employer does performance review. I haven't had to deal with performance reviews in over 15 years. This is one of the benefits of working as a consultant on a contract, and one of the things I don't miss about working as an employee.

I personally find consulting to be a more civilized, sane way to earn a living. My total compensation gets negotiated up front, for some prescribed period of time. Then, when the time is up, we just negotiate again(1). Simple. No fuss, no mess. You know how much you're making, and you don't feel shortchanged when the bean counters decide to cut down on some fringe benefit.

I guess that periodic contract extensions would count as a periodic performance review, of some sort. But there's no bureaucracy involved, and I don't need to dance like a pony, in front of someone. It's purely a business transaction, and nothing more.

The oft heard suggestion of unionizing is a joke. It's never going to happen. If you want to unionize, sure, but good luck to you. On the other hand, if you want to become a consultant, that can happen today. Your choice.

(1) Yes, I've went through an occasion of an 800lb corporate gorilla deciding, by fiat, to cut all their consultants' rates, for budgetary reasons, assuming that everyone is going to accept it and that they have no choice in the matter. As my then-managers discovered, that assumption was wrong. One of the other benefits of consulting, you see, is far fewer questions of what happened at your last job. Naturally, contracts come to an end all the time, and one's services are no longer required. Nothing wrong with that. Perfectly understandable, and expected.

evaluations

[Triv]

At my company, you write an evaluation for your manager in which you rank yourself as either needing improvement, meeting expectations or exceeding expectations on a variety of points, while your manager simultaneously fills out pretty much the same evaluation of you.

And then both evaluations are handed to a senior person in the office who doesn't actually know you that well or what you do, who gives you exactly the same, barely cost-of-living raise as everybody else he doesn't work directly with, regardless of what the paperwork actually said.

The disconnect is startling.

Re:evaluations

[Lumpy]

They stopped giving me those. Because I was always rating myself as , "Exceeds Expectations" and then giving examples of how and where I am exceeding expectations.

The department manager, on the other hand made everyone "satisfactory" with a couple of "needs improvement" points. We were pulled into a meeting with several senior managers asking why such a disparity and I pointed it all out, citing examples and even citing examples of above and beyond of other co workers.. They sided with me, and that royally pissed off the department manager who was just outed as screwing off on performance reviews.

I still did not get a raise. But it felt really good to throw a manager under the bus and watch all 18 wheels run over the body.

Lockheed Martin

[jacknifetoaswan]

I'm an engineer for Lockheed Martin, and we're ranked via stack ranking, although your ranking isn't just against other people doing the same, or similar jobs to you, on the same team, it's also against random groups in other states that have no impact on your job. When I first started, seven years ago, we were only ranked against those people that were on the same team as us. As the system has evolved, LM has created 'Centers of Excellence' to bridge gaps between skill sets across geographical locations. Now, I'm an engineer in Moorestown, and I'm being ranked against information assurance people in Bethesda, systems administrators in Syracuse, and quality assurance personnel in Eagan, Minnesota, among other roles and locations. Further, LM has created an artificially wide distribution, such that, instead of the normal distribution's 68.2% of people falling within one st. dev. from the mean (a '3' or 'Successful Contributor'), more like 90% of people fall in that grouping. Thus, while there are fewer '4s' (Basic Contributor) and '5s' (Failing Contributor), it also means that there are fewer '2s' (Above Average Contributor) and '1s' (Exceptional Contributor). Since our merit increases are based on our ranking, it's exceptionally tough to get a better ranking, so pretty much everyone gets the standard increase. I don't know if this is to increase 'fairness' across the ranks, or what, but it sucks.

Re:Lockheed Martin

[Old97]

When I joined LM I was already cynical about these performance evaluations, so I tended to ignore it, but a friend of mine who joined around the same time took them very seriously at first. He worked extra hard and documented all of his accomplishments in detail. He made a very strong case for his excellent performance. He ended up with the same 3 everyone else got. His boss was honest/dumb enough to tell him straight out that he gives everyone a 3 because LM needs to keep the rates down to remain both competitive and profitable. My friend then adopted my attitude. I've moved on to better things and he is still with LM comfortably coasting. LM lost 2 high performing professionals as result. One left and the other quit trying.

Re:Lockheed Martin

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet they still keep raking in money from goverment contracts.

I work at a Tech company run by a salesman

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of the few people who work support for a web-based tech company. The boss is a former (and current) salesman and as the sales staff keep adding customers the number of support people are getting smaller as we quit without getting replaced.

Our metrics are pretty much the same as if we were sales people making cold calls : How many phone calls did we take and how many customers did we call back after they left messages.

It doesn't matter that in addition to tech support calls we also do hour-long webinar product trainings and remote installations that could take a few hours each. There have been days where I was doing back-to-back training all day and my phone call figures suffered. Why didn't these complaining customers get a call back from me? First off, most are calling every day about bugs that development has placed as an extremely low priority and secondly, I can only be on one phone call at a time. Yelling at the top of your lungs won't improve things.

Of course, he feels we have too many support people as it is and it's just a problem of mismanaging our time.

Get along with your boss

[s1mon75]

I have the pleasure of working for a very large multinational company which employ's over one hundred thousand people worldwide. The best way Ive found to ensure I get a 'positive' rating is primarily based on how well I get along with my leader. Ive had a 'below expectation' and 'exceeding expectation' while working in my current role. And I was working just as hard both times. One was conducted by an absolute fool, who was subsequently sacked and the other by a truly inspirational leader with whom I get along famously. In short, get along with your boss and you will always do well.

Re:Get along with your boss

[niks42]

Sometimes you have to manage your manager out of the organisation you are in .. sometimes you have to vote with your feet and leave. Not enough do.

Ignore It, Tell Your Direct Report

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have a four-eyes-Meeting with you boss, just tell him "I will ignore stack ranking and I will not care about my stack index. I will do good and hard work and if that is not enough, just fire me".
From that time on, you are out of the treadmill and you boss will know it. It will give you peace of mind and will remove that Kafkaesque thing out of your head. If they fire you, it might 100% be due to cost reducations and it will be justified by the "stack ranking". So again, ignore this shit.
In my experience, there is a sufficient number of companies and corporations around who don't play this shit. Of those who play it, many if not most will accept you ignoring the system. Good people cannot simply be cloned. If you are *actually* a bad performer you will be booted out anyway, if you are a good performer they will find some equally shitty rationalization why they keep you despite having a bad stack ranking. So to conclude, ignore the shit and have peace of mind.
Just don't advertise all of this when some higher-up comes around. You don't have to make them feel ridiculuous in the public. Then all will be fine, even if your handling of the Stack Ranking will become known to the chain of management (up to the CEO). These are sleazy businesspeople, not maths professors.

water and weight

[Anonymous Coward]

They dunk me underwater: if I float I'm a bad programer and so must be fired, if I sink I'm a good programmer. At my last company they checked if people weighed the same as a duck.

Re:Try being a manager who has this imposed on you

[niks42]

By the by: other managers were in the same situation as I was; one solved the problem by telling his newly-promoted staff working for him that it was HR policy to give people a 3 rating for the first appraisal after promotion ..! Another happened to have a couple of people on a one-year placement as part of their degree course - they got a 3 to make the numbers up. I decided that in the future, I would always ensure that I had a doofus or two working for me to perform menial tasks and to take the hit.

Fortune 500

[Anonymous Coward]

Caterpillar has the same ranking methods. It's always amazing what management believes when people get to review periods.

The way to survive

[SoothingMist]

The US Government, including uniformed services, also grades this way. A quota is enforced that prevents supervisors from giving good reports to good employees. The only way I have seen to win in this system is to put office politics and power games ahead of meaningful accomplishment. One has to "manage up", meaning that one has to keep one's nose stuck up the right rear-end. Those are the ones who do well, not the ones who put mission first in an effort to accomplish something. Because of this, the US Government spends more and more money, creates more and more agencies, and hires more and more people while getting less and less accomplished. Is there any reason to wonder about the US' loss of world leadership, military strength, and economic prowess?

Re:I remember the old days...

[AwesomeMcgee]

So how 'bout that windows 8? Man what a load! I hear if you install it your computer will start speaking in tongues! User-friendly my eye!

The competition myth

[MisterPuddles]

The problem with systems like this, where you rank employees with respect to each other, is that it creates an atmosphere of competition in an environment where cooperation would be more productive. As a software engineer, I've yet to find one situation where competing against my peers has produced a better product. Management doesn't get this. The hierarchical structure of organizations lends itself to competition, so the people in charge tend to be competitive people and believe the best work comes from people trying to outdo each other. They seem to think that saying some other guy is a better employee will motivate his peers to work harder, when in truth all it does it create resentment or, if you figure it out, apathy.

Thunderdome

[Anonymous Coward]

Two employees enter, one employee leave.

Simple....

[Lumpy]

Everyone, Including when you save the company by performing a miracle.....

Needs improvement.

That way no raise is warranted. We cant be giving out raises, how would we keep our record breaking profits?

questions i ask in the interview

[james_van]

im not overly popular with typical HR people, cause i ask lots of questions during the initial interview, such as: how do you handle performance reviews? how is management reviewed (top down, 360, etc)? it weeds out bad places to work real quick. plus, its really fun to see the look on an interviewers face when theyre put on the spot.

Looks pretty similar to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a Big Defense Contractor, and HR requires managers to "distribute" performance rankings. They're basically allowed to have one "top" performer, forced to identify somebody as a "lower" performer, and lump everybody else in the middle.

There's almost no actual managerial discretion, everything is done by HR's one-size-fits-nobody formula. Raises are set by a strict computer-generated curve. Every year, HR calls a meeting to lay out the "raise pool," and tells the managers to lie to their people about what's actually going on. My last boss was a crusty old 30-year man who never failed to give us a blow-by-blow account of the annual HR propaganda meeting...

Could this be a long time coming?

[chthon]

I got introduced in this system twelve years ago. In the nineties I had never worked for a company which did such evaluation.

I have no qualms about evaluations per se, but when I heard how this worked, my immediate reaction was a real WTF moment.

I have in the course of school and my career been introduced into statistics several times, and I know the Gauss curve. So my first reaction really was, wtf. you do not go measuring and plotting your data, and then expand your bell curve. No, if you want to know if there are outliers then you do this match against your mean and your standard deviation. That way you can see the underperformers, but also the people who are really, really good (or one should investigate the matter).

However, the biggest wtf is really that I am working in a company with many engineers (master level engineers). I expect these people to understand these issues in probability/statistics and made a statement against this misuse of mathematics a long time ago, which is absolutely not the case.

Re:Could this be a long time coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember classes in college where the professor insisted on grading on the bell curve. Maybe it was a large enough class that it fits, but it seems like laziness on his part. He didn't want to make the call on how much of the material we were supposed to know and he didn't want to risk giving lots of low grades if he was a bad teacher and most of his students didn't learn what they were supposed to. So whatever most of the students learn, that's a C!

subject

[Legion303]

I believe my company has the same system, only the complete gutting of bonuses years ago and the fact that a stellar rating gets you around 0.3% more on the pathetic annual salary increase means that no one cares.

My last performance review contained two directly contradictory statements from my manager, in what I suspect was an uncorrected cut-and-paste from the previous year. I didn't bring it up, because either way I was getting the same shitty raise. That's motivation for you.

Re:subject

[Greg Hullender]

Doesn't sound like you work for a great place. However, even if pay increases are small, the other thing that performance reviews usually drive is promotions. When your name comes up for promotion, the first question people ask is "what were his/her last few performance reviews like?" So there is still a reason to strive for good reviews--and they should be easier to get if most other people are thinking it's pointless.

--Greg

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM?

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a review from a former manager in which he calls me the wrong name 4 times. Clearly a cut and paste out of a coworkers review. I pointed it out to him prior to submission to HR and chose to not change it. I filed a complaint with HR that my manager failed to even know my name, how could the review be accurate and their response was, and I quote, "it isn't our problem we have executive bonus issues to deal with". That was the year that confirmed my growing suspicion that the only time HR even looks at our reviews is when they decide they need a cause to fire us. Luckily, when they read that one they will either fire the wrong or face a lawsuit over unwarranted dismissal.

You gotta love corporate Amerika.

The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[Shag]

My primary workplace uses the 1-5 scale, but doing a perfect job of everything you're asked to do gets you a "3 - meets expectations." So the only way to get higher than a 3 is to think of things to do, and do a perfect job of them, before it even occurs to anyone to ask you. I averaged a 4-of-5 across several categories on last year's annual performance evaluation, which got me a year-end bonus equal to about 2 weeks' pay (which we tend to get most years) and a raise of... nothing.

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[HapSlappy_2222]

The problem is not the 1-5 scale, but the way your management utilizes it. Rest assured: your boss is the type that will try to find ways to not give you a raise every year, no matter what evaluation scale he uses.

The basic reality is simple, regardless of what type of scale is used. Evaluations cannot pit people against each other; this creates stagnation, not stellar performance. You also must evaluate fairly, and pit the employee's personal performance against what the company requires from the employee's position.

The best evaluations I was ever involved in came in the form of a 1-5 scale self-evaluation and a corresponding manager evaluation, and then discussing the discrepancies, if any. Following this, a brief discussion on what the employee has learned in the last year, whether the employee's direction at the company was still on the right trajectory, and finally any issues that the employee wanted to bring to the manager's attention. Raises would be discussed in a very brief meeting one week after the evaluation to give the employee time to put any applicable after-evaluation changes in place, and to allow the manager to secure and plan out his budget.

One of the worst evaluation setups I was involved in was when my eval outcome was decided prior to even meeting with me, and all I was handed was a document to sign. Before I even went to my evaluation meeting, I knew it was gonna be a 3-4 average, and I knew I was getting my standard 3% raise and production bonus. Not great; but not bad. Still, it didn't cause me to want to excel much. I needed a venue to discuss career path, satisfaction, hurdles, etc instead of being told "Here. Now get out."

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[Quirkz]

The problem is not the 1-5 scale, but the way your management utilizes it. Rest assured: your boss is the type that will try to find ways to not give you a raise every year, no matter what evaluation scale he uses.

Absolutely. Our company does a 1-5 scale, too, but they *expect* most of us to do pretty well. Other than a little baloney about "nobody is ever going to get a perfect 5", that's okay because the final score is an average of lots of subcomponents, and they've got a generous enough sliding scale. A 3 - 3.99 is a 3% raise, a 4 - 4.49 is a 4% raise, and 4.5 and up is a 5% raise. The total score works in a little general fluff (punctuality, attitude, resourcefulness, etc.) but the majority (80%) of our review is based on a set of personal goals with very clearly predefined "this is a 2, this is a 3, ... this is a 5" metrics. There's no competition against co-workers, expectations are all very clearly laid out ahead of time (often I'm the one actually writing the specifics of the goal in the first place), and then it's up to me to meet what I said I would.

One of the worst evaluation setups I was involved in was when my eval outcome was decided prior to even meeting with me, and all I was handed was a document to sign. Before I even went to my evaluation meeting, I knew it was gonna be a 3-4 average, and I knew I was getting my standard 3% raise and production bonus.

Oddly, since our goals are very clearly predefined, I don't mind at all when most of our annual reviews come pre-filled. I generally already know what I'm getting to within a few tenths of a point, so when the boss fills it out and emails it to me with "let me know in the review if you have any comments" I've never really had anything to disagree with. At the actual review we may spend a few moments talking about why one component was particularly good or bad, but then a lot of the time is spent discussing the goals for next year.

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[war4peace]

I work in a very large company which uses the 1-5 scale, where 5 is best (Outstanding) and 1 is worst (Not meeting expectations).
First year: I got 5 but no raise, nothing.
Second year: I got 5 but no raise, nothing.
Third: I got 5 but no raise, nothing.
Fourth: I got 5 but no raise, nothing.
Now upon 5th year completion, I specifically asked for a 3 just for fun. My manager agreed, so I have a 3 now. No raise, nothing.

Thing is, the yearly appraisals, according to HR and internal procedures don't ensure you're going to get any bonuses or raises or whatever. Shortly put, it's up to the manager how would he split the extra budget, if any. Most times there's no budget for that because our organization doesn't bring direct revenue and thus we're at the bottom of the pond. So after 5 years during which I have seen a 5% salary increase once, whereas the currency parity between my local currency and the EUR fell 40%, I stopped giving a fuck about the appraisals. Also, starting a few months ago I gave up hope of changing jobs within the company. I have applied for 3 different internal jobs and received an offer for each, but there was one thing that was constant: you don't get any salary adjustment if you move. That's valid throughout the company at Individual Contributor level. Each hiring manager promised there's going to be appraisals and "if you do well, we can discuss about a salary increase". Right. I flat out told the last one: "You know, I'm not a new hire and after 5 years of being here I don't believe in such promises".

For me, it's very simple: show me the dough and I'm all yours. Job titles, work amounts, perks such as a desk nearer to the window don't interest me. I have to make enough for supporting my family and right now I can only make enough to barely keep us afloat. So I'm definitely looking outside but I was so far followed by bad luck.

One more thing: we're going through rougher times and companies bully their employees into low wages and shit because they can. But times will change eventually (might be 5 years, might be 10 until then) and when times change, some now large companies will become effectively defoliated of good performers. People would leave in droves because the job markets would boom again and bubbles will rise again to the top, while biggest bullies on the market right now will see their good blood drained by various startups and companies with good employee care plans.

Right now, when we look for another job, we ask ourselves "how stable is this company?" and a company's desirability is affected by its stability in the long-ish term. but in the future, when most companies will become again pretty stable, people will change their desirability scale accordingly. Then all the sins of those companies who now treat their employees like dirt will finally receive their overdue payment.

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[HapSlappy_2222]

So after 5 years during which I have seen a 5% salary increase once, whereas the currency parity between my local currency and the EUR fell 40%, I stopped giving a fuck about the appraisals.

I'd have stopped giving a fuck, period.

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Raises and bonus are often capped per-group even when the HR review process isn't! Companies seem to think it's OK because only management deals with the budget issues so employees won't know the details (really?) and therefor won't be able to complain since they lack the facts.

Re:The 1-5 scale can be totally worthless, too

[Shag]

yearly appraisals, according to HR and internal procedures don't ensure you're going to get any bonuses or raises or whatever. Shortly put, it's up to the manager how would he split the extra budget, if any. Most times there's no budget for that because our organization doesn't bring direct revenue and thus we're at the bottom of the pond.

Absolutely. I have the "advantage" of pretty good job security due to working for a largely government-funded, university-affiliated research organization (and being in the department that actually runs the gear used for the research). That said, I'm sure our departmental budget is stagnant. Heck, the overall organizational budget gets smaller most years, because efficiency improves.

So, for now, I work two part-time jobs in addition to my full-time one, because that one by itself wouldn't quite pay all the bills. But I don't want to do that forever.

there are multiple solutions

[Emil_and_the_Detecti]

- work only on contract based no longer then 12-18 months per company. You won't be included in such rankings ... but you might get hired-and-fired faster then usual staff (but better paid) - make yourself the only person with specific know-how about certain technical aspects (But to serve a niche can make you unemployed easy, for example if the niche is gone). If there are not so many people that have comparable knowledge it is harder to rank you. Specialists always get better ranking then generalists.

IBM doesn't rank anyone

[gelfling]

We all suck and should pray to the CEO each and every day we still have jobs or at least jobs in places where people aren't routinely eaten by tigers. One fundamental way to do this is to erect a byzantine HR structure which ensures that none but the politically astute few rise past the level of their incompetence while everyone else is left filling out endless self appraisals and evaluations. Another is to make it policy that in order to even apply for a different job in the company you have to have already lined up your own replacement. And since no one is really allowed to move outside of their own organizational structure anyhow, it's a near impossibility. And last but not least set in stone salary plans which, months ahead of the date of these so called appraisals, state that with few if any exceptions, there are, once again, zero dollars to give to anyone for any sort of bonus, benefit or increase, ever. The reasons, you can pick from the usual basket of nonsense: the industry's bad, the company didn't or won't meet its goals, market pressures, regional employment imbalance, you're too far above the midpoint (but be careful you never divulge what that number is or what it means), they have the wrong mix of skills and/or jobs, competitive pressures or 'drive to leverage'.

Then follow this up with the obligatory quarterly executive emails extolling the greatness of the company and how wonderfully it's doing. Exhort the workers to exceed all goals. Have HR grind out survey results proving that the company is the greatest company in the world to work for.

Bell Curve Nonsense.

[stewbacca]

Stack ranking is basically applying a forced curve distribution on all employees at the same level

This is fundamentally flawed. Peer-referenced criterion is not an appropriate measurement of one's worth to an organization. Performance-based criterion is more effective. With peer-referenced, you are assuming that there is some sort of naturally occurring bell curve, which may or may not be true. You eliminate the possibility that 5 out of 5 employees might all be really good and instead are saying "John is the best and Frank is the worst". If Frank is performing well above the performance requirements, then what's the problem?

This same problem is prevalent in education. Pitting student against student has no educational value of measuring if a student can learn what they are supposed to learn. Johnny is the best at 4th grade math (got 100%!) and Frank is the worst, even though Frank got a 92% when the standard is 70%.

Re:Bell Curve Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

There probably is still a bell curve, that's the point. It's just that the entire 99th percentile lies way above the national average. There's nothing wrong with measuring that curve; it's how you apply it that matters.

Re:Bell Curve Nonsense.

[Maximum Prophet]

This same problem is prevalent in education. Pitting student against student has no educational value of measuring if a student can learn what they are supposed to learn. Johnny is the best at 4th grade math (got 100%!) and Frank is the worst, even though Frank got a 92% when the standard is 70%.

When I was in high school and college, I was amazed by the number of Math teachers/professors that didn't understand the mathematical basis for "grading on a curve".

Re:Bell Curve Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Joe is a lousy teacher, he sleeps through most of his classes and shirks his office hours. Most of his students don't learn a thing in his class (a few teach themselves out of the textbook). Exam time, since the class average is 20%, 20% is passing! Joe thinks he's a great teacher because with no effort he has the grade distribution he was shooting for.

I think I has the solution

[windcask]

Stop being such a pansy. The only way to live this life of yours is to do better than the guy below you, so either step on his face to climb your way to top of the greasy pole or start sweeping floors. Step it up, you jackwagon!

Australian Government Department Does It As Well

[Anonymous Coward]

The Foreign Affairs Department has done performance management like this for some years. They do it for financial reasons, not performance reasons. If they can (sort of) stick to their bell curve then they are able to budget with a degree of certainty. What it has created is a race amongst staff to see who can stick their tongues up their supervisors freckle the best. It's pathetic.

Not at all

[Door-opening Fascist]

One of the advantages of having my pay legislatively frozen for the past four years[1] is that my boss feels it would be a waste of time to evaluate my performance. Back when I actually could get raises, I had to do this hokey self-evaluation and then go over it with my boss.

[1] The Washington state legislature has frozen all state employee salaries from 2009-2013. Even though my salary is entirely grant-funded and I don't cost the state a dime, I still can't get a raise. Unfortunately, I don't think legislators understand how research universities really work.

Re:Not at all

[dkleinsc]

Unfortunately, I don't think legislators understand how research universities really work.

Sure they do - they cost the state money, threaten major donors with research about such silly things as water pollution and repetitive stress injuries, and turn out citizens who might be smart enough to realize they're being screwed over by those legislators. That's why the entire budget should be allocated instead to the football team.

One approach

[ausrob]

Spend a little time in one of these companies to gain the prestige of having worked for them (that's probably one of the big draw cards of working at a company like Microsoft), then take that experience and "bank it" outside in a non-Fortune 500 company. If many people took this approach (and with some luck) the brain drain may cause these companies to rethink the stack ranking policy.

work for the (US) government

[eagle1361]

If you're a GS (general schedule) US government employee, you get rated as "met" or "not met" expectations. Everyone except true losers get across the board "met". Not that the pay changes much regardless. Pay and performance are pretty much uncoupled. Work hard and get paid the same as the lazy guy across the hall. And people wonder why government employees are lazy...

Bad reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never got a bad performance review at any company. Not sure what to think about someone that blames their bad evals on the eval metrics. Oh yea, I think you probably just suck at your job.

How do they evaluate us?

[DaveV1.0]

Poorly. Objectives that come and go and are often unobtainable. Shuffled from team to team and project to project with little training and preparation. Forced to work on previous projects or side projects that are not evaluated but are required to be done. Little to no understanding of what we do and the tools we are forced to use.

They evaluated us poorly.

Oh, and my company also uses "stacked rankings".

Blame Management

[Anonymous Coward]

To survive in an environment with a forced bell curve, let me paraphrase Shakespeare: "Kill all MBAs."

If you want to be less cynical, assuming you like the job, stay with the company so long as you are being rated as a nominal or better employee. If you have the right personality type, perhaps you can one day rise high enough in the company to change the employee evaluation policy.

If you are evaluated as a non-performer, take immediate action to find another job and resign from the company. If you're actually a good employee who just happens to be in an insane system, this is about the only real power you have. If all employees took this approach (and almost all do not), the company would be forced to re-evaluate its policies or risk fatal talent drain.

What idiots like Jack Welch and his acolytes fail to realize is that if the company did its job correctly in the first place (hiring great people and not hiring bozos), it wouldn't have to constantly churn its work force to weed out lousy hires. The question management really ought to ask is one to itself, "What am I doing wrong that causes me to constantly hire lousy people and cost the company time, money, and reputation?"

Re:Blame Management

[SecurityGuy]

> To survive in an environment with a forced bell curve, let me paraphrase Shakespeare: "Kill all MBAs."

The people who do nonsense like this are often not MBAs. MBAs should be telling them why this is a bad idea. In my experience, MBAs are taught that this is a bad idea.

> if the company did its job correctly in the first place (hiring great people and not hiring bozos)

Unfortunately, this is hard. Sometimes you make a mistake and hire a bozo. Sometimes you hire a star, and he becomes a bozo. Personally, I like the motto "Hire slow, fire fast." which I think goes to your doing "its job correctly in the first place." Take the time to hire the right people. When you end up with a bad apple, don't take a year to get rid of them, especially if you have a 90 day probationary period.

Actually, that might be one thing that leads to systems like this. It's hard for a big company to fire just one person. They tie themselves in HR knots. But if it's standard operating procedure to fire X% every year, well that's easy! I'm not saying I approve, merely that I may see why this particular pathology develops.

The 5 no's, or how to be bulletproof at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes down to the 5 No's. If your employer can ask these of you, and come back with no for all, you're in the clear.

1) Does this employee bitch or moan about much of anything?
2) Does this employee inappropriately fondle female employees? (appropriate fondling over-looked)
3) Does this employee appear to have questionably legal inside knowledge that makes him a liability if he was fired? (does he know of some skeletons in the closet)
4) Has this employee been noticeably drunk or high whilst doing his job? (only noticeably)
5) Have I payed back this employee for bailing my ass out of that life or death business meeting?

So in short, keep b.s. grievances to yourself, only sexually harrass the woman presently dating, keep your knowledge to yourself, don't get too loaded during the day, and make sure everyone important owes you a favor or two!

Best Way?

[gregulator]

"What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Overperform.

Start your own business

[tbg58]

When it comes down to it EVERYONE has their own business. When you are traditionally employed, your business has one customer, and if you lose that customer by quitting or getting fired, you're out of business. Start your own business and remember each customer is an income stream. Multiple income streams mean more money and more security, and also give you the ability to fire customers you don't want to do business with.

This doesn't mean it's easy or even possible for everyone. My business was much harder to start than I ever thought it would be, but the challenges have been worthwhile both in income and in getting out of corporate BS like the stacked ranking game.

Middle managers who have no skills beyond playing office politics and self-promotion are pretty much stuck in the corporate rat race, but people with real skills that translate to marketable goods or services can make it on their own if they can learn how to build business structures and processes to run their business and a marketing plan to get customers.

The Slashdotter who said the best way to win is not to play the game was right. This post suggests one way HOW get out of the game.

my company does this

[__aaltlg1547]

And as a manager I hate it. I'm forced to play chicken with the other managers and try to make sure my employees get not less than whether I think they deserve. So instead of giving them the review I think they deserve I have to inflate it a little or a lot. I have to because nobody wants to evaluate one of their employees poorly unless he's doing poorly. And somebody has to get screwed if you have no poorly performing people.

Re:my company does this

[Greg Hullender]

Sometime before my career is over (35+ years now) I hope to actually manage a team with no poorly-performing people.

--Greg

Stack ranking (not to play the game)

[Anonymous Coward]

Work for a big international bank that also implements stack ranking. In the beginning I took it seriously, but not anymore. I just do what I think is right and don't even read the so called goals anymore. We have to sign our performance review. And in case get a bad rating, I will simply refuse to sign. That will cause trouble for my manager which (hopefully) motivates him/her to get me a better review next time. Otherwise I really don't care.

gamut

[buddyglass]

I've worked for big companies (IBM) that had twice-a-year reviews that involved goal setting, evaluation of whether goals were achieved, and rating yourself on a bunch of silly categories. Bonuses were tied to your score. I've worked for small companies that tried to do the same, and I've worked for even smaller companies where there was no review system (or performance bonuses) whatsoever. I vastly prefer the latter. If I'm doing a crappy job and am in danger of losing my job then tell me. If I'm doing an awesome job and you're especially pleased with my performance then tell me. If I'm meeting expectations but not doing anything awesome then don't waste my time (and create awkwardness between manager and employee that needn't exist) by making me go through performance reviews.

Re:gamut

[nortcele]

Amen. The larger our company grows, the less work satisfaction there is. A few years ago the company instituted mandatory goals and reviews. Up until then the company had been 10% profit sharing. 5% of the profit divided evenly, and the other 5% divided based on salary. No quarterly profit for the company, no sharing check. It really seemed to form a teamwork I help you, you help me environment. After dissolving the profit sharing and going to a goals/review system, immediately there were groups that gamed the goals. Individual and group goal conflicts... How can I meet my goal if I spend time helping you meet your goal... Senseless.

Review

[Muramas95]

My job is to make sure everything runs smoothly and if they hear no complaints then that means I am doing my job well.

Ratings

[the eric conspiracy]

I've worked with two types of companies; large ones that all had a fixed percentage allocation like Microsoft, and small ones that did it seat of pants or not at all.

The fact is no matter what sort of system your employer has, the whole process is a lie. You will only find out what they really think of you when it comes time to downsize.

Generally not having a fixed percentage system makes it easier to lie to the employee. Having a fixed percentage system can be unfair if you are on a team with all superstars. Basically though if you are on such a team it is a very unstable situation and will not last long because members of such a team will generally move on to better opportunities pretty quickly.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

By the metric of

[Anonymous Coward]

dingleberry count.

Beards score well above avg.

Dell looks for any excuse not to give raises

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Dell. I got a 2 out of 5 on my review last year and did not get a raise. Last year was my first year with the company. The entire review was 'you were not here the entire year so relative to people that are, you did not complete all your objectives'. I then asked what objectives did I not complete, and I got some really vague responses. Then I got 'you are in a pay grade with senior managers, so you are rated relative to then. To make matters worse a 2 review blocks me from being able to find a job in another group. I have never seen anything like this. I never get reviews below a 3. I sometimes get a 4 and have no interest in putting in the hours necessary to get a 5. If I did that last year, I would have still gotten a 2. This is with multiple companies.

This review did not even mention the multiple monetary awards I got last year(they were small, but they pretend like they are a big deal). I probably got as many awards as any of the top performers and I was only there for 7 months. I did not expect a big raise. I expected some kind of cost of living increase and then I would get 7/12s of it. This is how most companies do it. I asked around and Dell does this alot. When you get a raise it is typically below inflation. This appears to be one way they are cutting expenses. There are not any 'cost of living increases' there are only 'merit increases'. There is inflation, if you don't get a raise, it is the same as a pay cut. Since money is only worth what you can buy with it. Odds are I won't get a raise this year either due to the bad revenue numbers and Dells pledge to cut $2 billion in expenses.

The part about how I can't transfer makes the review worse. You need at least a 3 on your review to get another job in the company. There are more interesting and more senior level positions in the company that pop up periodically that I am qualified to interview for. These are very competitive, so who knows if I would actually get them. I can't even apply for them. To show us what they really think of our effort, Dell now has most of its technical staff in my group reporting to people in India. We are matrix managed. A person I have never spoken to is responsible for my review. When we look up these people in the system they appear to have many people with similiar skill sets matrixed to them. So this is probably done in part to see who you can fire in the US and replace with someone in India or temporarily move this person to the US on a visa. Note that the Indian guys on the team are not blind and they say the same thing.

I am a very senior technical person and I can replace this position without a lot of effort. This place does seem to have people who stick around a long time. Apparently they are confusing me with people who will put up with this. Since that review I have cut my hours to 40 hours and any time I have to do off hours work I always make sure to take comp time. I did not always do that last year, but now they have shown that extra work is not rewarded, I see no reason to be bothered. To be fair, the group I am in at Dell is very reasonable about hours and we get 1 month off to start (2 weeks personal time/2 weeks vacation). I plan to use all of it.

Re:Dell looks for any excuse not to give raises

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

The extra work you used to be doing might have been what got you the '3' and my favorite benefit, the salary continuation program.

FYI: 1000 feet = 304.8 meters

[Anonymous Coward]

Just helping out.

Amusing GE anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

I once worked for a company that was acquired (and later divested) by GE, and they introduced this same insane 80/20/10 evaluation scheme. Regardless of the actual merits, 80% in each department were required to be rated as average, 20% as excellent, and the remaining 10% as crap. And the latter were required to be terminated if they stayed in said 10%. In a small group of uniformly excellent performers (that's why GE bought the firm, duhhh), this was nonsense.

The amusing part (which I learned by direct observation and talking with my manager) is that at any GE facility, by mandated corporate policy, the appearance of union organizers outside on the sidewalk passing out pamphlets causes an immediate, mandatory all-managers meeting to discuss ways of fending off the menace. Consequently, any GE facility can be brought to a standstill for a week by simply having real or simulated union organizers show up on the sidewalk every two days or so, handing out leaflets...

Re:Amusing GE anecdote

[HornWumpus]

Wait a second. Are you saying that having managers in a meeting 'brought work to a standstill'?

That's the exact opposite of my experience. 'When the managers away, real work gets done.'

Here's how the review system works

[Anonymous Coward]

The board essentially tells your managing director that the department is getting a 3% budget increase for salaries. Management may want to give everyone great raises, but budgets are budgets. You have to give your superstars a little extra which means giving someone else a little less. The purpose of the review process is to come up with an excuse as to why you're getting a crappy raise. The rest of the implementation details are just that... details.

Out Perform

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at GE, so I'm quite familiar with the stacked ranking model. From a business standpoint, the approach has the advantage of making it easier for managers to fire the under-performers (and there are always some of those in any department - whether due to lack of skill or motivation). The downside is not that it cut down on team effectiveness, but rather that the constant pressure of "up or out" meant there were very few people who stayed with the company beyond ~ age 40 (they joined other companies looking for those with GE experience).

To survive this environment, you need to perform - period. You have to decide whether you want to belong to a company that demands that you work (a four-letter word that generally means doing things you don't want to do) or one that doesn't. Companies in the latter category carry a lot of dead weight around because they don't fire the losers, but the atmosphere is pretty relaxed among the employees...until there's a RIF where they start firing people wholesale.

On a selfish side note, if Micro$haft didn't have a monopoly on the highly-obfuscated OOXML file formats used in MS-Office, it wouldn't be around anymore... :)

My company used to do this

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

My company used to do this and yes, it does suck. Not only because it does force unnatural rankings depending on the mix of people, but because the good old boys and people who have connections don't get weeded out as part of the process. I remember one of my good employees getting 'targeted' to land in the bottom of the rankings and having to haul the rank meeting manager and the HR person into a different room and asking if they wanted to continue tarring and feathering the good employee, or should I go back in and bring up the couple of 25 year plus employees who did nothing more than recirculate the air in a cubicle. Turns out they didn't.

How do you defeat this? Pretty much perception, perception, perception. To succeed in one of these things, the managers in the room folding, spindling and mutilating your annual contributions should all know who your employees are, approximately what they do, and have a favorable impression of them. This is a year long marketing effort to get recognition for your people, name them in staff meetings and in written status reports when they do something good. Death is some manager in the meeting that one of your employees did something to during the year, but they decided to wait until the review process to bring it up.

The difference between the guys at the top and the guys at the bottom are the ones at the top got talked about and everyone in the room said "Yep, good guy" while the ones at the bottom were people nobody knew, someone had a bad experience with them, or nobody understood their accomplishments.

So the marching orders are a) make sure you know what you're working on and that what you're working on has measurable value and is important to the business. If you cant identify the value and importance, simply stop doing it. Make sure everyone knows what you're doing. Make sure every time you interact with a manager that its a positive outcome or bring it up with you so you can repair the situation in advance of the review session. Market the heck out of your people and put them in front of as much management as possible. I used to send employees in my stead to meetings or have them make major presentations where most managers want to do it themselves.

Done properly, this could be a good tool. Not done properly (and it usually isnt done properly) its a stress inducing sales job and whoever has the best skills at presenting employees and hardballing the HR people will get the results.

There are also a number of other little things to pay attention to. I found out that each of these sessions has a hunk of money and stock options to give out to the group, but that they rarely allocate all of it and if it isn't allocated, that falls back into the general pool. So I found out that if I approached the HR person and asked if there was any residual we could divvy up among the top 2 or 3 people, they'd often do it.

Re:My company used to do this

[Greg Hullender]

The suggestion of sending your people to represent you in meetings is an excellent one. Note, however, that there are probably only two or three people in your team (assuming 6 to 8) whom you would trust to do that. Every manager already has a ranking of his/her team, even if they don't like to talk about it.

I'm surprised you worked at a place that protected unproductive long-time employees. At Microsoft, we dumped them into the bottom bucket unceremoniously. That didn't get them fired, but it meant they didn't get raises or stock. (I suspect most of them didn't care.) But I sure can't remember anyone trying to defend one.

Likewise, if you had 8 people, you could get two in the top group without fighting and wouldn't be forced to put more than two in the bottom group. With good arguments, you might get three into the top group and limit the bottom group to just one. (I usually had one person I WANTED to put into the bottom group.) But the idea of having to fight for ALL of your good people is very strange to me.

--Greg

I work for the fed

[deadweight]

All time and money saving ideas are punished.

Stacked Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I believe this practice is more widely used than folks know. This is all part of Silicon Valleys "Pay for Performance" policy - to work you like slaves just to give you crumbs, while the big-shots get all the bonus money. Companies have lost sight of what truly "makes" a company: the people - not the "outside" shareholders (to differentiate those of use who are "grunts" who also are shareholders, albeit with measly numbers of shares). When was the last time an "outside" stockholder came up with a bright idea that made the company some $$? Yea, I thought. . . . With the current CIO/MBA focus on meaningless numbers, the fundamental aspects of one's business is forgotten: To deliver a product/service that your customer will delight with and will come back for more. Most companies "claim" they share this vision, but down in the trenches - it's a very different view than from cloud 99. We are people: We have talents, experiences, skills - we're not interchangeable widgets. . . We have dreams/desires/hopes for our future that nobody cares about, since "they" are too self-absorbed in their own fantasy of being greater than they are, only to have the company stumble because of their incompetence, and good, skilled workers loose their jobs in the process. In the 30 years I've been doing embedded sw development, sure, lots has changed, but many (many, many) of the current issues we face are ones we did 20 years ago, just at 1/100'th speed, 1/1,000'th the memory. While most companies run to be "wannabee's", the "truly" innovative companies will continue to rule and eventually be the "winners". It all still boils down to a company's "dna" - how they go about doing great things.
So. . . people, workers, get stacked, ranked, filtered and flushed - without a single thought of the human cost - just to save the quarter's numbers. It takes money to make money - DOOOHHH. . . .

Backstabbing

[Anonymous Coward]

We do this where we work and the best way is to just look better than your co-workers. It doesn't matter how good of a job you do really as long as you look better than average. So, stab your co-workers in the back. Horde your knowledge. Suck up to the boss.

Unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

The unpopular - but realistic - response to this question is simple:

Be the best performer on the team. Be smarter, more professional, more productive, more motivated, and more hard working than your peers.

Or, leave and go work a union job as manual labor for (comparatively) shit wages, and forget about your 6-figure engineering job.

That's how you "survive" a system like this. There's no magical formula, you either outperform, or you give up.

At my employer...

[antdude]

... we get reviewed by other colleagues every year. So you have to be good, doing team work, etc.

Technology companies firing nerds

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Thus discriminating against the people most devoted to technology.

I know people at Microsoft, and know more than one who got a review that basically said "You met all your objectives on time, this is unsatisfactory performance, get out before we fire you". All of them were hardcore nerds.

forced ranking = back stabbing

[iriemon]

It doesn't really matter much how good of a job you do, as long as you look better than your co-workers. So, stab them in the back to succeed in this environment. Make them look bad.

Like a clock, but pointless

[wiedzmin]

Every year on the dot, but the review has a form of self-assessment, where you provide your own performance rankings and your manager than either agrees or adjusts them. Result of the review can affect your annual cost of living increase by +/- 1.5% which is pretty pretty miniscule, considering the actual inflation rates, so the whole exercise is rather pointless.

I work @ GE

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for GE. We call it "rank and yank" referring to the bottom 10% who tend to be looking for jobs when a RIF comes along.

On the other hand I've seen it work well. We get rid of the scum. But on high performing teams, the LE's (less effective aka bottom 10%) get training and skills improvements because we want to keep them, and are looking out for those who might start to coast. High performing teams are looked differently than low performing teams.

It isn't as bad today as it was during previous administrations. Today it affects raises and bonuses, and helps remove scum.

  I think it drives everyone to shoot for safety. Being A+ doesn't get you all that much. But D- will bite you during a RIF... So aim for B Without hassle of A+. It doesn't hurt to keep a list and remind the boss of the good things you did this year. Know your bosses boss, and make sure they know you. Volunteer for things so you are known, and make sure you are know for good things.

How do not play? Either be confident that you are doing a good job and don't worry, or don't play in those companies. Being a B isn't hard. So if you keeping finding yourself at the bottom, take an honest look. Ask the boss for help if need be, or find a mentor within the company.

Be known. I knew a guy who took up smoking so he could stand outside with the VP who was a smoker.

Re:I work @ GE

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that GE had (or still has?) a rule where certain engineers are supposed to bring in at least their own salary worth of new business to stay employed. I work at Lockheed Martin and have used that philosophy as a guiding tenet. So far I've brought in nearly 5x my own salary over the last three years. I've had stellar reviews but my salary has only gone up 11% in that time, which equates to a meager 3.55% annual raise. My salary increase as a fraction of the monetary value of new business I've brought in is less than 1%, which in my opinion is pretty pathetic. Does GE give sizable raises to people who bring in more business? LM clearly doesn't know how to do this equitably.

I don't know

[_8553454222834292266]

I know they rank us. But it's all confidential and they won't even tell you your rating. Sometimes you can get vague things like "average" or "below average" out of them but the actual grad is confidential. No idea if there's a curve. The evaluation metrics are also unknown.

Comparison if Microsoft and IBM Research ranking

[Anonymous Coward]

Kurt Eichenwald's Vanity Fair piece prompted me to note my own thoughts on the ranking process at IBM Research. See

http://daveshields.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/cannibalistic-culture-ibm-and-microsoft/

Assume all complaints are true,

[Anonymous Coward]

and fire.

Worst System Except for all the Others

[Greg Hullender]

I worked at Microsoft for 14 years (up to 2008) and was a manager for most of that period. The Vanity-Fair article doesn't really describe the system accurately, so I'll offer my own view. Given that I participated in it 25+ times, that ought to be worth something. :-)

The first thing is that, as a manager of a small team, you do NOT have to meet a curve. That's only required at high levels with hundreds or thousands of employees in the pool. You DO have to rank your people in order and argue for them at a meeting with your peers. If you have a team of 6 or 8 people, I'll be very surprised if you don't know who your best person is--and who the worst one is. As a general rule, you ought to be able to rank your whole team in order from best to worst, with perhaps a few ties. (Generally, though, I didn't end up with ties.)

So together with your peers, you now try to slot 50 or so people into three rankings: 4.0 for the best 25%, 3.5 for the bulk of the people and 3.0 for the bottom 20%. (There is special handling for superstars at 4.5 and total losers at 2.5, but that's a post-process with no quotas.) The argument always revolves around strong 3.5 people who "ought" to be 4.0 and weak 3.5 people who "don't deserve" to be 3.0. Not a surprise; every manager overrates his/her own people. The pressure to meet a quota forces people to have hard arguments about how valuable each person's work really was. It can even help a manager see the importance of putting people on the highest-value tasks. At the end of it, there are typically two or three borderline individuals, but everyone else pretty much has the rating they actually earned. The General Manager takes the result up to the stack ranking at the next level, armed with appropriate arguments for the borderline folks.

One time, I worked on a project with high-visibility and lots of pressure. At review time, we told management we wanted to give about 50% 4.0 (instead of the usual 25%) and only one or two 3.0 reviews (out of a team of ~100). They pushed that up, and it was granted. We did exceptional work, so they let us blow out the curve. But it only happened once in 14 years.

What are the alternatives? Have a Union that gives everyone the same rewards regardless of the work he/she did? Doesn't seem like a winner to me.

So to answer the OP's question, how do you succeed in such a system, the answer is: work hard, do good work, help others who get stuck, and BE SEEN DOING IT. When your manager says "Jane is my best worker," you want all his/her peers to nod and say "yeah, Jane is great! She helps us out all the time!" When your manager says "Jack deserves a better rating," you don't want his/her peers to say "that lazy bum? He couldn't find his ass with both hands!" But most important of all is for your manager to actually see you as someone who gets stuff done. Whatever anyone tries to claim, most teams only have a few such people on them. They rarely go unrewarded.

--Greg

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in Microsoft for 13 year (up to 2011) and I was never a manager. The Vanity-Fair article is 100% correct from the point of view of non-manager. Let me offer my own point of view. Given that I participated in it for 25+ times, that ought to be worth something, :-)

The first thing is that, as a non-manager you need to meet the goals in your commitments. Only upper management, Director/General Manager and higher, have the ability to change their commitments mid-flight. Engineers don't have this power. Which brings us to the point that commitments are by large are pushed down on you as a member of Corporation/Division/Group/Team. You cannot refuse the commitments that are bullshit, yet you will be evaluated on them. This gives you management chain all the power they need to push you up or bring you down regardless of what you actually do.
Bullshit commitments make managers detached from reality. During settlement phase of review, management peers enter gray zone of discussions whether person A was more or less visible than person B. Or maybe they trade one for one (give me lower now for higher later). Or maybe they start dick measuring contests. The point being, settlement has very little to do with work performed. End results are invariably depressing for most non-managers.
One time I was working on a project with high-visibility and a lot of pressure. At review time I was told that this time around our 50 person group lost to another 50 person group on visibility contest. Therefore everybody is ranked average, thank you for playing.
What are the alternatives? As Vanity-Fair article points out stack ranking is named by everyone in Microsoft as the most destructive process. So any other system would be an improvement, union included.
So to answer the OP's question, how do you succeed in such a system, the answer is: Stop Coding, Start Networking. And work hard on networking.
Is this what you as engineer want in life? If answer is yes, you should apply. I for one quit in disgust and now lead productive life programming computers.

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be like that. I liked it when it was like that. A 3 was 'OK' and nobody had to give someone a 2.5.

Not anymore.

Now it's 1-5 scale (1 good 5 bad) and the curve is enforced all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom.

Someone WILL get the 5 and a 5 can end your career.

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[marcosdumay]

What are the alternatives?

I dunno. Management, maybe. I mean, real management: know what your people is doing; hire good middle managers (and verify that they are good); trust your people.

As a second tought, no, that'll never workk.

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[MMORG]

I worked at Microsoft for 18 years (up to 2011) and had a good mix of both IC and manager time.

The first thing you're missing is that the review system has been tweaked a few times since you left and it's worse now than it's ever been. Now the numeric system is 1 to 5 (1 is high, 5 is low), integers only, and all five numbers are used and have quotas. As of last year when I left, the very bottom review rating of 5 (equivalent in meaning to the 2.5 in the system you're familiar with) now has an enforced 10% quota. Yes, every year 10% of the work force gets a review score that devestates their career and puts them in serious danger of being fired. No, it doesn't matter how well those 10% did in absolute terms.

Secondly, I hear often hear people say, "But the curve isn't applied at the small team level; only at the large org level." That's only a semantic distinction. Sure, a front-line manager with 10 ICs isn't required to pick one person to recieve a 5. But he is required to stack rank all 10 people and send that up the chain with his recommended ratings, and those recommendations get normalized and tweaked to fit the curve at higher levels and sent back down again. So the manager might say, "My team did a kick-ass job this year, everyone did well, so I recommend that even my bottom person get nothing less than a 3." But when it goes up the chain, gets squeezed into the model, and comes back down, that bottom person may well now have a 5 and there's nothing the manager can do about it. The only thing he can do is go to that person and tell him, "Better pack your bags because you're screwed with a capital F." The entire system is random and non-deterministic.

Third, I agree that performance reviews are hard and anything we have to choose from sucks in some way (at least those systems that can scale to large companies). But Microsoft's system generates a certain set of unintended consequences that are horrifically corrosive and have rotted the company from the inside out. The most obvious unintended consequence is what you said - it's not enough to just do good work, you have to be seen doing it. It turns out that the smart thing to do is weight your efforts more toward the "be seen" part and less toward the "do work" part, to the extent that many people spend essentially all of their time "being seen" and almost none of their time doing actual product work. Over time those people tend to be rewarded disproportionately and the entire management chain ends up filled with people who's core strength is managing other's perceptions rather than doing great engineering. There are many other unintended consequences and I could fill a book talking about all of them, but suffice to say that it's slowly but surely killing the company.

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[stevesliva]

Hi Greg.

My experience is that things begin to break down with the underperformance quotas after layoffs. It's exactly the issue that at the "thousands of employees" level-- following a layoff, you've removed everyone who was in that lower tier. If you maintain the underperformer quotas after layoffs, you really kill morale. Not only are people pissed that their colleagues got kicked out, they're now looking at a regime that immediately begins sorting out who's next.

My guess would be the ranking system was appropriate whenever Microsoft was hiring at a rapid clip, a bit annoying when hiring slowed, and an absolute kick-in-the-balls to employees once layoffs happened. As with anything MS, a lot has to do with the company "maturing." Well, switching from a system that assumes there are lots of new guys to one that doesn't may be part of that process. As people have said, Microsoft hired compentent people, and good employees were generally the motivated ones. I don't disagree that in any group there will be apathetic people, for whatever reason. Once a company isn't hiring people who somewhat randomly become the apathetic undermotivated people, this system tends to turn otherwise decent employees into those apathetic underperformers. You end up pushing people towards a "why bother" attitude rather than motivating them away from it.

-Steve

Re:Worst System Except for all the Others

[Anonymous Coward]

> help others who get stuck

This is what I did, I was liked by my peers for it, but not at all by the management, because they thought they were too dependent on me (they actually told me this).
It's too bad, because feeling like you have saved 5h of work for someone is great.

Review system destroying MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a 'Softie. Have been for 3 years, so I've seen enough reviews and promotions to know that this system is crippling us from within. This is the quintessential suboptimal choice from game theory that's being made over and over a la John Nash. I worked on the infrastructure for a large project, but what that entails is that my work is always "under the hood". So even though the work I did was foundational and necessary for others, those who used my work to build "visible deliverables" got stack ranked higher than me in my team and sister teams last year. Needless to say, I wised up and started playing the game, since I know the underlying stuff much better, this year I built a slew of "visible deliverables", in the process at times undercutting some of my colleagues due to my intimate knowledge. So, this year, I've been indicated to be a top performer in our group. However, I know that I did it by gaming the system.

free from discrimination?

[HornWumpus]

You realize I'm perfectly at liberty to discriminate based on all criteria not related to 'protected classes'.

It's legal to 'discriminate' against idiots.

It's legal to 'discriminate' against crack heads/drunks etc (unless they get a very good shyster who claims they are 'disabled', then you are in a grey area.)

And when you can show a real hazard you can even 'discriminate' against some protected classes (e.g. Lead-acid battery producers can prevent women of child bearing age from working on their lines, unless baby proofed).

Why Don't You Tell Him ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he is not an absolute idiot, it might be possible to change something. If he feels offended and fires you, I assume this is the best thing that can happen. Otherwise you will suffer this crap even longer.
Yeah, economy is not going well, but if you can do interviews, I am quite sure you will soon have something better.

It's OK

[Anonymous Coward]

It is OK not to be part of some Strange Corpo, if you do not fit in for whatever reason. There are companies (e.g. HP) out there who will value all sorts of fluffy "social skills" and ignoire your hard skills. So if you are an ass-licker, you will do great at HP. If not, go somewhere else (e.g. Google) where they value your hard skills and ignore all the "social" shit more or less. You deliver great C++ code while sitting autistically in your office and you are a star.
Meanwhile all the New Age crappers at HP see their company decline at a fast rate. Apparently hard skills matter.
This is a free world and we should never suffer the Corporate Bullshit for too long, as there is a place for everyone.

My company has outsourced my metrics

[Ceriel Nosforit]

I'm not really sure who I work for. All I know is that if I show up on time and mail enough emails back to myself my bosses won't shout at me. At least I think they're my bosses...

Re:My company has outsourced my metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess, you work for Yesmail.

Hope You're An Extrovert

[loafing_oaf]

Since the criteria are relative rather than objective, you'd better be especially well-liked to avoid that bottom tier. Or sabotage. This type of evaluation system is an invitation for sabotage.

try to enlighten them, accept it, and/or leave

[Lserevi]

Have the managers watch this video by Mary Poppendiek http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MSYlqx1Yvqk. If the situation persists, then either accept it or leave.

Unions...

[Anonymous Coward]

are a poor substitute for good management. Good management has become somewhat unfashionable. There were times when management was much worse. Minnesota has strong mining unions partly as a carry over from when employees didn't like having to pimp out their daughters for their jobs to their supervisors. Companies don't go to prison they don't have a conscience, they have no morals, for them ethics are a convenience. It is easy to see that unions have a place. It is sad to see employees are punished for their own morality. A employee in a stacked ranking system would be well served by undermining the others in his cohort.

On Unions wants vs needs

[pooh666]

There are a lot of negative aspects to Unions that force membership, excessively protect incompetent workers, raise the cost of doing business to the point where companies die or move. I think these are real and not unreasonable drawbacks. However, to me the major point of a Union, the base reason for it existing, the one last straw that no one should give up, is simply to force companies to pay a *living wage* We have come to expect as a given that health and safety are not compromised and I think that is largely due to a change in our society rather as much a change in law, although the two parallel each other. So I wonder, if the definition of employee, any employee is someone who can do work which is worth a living wage, what changes? Do jobs suddenly dry up? Or can the compromise between extremes allow all who work to just plain feed and cloth their children, maybe hope to have the same in retirement? Fear is a great modivator it is true, but is it the best? If so, then why not threaten kids in school, don't learn don't eat? It is the subtile undertone of our society now.

solution

[roc97007]

> Does your company do this?

No.

> What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Work for a company that doesn't do this.

Law School Evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that law school have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time.
As an example, in one first year course, I received a raw 94/100. After applying the class curve, the letter grade I received was a C minus (or a 1.666 / 4.0 ).
Is that a fair representation of the quality of my work? As an objective measure, not at all. As a subjective one -- judged solely against my immediate peers -- perhaps.

At the end of the day though, who here thinks it is a good idea to do pretty much anything the way lawyers do things? :-p

Bad Memories

[essbase_nerd]

Wow, this really strikes a nerve. I worked as a financial systems developer for a large construction firm for close to a decade. They had a fantastic culture, it was a really great place to work; until our CIO was replaced by someone from GE who promptly implemented stack ranking. We literally wasted ~20 hours per person over a couple weeks working on (and refining) our "internal resumes". I would consider my ten person team to be very high performing, and at the end of the process, I was basically told that I was mediocre, and needed to step it up or risk serious repercussions. A few weeks later, and after demoralizing just about everyone in IT, she announced a "voluntary separation" program. Coincidentally, that same day, I pulled the trigger on another position (at a large software company) and I turned in my separation paperwork 15 minutes after I received the forms. I was denied for the program because I was an "exceptional performer". I asked how I could be both mediocre and exceptional at the same time, and never got a good answer. Of course I left anyway, and never looked back. The new CIO didn't make it a year.

Bingo!

[Evtim]

In the Netherlands there is a legislation that every company with more than 50 employees (used to be 35) must have "workers council" that acts to create a third leg of the "table of power", the other two being the CEO (shareholders) and the Supervisory board.
If anyone is interested here is the full legislation http://www.ser.nl/~/media/Files/Internet/Talen/Engels/2011/2011_WorksCouncilsAct.ashx

This legislation also serves to cover all people that are not union members and their companies do not operate under the so-called "collective labour agreement" so that they can have a saying in the running of the enterprise.

As a former citizen of totalitarian state I was curious and fascinated so I applied and was voted in. I did not look into the history of how this councils came to be until one day a colleague told me that I enjoy special protection when it comes to sacking. I was rather appalled by this because in my opinion such protection might attract the wrong kind of people to the council (absolutely not the case in my company though) and generally rigs the game. I was told then that the protection was put into place on a later stage because many companies harassed the members of the council. Another colleague chipped in at this point saying that a company he had worked for deliberately divided itself somehow to companies with number of employees just below the required (see above). Indeed a culture had spread around that being in the council is not a good career move. I was rather shocked (we, east-Europeans, who lived under the previous regime, generally suffer from shocks of disillusionment because we saw the allegedly free world as an absolute antithesis to the totalitarian regime and might have idealized...hm, a bit) and decided to learn a bit more.

Historically, this legislation has been under attack with varying intensity more or less all the time. As you already suspect recently the intensity is relatively high, what with the last government trying to turn us into little USA (very roughly said, no offense meant, you know what I mean, it's just a short way of saying it). As far as I understand, the Dutch businessmen have declared the "polder model", which the Netherlands proudly displayed in the past, dead (briefly: it comes from the water management issues in the past and boils down - as far as I see it - to not allowing that one side in any social decision-making process takes all, as in "drinks the undiluted wine" while the others "drinks pure water". If the wine must be watered i.e. compromise must be achieved, then every party will take a bit of water in their wine). Such decisions are said to take longer to work out but they endure longer and do not crash and burn because the water drinkers start appealing from the next morning.

This news devastated me. I heard that it was because "it is not profitable enough" or "not competitive enough", I even heard not too long ago that the workers councils cost jobs. Oh, the things we hear from people with vested interests...I came to the Netherlands because of this kind of social contracts, because of the yet unsurpassed "liberty-package" as I call it, because, believe it or not, I saw the episode of Cosmos back then, behind the wall, called "Travelers in space and time" where I learned that there is a country in which famous person could say "The world is my country, science is my religion" by the time of the Galileo trial. I think all this is part of the national capital of the Netherlands; very precious thing. Why someone wants to do away with it is beyond comprehension. Can anyone seriously (and without agenda) claim that the social contracts were the reason for the economic meltdown? Not competitive? Seriously? Can I, please, have Mr and Ms Cheap labor come to live here and pay Dutch prices and then let's compete on the labour market! Please! Is the solution to poverty to bring the rest of the world to its level?

It maybe anecdota

You are correct.

[jotaeleemeese]

It is fascinating how many of you don't follow more closely what is going on in Somalia which teaches you what happens when there is no functioning government of any kind.

Lets take the Somali pirates for example: the ransoms they obtain are communal property, people on their base get a cut just for being quiet, in effect the fruit of the pirate's labour is socialized amongst the community.

In tribal societies comunal property is normally the statuos quo and they would laugh at you by suggesting that every person should have stuff of their own property.

stack rank was supposed to be secret

[Anonymous Coward]

The stack rank intent was a secret Microsoft management tool to quickly decide when horizontal cuts across the board would be 10%.

Any manager at Microsoft knew this within the management confines. It applied to staff AND management.

does it work? never experienced it -- was always the top 1%. there are always losers in the room.

Tool/Trick

[NewYork]

Performance review is trick used by HR to keep the flock together

Stack ranking shouldn't be a method.

[ananthap]

When a fairly large group of assessors assess an even larger group of direct reports, then in a "normal year", the OUTCOME will be a stacked rank. (Normal year = No recessionary trends, marked employee attrition etc) So seeing a pattern of stacked ranking should be just a way for the HR/administration team to confirm whether their initiatives in administering assessments are OK or not. Instead if each and every supervisor tries to fit his direct reports into an order, then it is tantamount to cooking the books. Unfortunately, almost all supervisors think that they are god's gift to the company and they have to "eff"up their reports. It gets worse if there is an announced quota of money to go around within the department as salary etc. OK