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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.
--

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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?

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: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.