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Ask Slashdot: How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance?

Posted by samzenpus on from the score-me dept.

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?"

3 of 525 comments (clear)

  1. Easy answer for non-americans by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    It's called a union.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Easy answer for non-americans by drooling-dog · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Yes, and it sucked! by Madman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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....