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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?"
"What's the best way to survive this type of system?"
Find another job where they treat you as a human being.
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.
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.
HTTP/1.1 400
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:
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.
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.
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.
I agree, unions are awesome. I allows mediocre employees to receive the same compensation as the excellent employees.
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.