Microsoft Kills Stack Ranking

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft once demanded that its managers place their subordinates on a scale from 'top' to 'poor,' a practice that fueled some epic backstabbing within divisions. Last year, a Microsoft contractor with knowledge of the company's internal review processes told Slashdot that Microsoft was actively working to fix that system; just this week, the company announced that stack ranking was well and truly dead (and that's certainly one way to fix it). 'Lisa Brummel, head of human resources for the company, sent an e-mail to employees notifying them of the change today, according to my contacts,' ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wrote. According to the memo, there are 'no more ratings,' 'no more curves,' and 'Managers and leaders will have flexibility to allocate rewards in the manner that best reflects the performance of their teams and individuals, as long as they stay within their compensation budget.' They're trying to encourage more teamwork and collaboration throughout the company. As we discussed on Saturday, Yahoo is adopting this method just as Microsoft is abandoning it."

Comments

It's horrible

[nightsky30]

Lockheed Martin also employed stacked rankings. The local manager had no clue who people were. How can you even rank your employees when you have no idea who they are?!?!? I was called by another coworker's name multiple times. I finally called my manager out on it in front of everyone at a picnic. He didn't confuse me with the other individual after that... There was so much turnover we basically lost a contract due it and having to retrain new people ALL THE TIME. I don't blame those of us who left. Many people busted their asses and did an excellent job, only to be rated average or below because the manager had a certain number of slots to allocate certain rankings. AND THAT'S IF HE KNEW WHO THE FSCK YOU WERE!!!!!!

Re:The old Chair-man is gone

[lgw]

It surely needs to. I've said for quite some time that MS is doomed without some radical changes. Well, new CEO, major re-org, end of the reviled stack ranking, sure seems like they're trying! At this point it's clear that MS is re-inventing a different version of itself.

Lots do it

[koan]

I worked at a large corporation whose name started with an A and ends with an E.
They too had a ranking system, the lowest got sent to a certain team in our general group where they were needled to death over their stats and either quit or accumulated enough "black marks" to get canned.
When the team rotation came around, the lower ranking people got suicidal, dread is the word of the day, when your name appeared on that "special team" list it was like getting sent to a death camp.

That person is now tainted and must be shunned.

I saw good techs go down for not having enough "personality" (flashbacks of *37 pieces of flair* from Office Space) and it was a dismal atmosphere.

I left that sh*t hole, never got my turn on the death team.
Frankly every large corporation I have worked for is the same in that they have all the makings of a cult... I mean if they wanted to go that way.

This used to piss me off when I was a MSFT drone..

[saqmaster]

... I used to regularly score 'above average', or in MSFT stack rankings, a 3.5 or 4.0 (the latter was hard to achieve if you weren't the golden-boy - required to balance the team score). This meant I would get a performance based bonus, which was great.

I made the mistake of pushing for a promotion. I felt that because I was consistently out-performing my role, that I should be promoted. Eventually they promoted me and a few other guys. We got a 'Senior' title. Now comes the problem.

The promotion only came with a 2% pay rise. The following annual performance review, it was now deemed that I was not exceeding my role (due to the new title), so I only scored a 3.0. This score means 'you met all your objectives'. Unfortunately, at the time, the policy was bonuses were only awarded to those exceeding their job description. I got no bonus. That year, or the following year. It probably left me on average $5k/year out of pocket.

Moral to the story? Don't be an employee :-)