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Former Yahoo Employee Challenges the Legality of Yahoo's Ranking System (nytimes.com)
whoever57 writes: A former employee of Yahoo is challenging Yahoo's performance review and termination process. The ranking system was introduced to Yahoo by Ms. Mayer on the recommendation of management consultants McKinsey & Co.. Gregory Anderson, an editor who oversaw Yahoo's autos, homes, shopping, small business and travel sites in Sunnyvale, Calif. is claiming that the ranking and termination process was flawed to the extent that the terminations were not based on performance and hence constitute mass layoffs, which require notice periods under both California and Federal law. He is also alleging gender discrimination, under which women were given preferential treatment over men in the hiring, promotions and layoff processes.
I had to read several sentences in the find out we are talking about some kind of work rank system, not search ranking. You know... it being a search engine company and all.
It's great to be a CEO: get paid millions, then use the company's money to bring in consultants to do your own work!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I had a manager who was a big fan of Jack Welch and implemented a policy to fire the bottom 10% every year. Except he didn't hire replacements and the middle soon became the new bottom. The top 10% saw the writing on the wall and vacated for greener fields elsewhere. I was the third of a dozen senior testers who left the company. The manager rode the company all the way into bankruptcy, unwilling to admit that his channeling of Jack Welch was wrong.
I really don't have a problem with it, it's better than seeing incompetent dumbasses coast along while everyone else carries the weight.
That's fine, except that's not how it actually works. If you are female and/or a "person of color" its perfectly OK to be an incompetent dumbass because firing you would be racist/sexist discrimination.
I've seen a couple of places do this with a forced bell curve.
They had pre-defined that you can only have so many at each level, and had to fit -- if you had 10 people, the number at each level was defined by a formula.
Which meant the ranking system couldn't say "wow, I have a bunch of good people", or "shit, I have a bunch of dullards".
Morons who manage by arbitrary metric tend to do a lousy job of it. Because apparently reality is a problem for such people.
I find that style of management pretty pathetic, because it's just drooling idiots blindly following stuff they don't understand, and can't see why it's failing them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So it's "whining" to complain about open, pervasive, and unfair discrimination? I guess that makes Martin Luther King, Jr. a black-whiner.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They had pre-defined that you can only have so many at each level, and had to fit -- if you had 10 people, the number at each level was defined by a formula.
The company I worked for had a bell curve at one point. They funny thing is that the QA department as a whole did an honest assessment to fit the bell curve perfectly. The other departments, especially the department managers, all ranked themselves very highly. The executive team had a hard time bringing reality to the other departments that not everyone was a special snowflake.
It's the SJW version of "equality." If a group discriminated against you in the past, then it's okay for you to discriminate against them now. Of course, that means it will eventually come back around and make it okay for white males to discriminate again against minorities and women, but we won't worry about that.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When I worked for a state university system I had occasion to read the DOE regulations about discrimination. Colleges are required to file various paperwork about racial and gender statistic of students who apply, students admitted, and students who graduate, to prove that they aren't discriminating. I was a bit surprised to find out that the DOE regulations explicitly state that discrimination against males and caucasians is not discrimination. I wonder of the Department of Labor has a similar rule.
Yeah, except that that's incorrect: http://www.lawfficespace.com/2013/12/yes-white-males-are-protected-class.html.
It's called "stack ranking" and it doesn't work period.
From an article in Vanity Fair: “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
In addition to that, you now only have the right on TV and movies to be stupid, fat and a general duffass (sp?)...the butt of any jokes. Since minorities and women cannot be made fun of, or risk having the commercial, tv show or movie insensitive, it is only the white guys that can be made fun of these days.
Pretty much the sole exception to that is Family Guy, they get away with saying shit and I don't know how they do in todays over Politically Correct society.
But seriously, if you are a white guy, you are either bottom of totem pole, or the bad guy causing the problems for the rest of the non-white guy population...shame on you for holding them back and being "The Man".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Oppressed? Maybe not.
Educational outcomes, family court outcomes, criminal justice system outcomes, health outcomes, employment discrimination.. I see a lot of reasons for men to be concerned.
Poor white boys have the lowest educational outcomes, so don't go playing the race card.
As for how white men are treated by universities and colleges.. clear discrimination, abuse and frankly yes, oppression.
As to the women given preference, considering they're paid less, on average, than men
The problem is that they're not. Women get paid on average the same as men, once you factor in experience, hours worked and contribution.
Women under 30 get paid more than men.
Women in part times roles get paid more per hour than men in part time roles.
Women spend most of the household income, even where it's earned by men.
Please, do some fucking research before spouting spurious divisive bullshit about gender pay differentials.
It looked so much like layoffs that I thought it was layoffs.
Well, it does seem pretty obvious they are coming...
Really, this guy should be thanking Yahoo, not suing them. They've given him a head start over the thousands of other Yahoo employees that'll soon be flooding the marketplace.
#DeleteChrome
I had a manager who was a big fan of Jack Welch and implemented a policy to fire the bottom 10% every year. Except he didn't hire replacements and the middle soon became the new bottom. The top 10% saw the writing on the wall and vacated for greener fields elsewhere. I was the third of a dozen senior testers who left the company. The manager rode the company all the way into bankruptcy, unwilling to admit that his channeling of Jack Welch was wrong.
That manager was a "fan" of Jack Welch the same way a baseball-bat murderer is a "fan" of Derek Jeter.
I worked for GE under Jack Welch. On the day I was hired, there were about 6-7 people between me and Welch. That's it.
Then the group I was in - GE Aerospace - was sold to Martin Marietta because Welch was tired of the GE Aerospace business model of being a mere body shop for US government contracting that was using the GE name to attract young engineers, then underpay them while billing them out at a higher rate. By the time Martin Marietta was done "improving" our management, it took more than 6-7 managers to get out of the one damn building I was in.
As Welch said, "You work the week and at the end we pay you. We're even." Because GE used to pay workers every week. Hell, even as technically salaried employees we got paid overtime (and Martin Marietta shit their pants when they tried to put a stop to that. They wanted to require us to work overtime and not get paid. Yeah, right...)
Nice guy? No Welch wasn't, but he wasn't afraid to tell the truth. And there was nowhere near the bullshit at GE that I've seen elsewhere - there wasn't enough useless non-productive mid-managers around with nothing to do to generate that bullshit.
And if you didn't like your job at GE and somehow wound up complaining to Welch, he'd tell you something like, "You have a crappy job. It's your responsibility to change that."
Compare Welch to Norm Augustine - the first Lockheed Martin CEO (I went through that merger, too) Upon the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, Augustine made a huge killing because of the way the stock prices jumped and all the options he had. OK, but Augustine published a long missive about how much he had done for the company, weaseling and trying to imply he didn't get paid - but in all his bullshit he never once denied getting the windfall.
I always had the feeling Welch in that situation would have said something like, "I was hired by the shareholders to make them money. I did just that and they rewarded me."
When you worked at GE, you knew Welch wasn't your friend. But you also knew he wasn't your enemy, and he'd tell you straight up why you were fired or why your plant was shut down. And he'd make those decisions on the basis of making money - and you knew it. You knew why the company existed, and you knew you were expected to contribute to that.
Myself? I respected Welch - and I wasn't alone.
We laughed at the battle hag who rode down from Martin Marietta HQs on her broom to "lay down the law" to us lowly GE types after we got sold.
Here's what I say to my kids when they get caught up in some kind of Internet jihad: there are 30000 tons of brussels sprouts produced in the USA every year (7500 acres planted x 8000 pounds/acre typical yield). So clearly some people like brussels sprouts, peculiar as that is. If you take a large enough group of people you can find exemplars for any behavior, preference and outcome you need to "prove" any point (e.g., "brussels sprouts are yummy"). Everything that Gamergaters say about feminists is true -- of somebody, somewhere. It proves nothing about what a typical feminist is like.
To get at the truth you need to do two things: (1) find aggregate data which tells you whether your generalization has even a chance of being true; the disaggregate that data to find the kernel of truth that makes your over-generalization feel convincing. It's bound to be true of some people, and that's where you need to focus your attention.
So lets take the notion that white males are discriminated against educationally. The aggregate data clearly shows this is not generally true. For males age 25-29, 55% of Asians have a college degree, 37% of whites, 17% of blacks, and 13% of hispanics. In total 31% of males have college degrees and 37% of females. This paints a picture where white males don't get quite as much education as females, but are still in a very strong position compared to their black and hispanic counterparts. Some of the male/female educational disparity may be due to high-paying trade jobs generally being more open to men; if you look at income, the median male income is $860/week vs. $706/week for women.
So the overall picture is mixed, but for the most part the picture looks relatively rosy from white men in general. But no individual white man is in exactly the position of men in general. It's clear that a lot of white men are in a bad situation now, which they may attribute to benefits going to their hispanic or black neighbors, but in fact those group are in a similar or worse place if you compare hispanics and blacks of similar educational attainment.
Uniquely in the developed world mortality for American men aged 45-54 has increased; men who should be near the apex of their earning capacity and benefiting from a reduction in smoking and advances in medical treatment of degenerative diseases that start to kick it that age. But if you disaggregate that data you see that it's driven by a massive increase in mortality for men with only a high school education.
What this tells me is that we have an economic class problem in this country. Some white men look around and think the weight of all those hispanics and blacks are making the boat sink, but the real problem is that the boat has a hole in it.
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