ranking

As far as stack ranking and these other things go: on the face of it I consider them symptoms rather than the root problem. The root problems are: 1.

I hope that I could still get yours or others attention, even though I'm not such a high-ranking commenter.

To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.

This is the top comment on the Reddit thread: "They went after high ranking military officers. They went after members of congress.

Stack ranking. Google's perf management is basically an elaborate game where using 20% time is a losing move.

Wow. Is this what HN is getting reduced to, that the top-ranking comment is filled with ad hominem attacks? Whether you agree or disagree with the author's motivations, at least be civil.

The company did stack-ranking with 5-10% annual layoffs, and the Director-level people would scheme and fight to collect the most inept people possible. When it came time for their unit to be culled, these people would basically serve as fodder for the layoff.

Recruiters and interviewers will ask you point-blank what your ranking and compensation was. Analysts carry a blackberry with them at all times, and a staffing can blow up their next two weeks literally at any moment.

If you're a manager in a stack-ranking organization like this, in this market, why not take a stand? Refuse to classify team members who are not actually "occasionally misses" as such. If it's straight-up stack ranking, give everyone a tie for 3rd place or something.

Once you set up a grading/ranking system, it is psychologically very hard not to admire people who end up at the top. I am personally a little dubious that the people with the highest scores would make the best pool of employees, especially given that this is an online course without the programming component, but what do I know?

She had high ranking high influence positions at Google but over the years has been relegated to a position that has little visibility and control, mostly due to her non execution. This is a great opportunity for her to make some serious cash and be the "top dog" in a kennel of average dogs, rather than the opposite at Google.

"Eichenwalds conversations reveal that a management system known as stack rankinga program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and pooreffectively crippled Microsofts ability to innovate." This is the most important sentence in the article. Because many companies over the years - a lot of them start ups - would point to this practice by Microsoft and try to follow their lead. Microsoft has been stack ranking almost since conception.

As someone who has seen stack ranking in action at Amazon and Microsoft both, this is an excellent interview question at any company you consider, especially one founded by ex-Amazon or ex-Microsoft employees. Do you use stack ranking? If the answer is yes then you know they aren't performance based. Microsoft and Amazon both seem to think it is "scientific". It isn't really scientific when, in advance, you decide that %10 should be on a firing track, %70 should be warned and %20 should be promoted-- without regard to actual performance. Bezos likes to run around claiming he only hires "A players", but what it ended up being was C & D[1] players who didn't know how to program or understand technology, ranking their teams, almost completely based on office politics[2] and ones ability to hype their work, rather than the actual technical quality of the work.