<story><title>Microsoft does away with stack ranking</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-does-away-with-stack-ranking-7000023103/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ethomson</author><text>This was seemingly inevitable whether this is actually useful or not.  Microsoft has been getting increasing heat about our stack ranking system, both from employees and from external people.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t think stack ranking is our problem.  I think our problem is that we value this notion of the brilliant and excellent individual contributor instead of valuing employees that value teamwork and team problem solving.  I suspect this is an institutional problem, having been started by exactly that sort of person.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; that causes the backstabbing and the mess that people attribute to &amp;quot;stack ranking&amp;quot;.  Until we put value in changing this culture, I don&amp;#x27;t see too much changing.&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: my team at Microsoft is sort of odd - we&amp;#x27;re not in Redmond, and I don&amp;#x27;t see a lot of this backstabbing that is oft-reported.  I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; see our managers overvaluing the brilliant IC and I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; see my organization undervaluing teamwork, but at least we&amp;#x27;re not doing that stupid game playing like joining weak teams to get great reviews.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RandallBrown</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t seen much backstabbing either, but what I have seen is plenty of people acting way differently than they would if the stack ranking curve doesn&amp;#x27;t exist.&lt;p&gt;People are constantly doing stuff to make them &amp;quot;visible&amp;quot; instead of doing what is best for the project. How many features do people fight nail and tooth for, that should be cut, just because if they aren&amp;#x27;t in the product they won&amp;#x27;t have anything to show for their work when review time comes around?&lt;p&gt;People are terrified of making decisions, because if they make a bad one, it&amp;#x27;s going to look poorly when they&amp;#x27;re ranked. I don&amp;#x27;t know if you&amp;#x27;ve noticed this, but our managers tend to give &amp;quot;guidance&amp;quot; rather than outright telling us what to do. That way when something goes wrong, it isn&amp;#x27;t their fault. They didn&amp;#x27;t say we &lt;i&gt;had&lt;/i&gt; to do it the wrong way and it&amp;#x27;s our fault for not bringing up that it was wrong sooner.&lt;p&gt;The first year I was here, I didn&amp;#x27;t think anything of the stack ranking. It was just one of those evils of working at a huge company. Then I started to notice that people were just doing weird stuff. Calling pointless meetings, making big stinks over small things, and just doing weird things just to create more work for themselves. I realized all of that was just so people could have more bullet points on their list of accomplishments at the end of the year.&lt;p&gt;Sure, killing the curve won&amp;#x27;t solve everything and I think there is a lot of truth to what you&amp;#x27;re saying about not valuing teamwork. I just think that killing the stack ranking is a BIG step in the right direction.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft does away with stack ranking</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-does-away-with-stack-ranking-7000023103/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ethomson</author><text>This was seemingly inevitable whether this is actually useful or not.  Microsoft has been getting increasing heat about our stack ranking system, both from employees and from external people.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t think stack ranking is our problem.  I think our problem is that we value this notion of the brilliant and excellent individual contributor instead of valuing employees that value teamwork and team problem solving.  I suspect this is an institutional problem, having been started by exactly that sort of person.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; that causes the backstabbing and the mess that people attribute to &amp;quot;stack ranking&amp;quot;.  Until we put value in changing this culture, I don&amp;#x27;t see too much changing.&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: my team at Microsoft is sort of odd - we&amp;#x27;re not in Redmond, and I don&amp;#x27;t see a lot of this backstabbing that is oft-reported.  I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; see our managers overvaluing the brilliant IC and I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; see my organization undervaluing teamwork, but at least we&amp;#x27;re not doing that stupid game playing like joining weak teams to get great reviews.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>InclinedPlane</author><text>Stack ranking is just one part of the many problems in MS&amp;#x27;s corporate culture. Once it&amp;#x27;s gone it won&amp;#x27;t end the politics, they&amp;#x27;ll just find other outlets (of which there are many). Another big problem is the review system in general, regardless of stack ranking. MS prioritizes highly visible and easy to complete work over more important and more difficult work. This creates perverse incentives to, for example, avoid fixing things that are known to be broken, or even assuming responsibility for them. It&amp;#x27;s far more beneficial to spin up a new project of trivial value than it is to take ownership of some broken or long abandoned system or tool that desperately needs improvement.</text></comment>