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Comment by throw1230 | Hacker News Reader

Everything here is true. And the article is really low effort.

LE and URA targets do change by organization and current HC goals. People need to go to Focus but in my experience it was the right thing to do. HR will absolutely help you to improve the performance and retain the individual if you think it's fixable.

From my experience, and I'm not saying this is case for all, people in Focus had undeniable performance problems that needed addressing. Stack ranking and quotas suck, and you feel like shit having to abide by them, but I've also seen managers being overprotective about underperforming employees. At some point, you have to do something about them because they'll bring the whole team down.

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The problem with zero sum game performance reviews is that they're not about improving performance but about fitting everyone in the same boxes. And this usually results in ridiculous outcomes, some of which are particularly bad depending on how that "box fitting" is implemented.

> trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to keep an unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer from getting an LE.

Like this where the company's goal is never to improve "unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer" but rather to keep the boundary of the boxes. And this despite mounting evidence against such systems, and the known abuse with methods like hire to fire. To me this is always a sign of rotten leadership.

Can't add to Amazon, but wanted to add another example of stack ranking problems.

I and some friends worked for Capital One, which does stack ranking (but not the intense PIP that Amazon does).

Overall the stack ranking isn't a huge issue, but you get screwed because those boxes are subjective, which I always felt was the big issue with any system like this.

I worked easily 9-6 most days and got an average rating, while I buddy of mine in a different org would work maybe 4 hours a day and get the same rating. My org had intense work and my manager saw that as the norm.

Again not terrible, but I would be incredibly mad if say this same system conspired to putting me on PIP. Working more and longer hours but not meeting the definition of average for your specific manager and team.

> Stack ranking and quotas suck, and you feel like shit having to abide by them, but I've also seen managers being overprotective about underperforming employees.

Then those managers are bad at their jobs and should be PIP-ed even more ruthlessly.

It's always interesting to me how managers get a complete and utterly unexamined pass in these conversations. The bar is so, so low for them. Managerial incompetence can be breezily cited as the reason for a horrible policy, like managing out a fixed percentage of every team, and everyone considers it a fait accompli. After all, what would be the alternative? Managers actually being held accountable for doing the most important part of their jobs?

ICs must be held nose to the grindstone every minute of every day... but ya can't do anything about bad management!

Managers have their own Managers , and those are appraising them too.

Big Orgs have big re-orgs all the time and the entire management structure can change swiftly. Leaf node workers left untouched.

Umm, no... directors & VPs do get ruthlessly Lord of the Flies'ed (new verb here).

Middle managers, other than maybe first-level ones, are the lowest of the low, and very rarely get managed out. In fact, they are the cause of nearly all corporate problems, IMHO.

I've seen one incredibly horrible manager managed out this way. But anyone above incredibly horrible tends to survive all the reorgs.

If the reorgs actually got rid of bad management, it wouldn't be necessary to shrug and cite bad management as the excuse for mandatory stack ranking and attrition quotas.

"We can't help it! Our managers can't be trusted to tell us if someone is effective!"

Being a (low level) manager sucks, though. At least if you're a competent programmer and could get by with a very similar pay with little involvement in politics.

If I said "being a programmer sucks", people would tell me I can do another job and let someone who likes the job do mine instead.

Not so for the poor manager, somehow. The poor manager who, in most cases, bent over backwards to get that promotion.

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