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Comment by wcdolphin | Hacker News Reader

The way they describe stack ranking is fundamentally wrong. Currently Windows is in calibration, where we stack rank and reward behaviors that are positive for the company. This is not done on a per team basis, but on a whole organization basis. Everyone at a given level is ranked against everyone at the same level, with the goal that those who do well will be rewarded-- not only monetarily but also in terms of their position within the company. This starts at the team level, where managers push for their reports and ICs to be recognized for their successes, and it follows all the way up the chain and across the company.

Stack ranking is not simply based on what you accomplished, but also how you did it. There are three main pillars: what you did, how you did it and how you showed growth during the timeframe/milestone.

There is no perfect system, but to be frank, the calibration and review system is pretty damn fair and consistent.

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I'm assuming you're just naive and lack the experience to see through this BS. This type of system can be gamed 'til the cows come home! Here are some corrections to your description:

Currently Windows is in calibration, where we stack rank and reward behaviors that can easily be sold to one's boss. This is not done on a team basis, an organizational basis or really any rational basis at all. Everyone at a given level competes with everyone else at the same level for the next level of management's affection. Those who kiss ass up and trash talk their co-workers/competitors are rewarded in various ways. Usually with an ego boost but occasionally with a monetary reward.

Stack ranking is not based on what you accomplished at all rather how your managers perceive what you accomplished. There are three main pillars: how close you are to your manager, how effectively you can trash-talk any competing co-workers and how you helped your manager sell your accomplishments to his or her boss.

There is no perfect system, but to be frank, the calibration and review system rewards people more for their political skills than technological merits and therefore is pretty damn good practice for a career in playing corporate politics and approval seeking behavior in general.

Really? You must be on a rare and exceptional org, then. I left Microsoft because the stack rank system most often worked exactly as described in the article and it was just as corrosive as they described. (I’m making more money and having way more fun now, too.)

In my extensive experience as both an IC and a lead at Microsoft the curve is enforced down to at least the dev manager level (i.e. teams of 20-30 people). A manager with 20+ people often ends up having to pick two sacrificial victims to receive a punitive review score (i.e. a 5 in the current system) even if everyone’s performing well. This causes all kinds of unintended side-effects and has absolutely rotted the company from the inside out.

I understand that the idea is to keep everyone on their toes and encourage them to keep pushing. It might even work ok if there were some fool-proof way to guarantee that everyone always got evaluated on their actual product work, but engineers are smart people and they usually figure out that it’s easier and faster to optimize for networking/schmoozing/backstabbing than it is to merely do brilliant engineering.

If a low review score was just a momentary, “better luck next time” sort of thing then it still might work ok but a low review score is a terribly punitive thing. You get no raise/bonus/stock, you’re not allowed to interview with other teams, and you’re in serious danger of being fired. It drastically affects your career prospects for the next several years. If that happens to you, it’s not worth sticking around. Because a low review score is so punitive, people are highly motivated to do anything possible to avoid it. The most efficient and effective means of avoid it is often not to spend time doing great engineering, but rather to spend time on non-engineering tasks that “increase your visibility”, or doing things that make everyone else look bad. Some people are quite good at doing that and they tend to be rewarded for it.

Sometimes low review scores are handed out to people who deserve them but often they go to people who just got caught at the wrong end of the political network. Being “the new guy” on a team as a result of a reorg is one of the most hazardous places to be at Microsoft. If a manager needs to dump a low review score on someone, he’s going to choose the most expendable (i.e. least well-known and well-connected) person. The point is that you can easily end up with a low review score through absolutely no fault of your own, then your career at Microsoft is screwed. That kind of chronic stress and fear shapes the company and has made it what it is today.

Granted, not every team at Microsoft is completely disfunctional, but enough of them are that the company tends to bleed great engineers and visionaries. The proof is in the stock price.

Why rank the employees at all though? What good does it do to tell someone that they're worse than everyone else?

It is to your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, and that sucks. Thankfully, people are generally pretty good and don't do this too much, but I can see it creating a very toxic work environment.

Ranking employees and rewarding behavior allows a company to form a culture. What actions are rewarded? What actions are not? For example, if someone delivers well, but is an asshole in the process, do they get rewarded? If they do, then that is the behavior that will be emulated and replicated throughout the company, as that is the behavior that is encouraged. If someone does a good job, delivering for their team, working well with our organizations and providing insight and value to many different projects, and this is rewarded, then this is emulated. It is classic behavioral psychology.

It isn't in your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, it is in your favor to make them look great, because they review you! You can ask different people for feedback and reviews, provdiding a great opportunity for growth. I have to agree with you in that it could create a toxic work environment, but I don't see that happening, and there doesn't seem to be much stress or strain around the process. Sure, there are worries, receiving feedback both negative and positive is not comfortable by any means, but the fundamental purpose is for everyone to get better, do better, and to have people rewarded for doing well!

If you have a problem with a person, either with their results or with their behavior, fire them.

Whole review process is designed to help managers avoid making tough decisions like firing bad apples.

In Microsoft, I got one year underachieving mark, and that made huge dent on my career. It took open-minded manager (who was recent external hire) to offer me a spot in new group. After that, I did really great, got promotion and enjoy the work.

Now, tell me, how giving me bad mark helped Microsoft? It kept me in miserable state for a year and half, forced me to work with people who already said that I am failure, and I surely didn't produce much at that time.

However, next year, I (same person, working same job), got middle-of-the-road review, and was officially allowed to look for a position elsewhere... But no hiring manager will talk to me. Whenever you apply for a position inside Microsoft, first question hiring manager asks is: What are your last three/four/five review scores? As soon as any of those is 4 (in today's system), they will stop talking to you. You cannot get even informationals... Some jerks don't even want to answer your emails anymore...

Dolphin, I know you are all smart and shiny, but axe is waiting for you too... Yank-and-rank...

"Now, tell me, how giving me bad mark helped Microsoft?"

The bad mark kept you at the company where you're currently happy and productive. If the company had just fired you they would have lost a soon-to-be happy and productive employee.

The overhead of hiring/firing people in a huge company is non-trivial. Even taking your less productive 1.5 years into account your employment is probably still a net gain for the company.

"Whenever you apply for a position inside Microsoft, first question hiring manager asks is: What are your last three/four/five review scores?"

Does anyone know the rationale for blocking internal transfers? If somebody is unhirable by all teams but one, why are they not fired? If a manager might need a sacrificial goat, why would he not hire a proven low performer?

I can imagine at least three rationales:

- Avoid "manager shopping", wherein a low performing employee transfers from group to group until he finds one that doesn't recognize his lack of competence. Similarly, communicate to the low-ranked employee that his only path to redemption is with his current group.

- Encourage effort from employees who are dissatisfied with their current group. Continue to perform or you won't be able to switch.

- Discourage managers from handing out worse reviews to team members whom they'd just like to see leave the group, as opposed to genuinely poor performers.

But I'd love to hear the real reasons.

Typically, even if hiring manager would like you one way or another (either he genuinely believe that you can perform, or he wants sacrificial lamp), usually he is under orders from VP level which forbid interviewing anybody with bad mark in last three years.

However, those who call out VP orders are weak managers anyway, so you do not want to go work for them. A manager who hired me actually was impressed by me enough to go to director and bat for me to give me a chance to interview...

> It isn't in your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, it is in your favor to make them look great, because they review you!

True, but that can also be gamed in a classic case of kill the curve wrecker. Let's say Alice and Bob are excellent programmers, Charles through Henry are mediocre, and Isabella and Jerome are terrible. Everyone can go into the performance reviews and state their honest opinions, resulting in raises for Alice and Bob and a pink slip for Jerome.

On the other hand, Charles and Dana can get together with Jerome and Isabella. They agree to make each other look great and make Alice and Bob look terrible. If it works, then Charles and Dana get raises and Jerome and Isabella don't need to worry about their jobs. In fact, working together to throw Alice and Bob under the bus comes out to a happy ending for 80% of the department, so it shouldn't be to hard to get Erin through Henry in on the scheme.

Of course, once Alice and Bob are canned, it's a little awkward for Charles and Dana, since they're the new top of the chain. However, the rest of the department already knows that they're willing to deal. Charles and Dana agree to talk up Erin and Frank, so they wealth gets spread around. As for who gets the bottom ranks, just bad mouth Zach and Yolanda, the new hires that replaced Alice and Bob. This prevents needing to trust new members to the conspiracy while everyone gets to keep their job without needing to expend any effort to improve their skills. And, as I said, it's a happier ending for 80% of the original employees.

Doesn't that seem like spending an awful lot of time and effort on something completely internal?

Yeah, it's probably not worth the time investment to make sure employees are rewarded for their work in an equitable manner. If they can't sell it, why bother?

Every minute spent on determining how much profit to distribute is a minute not spent making that profit.

It sure is interesting to watch armchair HN give commentary on things they only have second-hand knowledge of, especially when your team just went through calibration 4 days ago and you got an inside look on how not-big-a-deal it was.

Is this your first calibration? How long have you been working at this company? The second year is much more stressful than the first. At least it was, to me.

MSFT Employee

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