Got a 4? You just got fired from Microsoft
ceklog.kindel.com
ceklog.kindel.com
I often wonder if Microsoft's inability to get great products to market in a timely fashion is due to stack ranking. They clearly have great people who work there, who can make great products. Even the Zune was a great product. They arrive on the market about 3 years too late, and then require iteration on top of it. Is this because people there optimize their careers for "their number", rather than what's truly best for the company? Only time will tell.
Likewise, I wouldn't give it much credit if MS (or Google, or whoever) does well. With a few notable counterexamples, most very large companies end up adopting processes to manage the size of the company, but how large is the impact of the particular process chosen? Is it really controlling success or failure?
Bad management/vision can happen in any system.
"Vision" is one thing but a lot of people have vision (or think they do). Very few people have that rare combination of interpersonal empathy and competency around complexity that enable them to reliably make good decisions as executives of large companies. (Worse yet, over 90 percent of the people given those positions get them as favors and utterly lack both skill sets.)
Um, no. The back-story you're missing is that, up until about 1980, it wasn't uncommon for people to stay at one company for 20+ years, even after they'd essentially ruined their reputations and were regarded as failures, because it was so disastrous and rare for people to actually get fired. So for companies to have 10 or 20% that was obvious deadwood was not rare. By "deadwood" I don't mean people who tried hard but took a long time to onboard or who worked on unlucky projects and could be rehabilitated, but I mean people who showed up at 11, left at 4, and might do no real work other than showing up for a couple meetings per week and making it obvious through inane comments that they didn't understand what was going on.
The first year of rank-and-yank, few objected to most of the firings because the people let go were the obvious nonparticipants, and it was better to get rid of them than lose the whole company. By the second year, it was more tense. By the third and fourth years, it was an outright morale-killer. It turns out that the percentage of people in a company who deserve to be fired isn't a constant.
In his book, Jack Welch says stack ranking put managers in a very difficult position around 3-4 years after it was implemented, simply because now they had choose worst among the very best. Of course not all of it is good, because even if you plan to hire and replace them by somebody else. What is the guarantee that they will be good?
But he later also says, the functions of the HR in GE were very different than in other companies. They were treated on par with the office of the CFO.
Since the HR itself is stack ranked, hiring wrong people means they will be getting ranked low and fired sooner or later. So they will be forced to hire the very best.
People work towards the goals you set them to achieve.
Why is this so surprising?
The part I found most interesting was your opinion on the different roles at Microsoft (quoted below). As someone with some experience in the PM role, I found it especially interesting. I find the opinion you have described spectacularly oversimplified, specifically in that the goal is just to write software (something only developers are needed), instead of writing the /right/ software, and at the right time. It is interesting to examine the different roles and how they interact, i.e. how devs often think of PMs as meetings and overheads, whilst PMs sometimes think of devs simply as resources. Tests, of course, are often left out in their own world, just hacking on whatever, and fixing the builds :-)
--------- Did you notice I said “software developer” above? This advice is really targeted at people who are good at and love actually writing software. It somewhat applies to program managers, product managers, and so forth, but hey, we work in the SOFTWARE industry. The only clear-cut jobs are for those who actually write the shit. Everyone else just helps.
I was a PM for a great part of my 21 years at Microsoft. I'm quite sure I am "spectacularly" oversimplifying things. That was intentional.
Here's the problem, related to this specific post, which is about mediocre reviews:
A SDE's job can be measured far more objectively than most other roles in a software company. PM's, specifically, have an additional challenge in that what they do is extremely hard to measure.
But don't get me wrong, I was not trying to diminish the importance of the other roles in creating great products.
People just out of college almost invariably are really bad at actually releasing products. They've often been shielded from the merciless process of productization of a system. So the first year is almost always going to involve a lot of hand-holding. "Yes, you really have to write tests," and "Yes, you really have to have repeatable deploys," and "Yes, you really have to document this." You know, the important but humdrum part of being a software engineer.
Exceptions to this rule; the kids who excel right out of the gate? Cultivate, cheerlead, and rapidly moved up your pay scale. Because invariably kids just out of college are going to work longer hours than most other people; they just don't have much of a life compared to people who've been out of college a few eyars.
Unless every company pays their employees pretty much exactly the same, somebody out there has to be in the Radford 75, 90, and presumably 100. You'd think that they would brag about that so the best employees would apply there.
It should be clear why companies won't admit to being in the radford 40, 20, 10, and presumably 0. :-)
Did they also claim that they only hired average people? Or did they claim that they only hired above average people?
As Scott Adams pointed out, there are very few above average engineers who can't identify the larger of two numbers.
20% people of each group will get a 4/5 regardless of their work done. Then the other 50% of the people that bust their butt off are told: Sorry! We can only tell 10 percent of the people they rock.
Second, I don't really see putting people into these groups is so bad because it's relative to the other employees. Even if everybody is awesome, some people will be more awesome than others. It would be ridiculous to assume everybody in the group is providing the exact same amount of value and should all be ranked 1 or 2.
It's nuts. It's probably what's going to force me out. I want to work with very good people, but to get good reviews I'd have to work with knuckledraggers.
This is the point where I have my biggest beef with the Microsoft system. I was fortunate to have worked in and managed several groups that were CLEARLY exceptional. One team I built was built from the ground up and EVERYONE I hired (about 30 people) had previously had 3.5 or better reviews.
In the end, I did those people a dis-service by hiring them. Some of them got 3.0s the following year. If I had been 'smarter', I would have 'padded' the team with a few poor-performers to ensure that I could meet the curve.
However, earlier in my career, someone I worked with, and whom I thought I respected, confided in me that he did this; he padded this team with "3.0s" intentionally. This felt completely and morally bankrupt to me. So I vowed to never do it myself.
The way this is supposed to be dealt with is that the stack ranking is supposed to balanced up to groups of ~250 people. The VPs or GMs of these larger groups are supposed to 'break ties' and deal with outliers by using their larger population. At a certain scale (and I believe this) it is realistic to believe that there can be a 20%, 20%, 40%, 13%, 7% bucketing. However, this system requires managers to be ready & willing to fight all the way up the chain. And, to a certain extent ALL managers at MS think their groups are better than others (due to the competitive nature induced by the stack ranking we're talking about also applying with even more dire consequences).
There is a related issue that the Microsoft system causes that is directly related to this: Even though groups must put 7% of their people in the "5" bucket, and are expected to "manage those people out" they are not rewarded for doing it, at all. In fact, it is in those managers best interests to keep those "5s" around.
Sad. And Frustrating.
From the stories I've heard from friends at MS, there does really seem to be a sense of office-politics-gone-insane there.
At some point, it seems there has to be a backlash.
It is important to remember we are discussing outliers here. 4s & 5s represent 20% of the company. My blog post does not impact that other 80% really at all, and within the 20%, 7% likely really deserve to be let go anyway (IMO).
It's a big company. With any sufficiently large population there will be problems. I'm not a MS apologist, but at the same time MS produces some pretty damn good things regardless.
You may have received a payment from me, likely for something X-Box related my kids have requested. On my payment, you will notice a number, from one to five. The breakdown for the numbers are as follows:
5: Wow, I really love your products! Each one is a groundbreaking example of "the road ahead." The design and execution are an example to the rest of us of what success looks like. Sadly MCSFT, you just didn't make the cut this year, but don't worry, only a few of your competitors ever get this number, i.e. Google and Apple.
4: Rock star! I couldn't make it through the day without one of your products. To be honest, you didn't really perform as a "4" this year, but work hard! I'm sure you can do it!
3: Thank you! My 2008 copy of Word still works great, and on the rare occasion I boot into Windows 7 I think, "Hey, this OS isn't so bad. I've used worse."
2: By "worse," I mean Vista. Yeah, it works, but honestly, I'm still a little put out by the whole experience. If you really put your heart and mind into it, I'm sure Win 8 will be the run-away success I know you've been working hard to achieve. But, don't screw this up, okay? People are watching.
1: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Failure to actually deliver innovation, years of being a bully, and products known for their bugginess is no way to run a company. I might care more, but I don't. I'm too busy watching netflix on my iPhone.
I hope this helps. PS - I'm sorry, but thats not what I meant by "you're number one."
They get a 5 from me. Where 5 is the number of times I have RMAed that XBox there you've mentioned.
(Actually the sad part is that that's a lie, I think the last time was number 6 for this same console, which I play rarely).
In other words your entire team works for a full quarter straight 60 hours a week... ah well at least some percentage of you are ranked lower. Tell me that is fair.
Stack ranking is horrible.
An entire team working 60 hours a week a full quarter straight is an entirely different problem.
The problem isn't ranking people, it's how they determine the score. Are the bottom 10% really the bottom or the people who were the worst at selling themselves to their managers? Do you really thinking that everyone performs equally well?
I look at the MSs and Googles of the world as the big leagues in software development. They only want to hire the best and only want to keep the best around. Not everyone can make it in the big leagues, it's just that simple.
This sort of thing happens in pro sports every single day. NFL teams are finishing their cuts right now.
That's not the problem either. The real problem is stack ranking is a morale killer. You get rid of the bottom ten percent and then the top ten percent says "Damn, every day I come to work I feel like there's this black cloud hanging over the cube farm. This place sucks, and I can get a job anywhere I want!" Then they do.
So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year.
Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup.
Depends. I've been on teams where the weak links are the morale killer. Busting my ass while watching people do little and continue with a job or worse yet get the team accolades made me leave my last job.
Does Microsoft have well-motivated top talent? It certainly doesn't show in the product lineup.
This is a completely separate issue. I would argue that MSs problems have nothing to do with engineering talent. Their problems stem from the management side with Balmer being problem number one. Doesn't Google also do some form of employee ranking? They seem to also have plenty of talent. Google though has side stepped needing great management by being data focused to a fault. This has made them better than MS in some ways, but worse in others.
So you're left with the middle - people who do their job reasonably well and aren't dumb enough to take risks that might get them downgraded. Projects that are in trouble can't be turned around because the best (remaining) people stay away. And the people who couldn't get away find other jobs. I saw this happen on a project at a financial company I worked for. They needed eight or ten developers and went through at least twenty in the space of a year.
You're right that it's not always the best solution. First, a company needs to be at the top of their field so they are attracting top talent. If Joe Bobs software attempted stack ranking they are going to fail because they are not the big leagues. No one goes to work there expecting it to be that way. People who work at the Googles and MSs of the world expect that environment and are rewarded well when they thrive.
At the end of the day, coming in at the bottom of one of the premier software companies isn't necessarily a bad thing. I regret not trying to get a job at one when I was younger just to see if I could hack it. At the time though my priorities were different.
Some people I know never went back home for a week.
At the year end appraisal. We were told we deserved nothing extra as we were told that we were just doing our jobs.
That's how badly management can rip you off.
For stack ranking to work you will need awesome leaders at the top rung in the company. You will need to fight out politics, processes and eliminate bureaucracy. You will also need a fair measuring of performance. Without all of this you see managers awarding their yes-men(their pets and bootlickers basically) top ranks and the good guys will leaving the organization. Unfortunately its very easy to get into this mode, especially if you are a large company will several layers of management- this kind of things can run for years until irreversible damage is caused. The net result after years will be false or irrelevant numbers floating in the company, while the best talent has already left.
Even Jack Welch, mentions that stack ranking works best if everybody in the organization is stack ranked all the way up to the CEO. So that if some one cheats in the middle he will get ranked low under his manager and so on an so forth. This is very different to what happens in most big corporates. Managers are generally left immune to this process. The net result is they begin to form gangs of yes-men around them. Whoever refuses to be a part of it, slips out of favor of the manager and gets a bad ranking. Net result in mass is a disaster. Which is not apparent until very late.
So if you are company with a culture of politics, processes, nepotism, bureaucracy and biases. Stack ranking will not help, but rather destroy you.
I saw all this at a Mega Corp here in India. Needlessly to say that company today is struggling fallen far below from its original glory days.
Microsoft still has a high rate of contractors (and I count some friends and relatives among this number), although less since they got in trouble from the federal government for not paying most types of benefits to contractors. [1]
1: http://archive.washtech.org/news/courts/display.php?ID_Conte...
In my experience what this post discusses is completely irrelevant to contract employees.
Once you hit level 61, you're an II Once you hit level 63 (maybe 64?), you're Senior After Senior, it goes Principal then Partner.
I'm curious, does MSFT still enforce the stacks? The OP made it sound like the scale was independent of one's relative rank.
The point is so called senior managers and executives you see today in the vast majority of the companies are totally undeserving of what they get. They didn't make it to the top on merit. Most of them had it easy, they made it big during gold rush in the IT boom. They were just there in the right place at the right time.
Most of them if were to compete with even a average developer of our time, will not last much longer.
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