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.
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.
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.