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Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

> in order to make more room for the top 85%

And nothing attracts top developers to an organization like news that they've got a great stack-ranking system!

Yahoo isn't exactly an attractive company to many developers now, IMHO.

Yeah I'd tend to agree. Given the press about the company, I can't say legions of talented developers are beating down the Yahoo's door to get in.

I doubt it affects recruiting very much because most people will be convinced that they'll be in the top 10%, or that they're being hired specifically to replace someone in the bottom 10%.

I am probably not in the top 10 percent of developers at this point, but I consider myself a good developer, and definitely a great problem solver and an all-round asset to any team. It is most unlikely I will even consider a company that uses stacked ranking, and this is perhaps the primary criterion I will look at. For me it is an important indicator that there will be a dysfunctional, damaged culture, and subtle or overt politics.

I think you overestimate the number of prospective employees who make their ultimate decision whether or not to work at a company based off of stack-ranking.

I turned down an offer from Microsoft, in substantial part, due to their evaluation system and the resulting "competitiveness" of the teams. (The competitiveness was self-admitted during the interview when I asked about the team culture)

I'm not a "star" developer by any means (although I consider myself competent), and I was frankly very concerned that they might be bringing me on to be the "scapegoat" that could be rated underperforming to save the rest of the team.

That's a good point.

I'm not sure how stack ranking can be good for any company:

1) It seems likely to deter prospective employees.

2) There's the incentive for the hiring teams to hire weak employees to use as "scapegoats"

Seems like a death spiral.

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