[RandallBrown]

I worked at Microsoft for a short time and got burned pretty badly by the stack ranking system.

In my first year there I had 3 different managers, so by the time my review came around, nobody really knew me very well. At least not well enough to fight for me in the ranking meetings.

So ultimately, I received the lowest ranking. What made it most annoying is that it was prefaced with a speech about how I was doing a good job, but someone had to get that ranking. This was just me.

About the only good advice that manager gave me was that if this happened again, I should leave the company because it was going to be an endless spiral that I couldn't get out of.

It was actually the last time they did the stack ranking and I left before finding out if things got any better. The whole project I was on got canceled a few weeks after I left anyway.