[kaiby]

I've heard that at companies that did stack ranking, managers of groups with high performers would actually seek out poor performers who didn't care about their ranking from other groups, to add to their group so that they wouldn't have to give a poor mark to their own people. These poor performers became hot commodities. Talk about gaming the system...

[xyzzy_plugh]

I've seen this happen. The best part is when attrition is bad enough in some cycle that the poor performers stick around... and now the managers are really in trouble!

It can be difficult for line managers to fire their entire team.

[TeMPOraL]

> These poor performers became hot commodities. Talk about gaming the system...

Couple iterations of that and you'll have people who are hired and/or paid extra for the purpose of being a "fuse" that protects the high performers during layoffs by being first to get fired.

[ryandrake]

Not sure about the “paid extra” part, but this is called Hire To Fire[1] and is evidently in practice at companies that do stack ranking.

1: https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...

[urthor]

It leads to the metagame.

For many junior employees, far more likely to be predesignated as H2F, you onboard as a hire to fire employee.

Then immediately begin networking for an adjacent team to join.

It's never about what you can do.

Always about who you know.

[ryandrake]

I wonder how I could signal my willingness to be a H2F candidate. I could see doing this, for example, to make a few bucks in pre-retirement: 1. Get hired as the sacrificial lamb, 2. Do nothing (or the bare minimum) for 11 months, 3. Start interviewing again one month before I know I’ll be stack-rank fired, 4. Get hired as another sacrificial lamb at a different company that does stack ranking, 5. Goto 2.

Everybody wins. I get a salary for doing nothing. Hiring manager protects his team from a cruel system. High-and-medium-performing coworkers are secure in their jobs. Recruiters meet their hiring goals.

[thombat]

My joke (?) proposal for a contracting business was "Scapegoat Solutions". You're a manager somewhere with a project which is of course late, over budget, crappy quality? Your bonus, or even ass, could be on the line? Never fear - just contract us to "work" on your project for a quarter, we'll drink a little coffee, play some Kicker, twiddle some files in your SCM, then you ceremonially fire us while bewailing the outlandish harm we did to your otherwise well-managed project, explain to your Lords & Masters that it will take months to right the ship... Obviously we're blacklisted as "No Hire" for your company - at least until the next time you need our well-remunerated services...

[SenHeng]

I had a roommate that had a real business doing such a thing. If a company/person fucks up and needs to apologise but are unable/unwilling for $REASONS, that's where my roommate would step in and literally apologise for them. He would even be provided with name cards and in some instances, underlings to look like an important person.

I tried very hard (google & wiki) to look for an English term but I failed. It's 謝罪代行 in Japanese. Literally Apology as a Service.

[TeMPOraL]

> It's never about what you can do.

> Always about who you know.

Sorry for a tangent to a tangent, but I keep hearing this being said all the time as something negative - even though it's obvious, natural, and how everyone says it should be. Some ways of promoting this arrangement include statements like:

- There's no "I" in "team"

- Team productivity matters more than individual productivity

- Most valuable employees are force multipliers for their team

- Being 2x multiplier for a team of 5+ beats being a 10x engineer

Etc.

How do people saying these things (and this is nearly everyone, it's the industry zeitgeist) think it works in practice? That you can skill up in being "a force multiplier for a team"? That you can grow your team multiplication factor from 1x to 2x to 3x to ... in isolation, and then slot yourself into any team to give them an instant bonus?

No, any kind of force multiplication is achieved through working relationships. The fuzzy stuff. Two people equally competent in their field and with equivalent EQ aren't freely swappable between the teams, because they don't have identical personalities, quirks and habits. Force multiplication involves people working together for some time, molding themselves to fit each other.

In the process, people working well together grow to know and like, or at least respect, each other. They become each other's "first on the list for X", or "example of how to do Y". Which is exactly how "it's about who you know" works in practice.

[NineStarPoint]

I think that the extent to what you say is true depends on who has hiring power. The farther removed from the actual team hiring decisions are made, the less someones ability to work effectively matters. If you can convince some MBAs you’re a 10X programmer, it may not matter than you’ve left behind a stream of teams that disliked working for you. If all hiring decisions are made by a team lead with no subject master expertise, you end up in a similar situation. It’s ultimately the case that it comes down to convincing the person who will hire you that you’ll act as you described, but in tons of companies the person you’re convincing isn’t actually the person who has the insight necessary to judge what you’ve said.

[oblio]

> How do people saying these things (and this is nearly everyone, it's the industry zeitgeist) think it works in practice?

They don't. Well, they think that about themselves personally, but otherwise, no, they don't really believe it en masse.

It's vranyo: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vranyo

[ryandrake]

Great vocabulary word, and perfect description of the activity. "Half-lies [...], told [...] as a fantasy, suppressing unpleasant parts of the truth.

I respect OP (TeMPOraL), he(?) has a long track record of great comments and insights on HN. I always look forward to his comments. But what he is describing is kind of a fantasy that we tell ourselves to get through the unpleasantness. Or more accurately, it's how the working world works in theory, but not in practice. "Team productivity" "Individual as force multiplier" these are phrases straight out of the employee handbook. It's how the company pretends career development works. And a lot of people believe it!

How it actually works is like High School. There are cliques. There are in-groups and out-groups. If you're part of the in-group, you're going places. Your individual performance sometimes matters, sometimes doesn't. Your actual teamwork and team accomplishments sometimes matter, sometimes don't. If you're in the out-group, nothing you do matters. You could be Ken Thompson but if you're not in the right clique, your career is going nowhere.

I've seen it almost everywhere I've worked. A low or medium performer manages to charm his way into the right clique, get liked by the right exec, and his career skyrockets, despite spotty actual work output. Despite their projects failing, despite their direct reports quitting. All the way up to Director level at FAANG--the sky is the limit. All because they got into the in-group and befriended the right people. I've seen top performers stagnate and quit out of frustration, because despite both great individual output and team success, the VP just didn't like the guy, and that was that. There's no way around it. I had a boss who picked favorites and villains. If you were the Golden Boy, you could do no wrong, and you were on track for promotion purely for being in her favor. If you were the unlucky villain, you could do no right and ended up just being a punching bag.

The actual corporate world in practice is nothing like the optimistic and egalitarian employee handbook. It's 80's High School again with jocks and cheerleaders and dweebs and losers.

[voakbasda]

How is this not a fraud on the part of the company that hires-to-fire? They have no intention of actually following through on the employment contract.

[TeMPOraL]

I was thinking about specifically asking people, whether already hired or those about to, to become "sacrificial parts"[0]. The difference between this and "hire to fire" would be that in my scenario, these sacrificial employees would enter the deal voluntarily, fully aware of their purpose. Extra compensation would be there to offset both the immediate hassle of searching for a new job and damage to work history on the resume of such sacrificial employee.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_part

[shriek]

That happens already. No big company is running on a skeleton crew. If they are then we have a bigger problem.

[monocasa]

But is the distribution maintained fractally down to most/all of the big company's teams?

[scifibestfi]

It's a bad sign when it sounds like a Dilbert cartoon.

[kyrra]

Circa 2006 I saw a friend who was a manager do exactly this. There wasn't stack ranking. He just kept a low performer on his team to sacrifice to the RIFs when they came through.

[raxxorraxor]

The bad thing is that this is predictable behavior and management still does it. Should the suggestion get grouped into the 5% of low performers? This is clearly damaging to overall work morale and company goals. And not to an insignificant part.

What would you give for that performance? I cannot see anything that would benefit the company. Not even employment costs, because employees certainly price that in.

[dbg31415]

Yup, this happens. Basically just hiring people to take the fall.

Seen this happen for teams where the manager loves everyone on their team.

[npteljes]

I know I would to that, to protect my team, and those who I consider good performers.