| It's interesting that the author of the article primarily blames stack ranking for her challenges. From her post she came in with extremely high expectations of how well she'd do at Microsoft (promoted within 6 months), she got a new manager and immediately assumed they'd play favorites with their existing employees then once given a project she couldn't handle instead of asking for help waited too long so "she wouldn't seem clueless". Then she gets a performance review that says she didn't do well and blames the system & her manager. This seems to expose a significant lack of introspection and self awareness. Is there a company in the world that gives a good performance review when someone spends months on a project, doesn't make progress and doesn't ask for help until it's too late? That said there are two places where Microsoft's former performance review methodology hurts here 1. Microsoft used to give people a score in the misguided belief that knowing "you suck" or "you're awesome" relative to your peers is motivational. In some cases, it does but in many cases it has the opposite effect where it causes someone to be so discouraged that they quit. Which is what the blog author did. 2. The requirement to have people who are flagged as "underperforming" in stack rank based models discourages managers from helping people who are struggling. As a manager it is actually somewhat of a relief to have someone who you can clearly award the "sucks" label without the strain of having to decide which of your team of good performers needs to draw the short straw(s). This to me was one of the biggest problems with the model as a manager at Microsoft since your reward for turning around a poor performer is to find someone else to mark as a poor performer. |