I heard about that, some call it the “wasted decade” at MS. Top engineers refused to work together due to the stack ranking, not wanting draw the short end of the stick in the evaluations, when compared to each other.
A company I worked at 10 years ago also dabbled with it a bit, luckily not seriously. It was a consultancy firm who hired top graduates from prestige universities, so it made even less sense. Dude, nobody is average or below here, you hire the best people after grilling them in interviews and a whole day assessment center. The bell curve just doesn’t make sense
I personally blame stack ranking, invented by Jack Welch to justify cutting 20% of the company.
If you want to get mad, the Behind the Bastards episode on him explains why corporate America is what it is today.
I heard about that, some call it the “wasted decade” at MS. Top engineers refused to work together due to the stack ranking, not wanting draw the short end of the stick in the evaluations, when compared to each other.
A company I worked at 10 years ago also dabbled with it a bit, luckily not seriously. It was a consultancy firm who hired top graduates from prestige universities, so it made even less sense. Dude, nobody is average or below here, you hire the best people after grilling them in interviews and a whole day assessment center. The bell curve just doesn’t make sense
My company does it and it’s fucking stressful. And just like you said, it doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Occasionally there are certainly people who are just there to ride coat tails but I see this behavior more in leadership than in the front lines.