Microsoft’s controversial ranking system, which pitted employees against each other in a somewhat unfair ranking system, is being tossed as Ballmer is cleaning out his office. One of the major complaints I’ve heard from several Microsoft employees has been the ranking system that was in use.
I believe that after the initial shock and people get used to not having it, things will improve greatly, and as consumers we will see better products.
Stack ranking is a process where each business unit’s management team has to review employees’ performance and rank a certain percentage of them as top performers, or as average or poorly performing. Former Microsoft employees have claimed it leads to colleagues competing with each other, especially when some employees in a group of individuals need to be given poor reviews to match the method. It’s a system that’s similar to Yahoo’s new alleged internal process of ranking employees.