Leaked Microsoft documents detail an employee performance review system where managers are quietly asked to adjust workers' results to limit the highest ratings
Leaked Microsoft documents detail an employee performance review system where managers are quietly asked to adjust workers' results to limit the highest ratings
Microsoft's review process includes a mandate for managers to distribute employees across a scale, documents and managers say.
That's literally every company.
As a manager, you get frustrated because no matter how good an employee is,they won't let you rate them as high as they should be, for...reasons.
Psst!
Its because they don't want to raise their pay, and also want the employee to blame themselves for not getting the pay raise/promotion instead of their greedy employer.
But don't tell anyone. Its a secret!
I was actually told during a review that they couldn't rank me higher because then they'd have to give me more money. My boss said I deserved it, but they didn't have the money to give it to me.
I started looking for a new job that day.
My wife's company does this overtly.
Raises are based on performance scores, they were prohibited from giving top scores for any category, because "nobody's perfect."
But when asked what could be done better there's never any answer.
It's why I focus on work life balance over everything else. No point in giving away weekends and nights for an average review. Average is perfectly rine with me, but that's also what I give now.
Yes. I work at a power plant in a large department. The best “ratings” that dictates our bonus multiplier is limited to five people because there are certainly only five people whose performance exceeds expectations. /s
The reason why is more that you have to justify top performmers against their peers and against their role responsibilities. That takes work and many managers dont want to do it.
Employees are rated like Uber drivers -- 5 stars is good, 4 stars neutral, anything else is bad.
But the companies forbid giving 5-star reviews.
If they didn't, they'd have to admit their expectations are too high for the pay they are offering. Exceeding expectations is the expectation and therefore you cannot exceed expectations. And since you aren't exceeding expectations, minimum or no raise for you.
Yeah. I thought this was the norm, so I don't know why this is news. At my company everyone is a 3 or 4. A 5 literally means you're going to be promoted to the next level. There's absolutely no other way to get a 5 and promotions are obviously rare.
Yeah. I thought this was the norm, so I don't know why this is news.
It's one thing to suspect this is being done deliberately, it's another thing to have written evidence.
Same here. When I was a manager I had to give most people a 3 regardless of higher performance. We only got (1) 4 for my team of eight people. No 5 was allowed. This rating determines bonus and raises. Rate everyone for their individual performance my ass. I rotated the 4 around every year. It was a fucking joke.
Microsoft famously used stank ranking when Steve Ballmer was CEO.
A fun typo, but also oddly fitting. Man had pit stains for days.
Don't most businesses do this?
Yes, but it's not documented, so it's not actionable, and the people not in management who end up getting the bonuses or raises in any given year often actively work to undermine any efforts to speak out or organize against these practices.
They pick enough people to actually get the pat on the head to keep the workers collectively destabilized and worried about what each other are saying.
I once had a manager -- who was new to being in charge of reports -- just outright admit in my annual review that he had to find negatives to ding me with when I asked him why no one had ever mentioned any of the issues he was bringing up to me at any time before the review. But when my closest co-workers (who were in other departments) were the ones who got the 5-star ratings and the raises, it would have just come across as sour grapes if I had said something.
It's not that hard to socially engineer an environment where it looks like individual efforts are encouraged and rewarded while simultaneously discouraging those efforts and refusing to reward them when they pay dividends.
It's not that hard to socially engineer an environment where it looks like individual efforts are encouraged and rewarded while simultaneously discouraging those efforts and refusing to reward them when they pay dividends.
You literally described my last gig to a tee. What everyone said and actually did couldn’t be farther apart. Basically gas lighting 101.
We did this at target. I had 5 hourly managers under me, 4 were amazing and went above and beyond every day and 1 that was complete ass. I was assigned a number of ratings I could give, each out of 3 (3 being best). It was 3-2-2-1-1 so I one of my best had to get the worst score possible while one other at the exact same level the best. It made no sense and I hated that.
This is the norm.
I've known several people in management in my industry (I've changed jobs a fair amount plus I'm in a consulting industry) who became managers and then either self demoted or moved over to equivalent technical roles specifically because they were forced to basically lie and say their great employees were average or even below average, couldn't give bonuses that matched performance, and couldn't give raises that matched performance.
It literally made them depressed to have to treat hard working people unfairly. So they stopped doing it.
Now that just brought the question to my mind: what does that mean about the people who do that and keep doing it? Are the just psychopaths? Sociopaths? Evil? Trapped?
I think the important thing to do is find the people who are forcing these dishonest review systems and challenge then directly on why they're making managers lie about employees performance. Contact the ombudsman if they have one and point out the dishonesty.
Our society is perverse. We reward sociopathic behavior and punish empathetic behavior.
Teachers and social workers are treated like garbage, competent liars are promoted.
I've heard a podcast interview of a very talented person. He said that he left MS because of "internal politics". I thought it was personality conflicts or something, but stack ranking might explain a lot.
It's called forced distribution and it's bad for the workers and for the company. It's far easier to sabotage others in your workgroup to bring them a lower/average rating than to try to get that one excellent rating that is probably going to go to the managers golf buddy anyway.
Non-paywall: https://archive.is/4uFFp
I feel like a lot of companies do this. Managers are usually incentivized to give their reports good rating so they can show how good they are at developing talent, so companies force them to grade on a curve.
I had just kind of assumed this was present in every enterprise environment.
It is at mine!
We abolished the system where your manager has to place you and your colleagues on an untruthful scale.
Now your managers can tell the truth, but your managers' manager places you and your colleagues on an untruthful scale! Very different!
Pretty sure MS isn't the only one doing this.
Every big tech co rates employee perf on a curve with a.forced distribution.
Paywall?
The original intent of corps was to be progressive. They would close after a job was completed. Somewhere our elders decided no, we should keep them open and shovel trash into peoples lives and keep them down with employee abuse and corruption.
Side note:
My favorite corruption story was when that oil platform blew up and years before we found out that the MMS (which oversees contracts between O&G and the US GOVT) was having sex and cocaine parties in the offices.O&G and ALL INFRASTRUCTURE should be nationalized and heavily regulated.
Our parents dropped the ball and it smashed tho.