These seem like compelling reasons not to work for Microsoft to me

3 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

@Maddus Mattus: so that those who do create value will be rewarded and not penalised because, for example, they disagree with their manager on climate change

Herbie

Now, you've done it!

Did somebody mention... oh look, shiny!

@Dr Herbie: I've never ever been judged on my views. I do agree that a non-politically correct view to certain company values limit your career, but I'm more interested in the truth and fair treatment for all then I'm interested in my own career, so I take my chances.

If there are personality clashes between the manager and a certain team members, it's the team's job to either get a new manager or part with the team member. This is what happens all the time in soccer. A neutral unbaised third party will not help you there. And where are you going to find these angels? They are most likely going to be HRM managers and they have other motives aswell.

If it wasnt for the straight jacket that our (yours and mine) government put us in, being fired from a job is actually a positive thing. It means that you are on the limit of your capabilities. Being stuck in a job for 40 years, means you could have done better. Ultimately the goal is to end up in a job that you are not qualified enough for. It's also a very good learning expierence. I've hit many brick walls. It hurts, but keeps me on my toes.

And you don't have to have a view on climate change, it's pseudo science;

http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/#/Video?id=1410

8 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

Chris, considering that you've never worked for any company big enough to have this kind of "problem", your opinion is - frankly - worthless.

Love the pointy stick you used there, but unfortunately, this time I have to side with Beer. I worked for a company as big as Microsoft that did stack ranking. They carried it to the extreme. At least once a year, often twice, they had mandatory layoffs. The "bottom 10%" in every team were let go. This often meant that an employee that was really probably in the top 10% in the company overall got layed off because he was in the bottom 10% on his team. What this did to morale and the quality of the work produced was quite obvious and very detrimental to the health of the company. This is a business practice that really doesn't make any sense and shouldn't be followed by anyone.

34 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

... Ultimately the goal is to end up in a job that you are not qualified enough for.

Yuk! The Peter Principle.

It's where all politicians originate...

We had that system for one year at my company. It got such bad feedback from employees that we dropped it and went back to rewards based on performance.

In my case, I was the "poor" who got no raise (out of a team of 5) because I happened to enter and fix more bugs than my co-workers.

In my opinion, a poor review should go to workers who aren't holding up their end and/or causing issues in the team. If no one is doing that, there should be no poor reviews.

And can we get a variant of Godwin's Law for climate change?

@JohnAskew: I believe Maddus was referring to something different: there's nothing wrong in getting a job you aren't qualified for, as long as you are willing to bust your arse to learn and catch up.

That's not the Peter Principle: that's what keeps the world interesting for the rest of us.

How many of them would have made it through modern day stack ranking?

How many of us would absolutely crush everyone, Bill Gates included, if we had a time capsule to go back to 1975 and compete with those people in a stack rank?

It's like there's a Moore's law for retarded business practices and we got the tail end.

@1001001: Yeah, why not go back to - say - Renaissance and get Da Vinci fired for being an incompetent?

Seriously, I don't think many of us would succeed against these guys (and gals), in 1975, using their weapons of choice. We had the benefit of decades of training on computing they couldn't possibly get, but we were also spoiled rotten in the process.

The most advanced workstation back then was an 80x24 terminal, a crappy editor, and some 8-bit assembler. Manuals (the dead tree version) you had to contend with your coworkers, no internet to find information or ask questions, compile times that ran for hours. And all this to produce code that had to fit in a handful of KiB.

We could relearn, but I doubt we would stomach it.

@1001001: apples and oranges

If I post a picture of you and your team 50 years from now and ask the same question, you will get the same answer.

IIRC, even Scott Hanselman complained about the review system from time to time

Surely the answer is simple. Chris should get a job somewhere other than at Microsoft.

Problem solved.

You could work there as a contractor where you're mostly insulated from all the politics and stuff Starting a new contract with a different group soon, pretty psyched!