Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

That nearly ruined Microsoft...

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-ditches-syst...

that doesn't mean it's easy to implement, manage, or impossible to game, or that it plays nice wrt human factors, but to attack the core idea as essentially wrong is anti math, science, and rationality.

Microsoft always suffered from rewarding egotists and political animals over people who did actual work.

When you hire 12 baristas are they competing to make the most coffees or is their job to handle customer's orders? If their job isn't to compete with each other then don't stack rank them. Use other metrics like #of incorrect orders or w/e and decide what you think they should've done and if they did more than that give them a bonus. If they do less then maybe you need a new employee.

> Microsoft always suffered from rewarding egotists and political animals over people who did actual work.

That has nothing to do with grading on a curve. You can assign people to the top of a curve based on "egotist" criteria or based on "work". Nothing about a curve or stack ranking requires it to be based on "real work".

Both? Handling customer orders is how the sport is played, but at the same time they are competing for the most points (money) in that gameplay.

Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

---

It's novel because it's not how its done.

It's a big part of the stack rank hate is that people just blindly rank everybody and then adjust compensation that way. Taking more granular detail into account just isn't done.

But also because you're hired to do a job. If you do the criteria of the job then you should get a satisfactory rating. Similar to test taking, if you demonstrate knowledge of the material then you should pass. If you got 99/100 questions right and everybody else got 100/100 then you shouldn't get an F despite you being the worse of the group.

Where'd you dream up that idea? I operate a restaurant, so I at least have first-hand experience in overseeing barista-like workers, and I don't know how you could possibly ignore such details?

I'm sure I'm not perfect at it. I'm certainly not accurately capturing the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa. But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times.

Perhaps with a statement like "But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times." then you understand why people don't like stack ranking because yes people do ignore blatantly obvious things.