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hezeus t1_iwsz5rw wrote

Reply to comment by be0wulfe in Amazon Recently Told Managers to Identify, 'Stack Rank' Low Performers Immediately by Truetree9999

Hate to break it to you but most big companies have a flavor of this despite what it’s called.

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be0wulfe t1_iwt2nqi wrote

Fully aware. A significant portion have moved away from it.

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frolie0 t1_iwt4mgf wrote

They have not. At least the 4 I've worked at. I know others at other large companies too and everyone has some form of performance reviews where ratings are applied. Even the ones thst have softened the ratings system still have a poor performer designation.

No company is immune to poor performing employees and any halfway decent manager is going to push out their low performers.

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SlowMotionPanic t1_iwtax9s wrote

Huge difference between stacked/forced ranking and performance reviews.

Stacked ranking is when employees are forced into arbitrary boxes and then the company cuts a certain category loose by termination. Managers will be will told “your team has 10 people, you MUST review and rank someone as a 1 then fire them.” The manager has little choice. Some companies offer leeway if teams are very small, but others like Amazon are cut throat because they haven’t lost massive class action lawsuits from their employees yet like GE and Microsoft did.

Amazon is being very transparent in what they are doing here. They aren’t doing performance reviews. They are cooking the books to cut an arbitrary number of people for performance issues because it sounds better than I ranked layoffs. In this case, they have just instructed managers to forced rank everyone they want laid off into the bottom tier.

Hence forced distribution.

Edit: a key component of forced distribution is that you can technically meet or exceed your company demands and still rank in the bottom tier because company policy forces someone to be there. So a team of high performers who all exceed will have an arbitrary percentage ranked as not meets or equivalent.

This really happens. Companies really get sued. Although probably not in this environment considering corpos have well and truly captured the courts.

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frolie0 t1_iwtef3b wrote

Amazon literally uses a performance system like I described. What's described in the article may be something happening in a specific team, but Amazon uses a company wide performance rating scale.

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PleasantWay7 t1_iwtfuli wrote

No they don’t. At most companies, if your team of 4 people are excellent you rank them as such.

At Amazon one must be marked as not performing m.

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MarionberryIcy5149 t1_iwtnpm3 wrote

Nope - curve applies to orgs of at least 50. A team of 4 would not be required to have one low performer.

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frolie0 t1_iwuajgs wrote

I literally work at Amazon in corporate. You are wrong.

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Truetree9999 OP t1_iwuk548 wrote

Yea that's why I was surprised by this article

I haven't noticed the use of stack rankings in my org in my time here

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be0wulfe t1_iwt9at6 wrote

There's a difference between measuring performance and stack ranking.

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hezeus t1_iwtanu4 wrote

What’s a significant portion? Which companies?

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