zlacker

>>kisna7+(OP)
I would be worried that it make performance management of managers difficult. Which is to say a manager who fires people as a way of preventing themselves from being fired. The trick being "Yeah, last quarter did kind of suck but we fired that loser Bob, this quarter will be great." In fact there are a couple of reasons why the quarter was poor, it could have been poor Bob but it could also be the manager isn't cutting it. Unless the group has the option of voting the manager out of the organization, the whole "save the best, fire the rest" algorithm has problems. Or more accurately it has a blind spot with respect to management.

The interesting question for NetFlix will be how durable it will be as a structure. My impression is that it selects for the wrong attributes in management. But time will tell.

>>ChuckM+za
Because there is a structure, I suspect stack ranking makes it easier to identify empire building. Highly ranked individuals should exhibit behaviors that correlate with their high ranking such as moving to more challenging work within or without the team and company. High ranked individuals should be the sort of people that the next couple of layers of management are aware of because they create value and solve hard problems. High ranked individuals should be the ones other managers are trying to poach sideways. High ranked individuals should be the ones that the manager relies on to explain technical detail to upper management layers. They should natural have a particular kind of visibility on email strings.

Any culture where a manager can explain away a bad quarter by blaming their underlings is already screwed.

>>brudge+Er
I agree with that last bit, but there is anecdotal evidence from employees that there is some validity to keeping a ready supply of people you can jettison out of your group in order to maintain altitude.

>>ChuckM+201
If I put myself in the shoes of a good manager, what do I do under stack ranking?

If my team is strong bottom to top, I try to find soft landings for my lower ranked employees because...well making people successful is what good managers do and concern for people as individuals beyond instrumental value is also a positive trait and it just seems fair and right in a karmic sense of the world.

On the the other hand, if the bottom people aren't really strong, a good manager gets cover for going against their positive traits.