[Bloomberg] Blizzard Manager Departs In Protest of Employee Ranking System (UPDATE: Manager responds)
- Thread starter Fieran
- Start date
- Activision/Blizzard
Exactly this. "Well, this guy shows that he doesn't have the ego to expect a high ranking in his self review, why should I give him one if he's satisfied with less?" I feel like solicited peer reviews are even worse because you sure as hell aren't going to ask for one from anyone who would even be the least bit critical of you.
Which brings us to the other problem with stack ranking, which was brought up a little earlier: why should I spend my precious time helping you out and increasing your rank when I could just be spending all my time on my work?
Work in the sense that people will try their hardest to appear to be working more than other to not get fired.
Blizzard's run by a former Microsoft exec, Mike Ybarra, so no surprise he brought their bullshit over to Blizzard.
Why do people keep thinking MS will do this? Have they really fixed or changed any of the companies they've acquired recently for Xbox? This shit ain't changing under MS.
Plus, as said above, the head of Blizzard is a former Microsoft Exec.
Completely wild theory, do you think Ybarra took on his position to help with the acquisition to MS, a la Nokia?
This happened to me last year at my employer when I received a rating of 3 out of 5. Later in the year when a veteran coworker left I was able to get his position including a 22% promotion. That evaluation was pure nonsense.
These theories for Ybarra don't work as well imo when he happily lets the world know just how addicted to WoW he is. It's not a judgement against him, but he is quite literally a massive open fanboy of Blizzard.
Nah. For that they'd need an exec in Activision Blizzard itself. Blizzard has nowhere near as much autonomy as they had in the past, they're "just" a division of Activision Blizzard now.
Microsoft famously ended stack ranking in 2013.
Ybarra joined Blizzard in 2019.
We know that discussions about the MS-ABK acquisition did not start until late 2021.
Nah. It's 100% arbitrary, flawed and should be consigned to history.
Rewarding good performers is effective. Taking corrective measures for poor performers is also effective. But defining good and bad performance through comparing individuals for a quota rather than against business need is the worst kind of Social Darwinism and will lead to conflict and office politicking.
I remember having to evaluate employees at a previous job, and HR very heavily implied quotas of the sort. All managers came out of the meeting confused and taking the whole thing apart. I very much ignored the quota and was asked to "identify low performers on my team" because it was "impossible" that everyone performed well. I sent them the most detailed report I ever made, explaining how my team had no bad performers and that when people messed up, I approached them with carefully considered feedback and gave them space to improve, which always ended up improving the situation. I was told "ok, but make sure you identify more low performers next year". Absolutely ridiculous (and I never did end up doing that- never heard about quotas again, in fact)
Quotas are often a stupid idea, but that was beyond the pale.
Quotas are often a stupid idea, but that was beyond the pale.
A company I used to work for did this bullshit as well. The manager gave me all exceeds except for one of the ratings and I asked why considering my contributions to the company had all far exceeded the ratings that year and he said "I'm sorry and I know this isn't what you wanted to hear after the fantastic year you had. HR basically doesn't let us do perfect reviews". Only reason I didn't go to HR and throw a fit about it was because the manager was a good friend and I didn't want to get him in trouble.
I left the company a year after. It's shitty that there's companies that do this.
I left the company a year after. It's shitty that there's companies that do this.
Jesus fucking christ. Great on that manager for walking the fuck out and telling them to fuck off. Wish that it'll do more to hurt the company but I somehow doubt it.
Why in the fuck can you not just have a legitimate review system with no stupid ass quotas requiring that so much of the team needs development? If someone's exceeding their position/goals, then fucking award them for it. If they truly aren't, then fucking say so and provide some assistance to help them out.
It can't be this hard.
Why in the fuck can you not just have a legitimate review system with no stupid ass quotas requiring that so much of the team needs development? If someone's exceeding their position/goals, then fucking award them for it. If they truly aren't, then fucking say so and provide some assistance to help them out.
It can't be this hard.
From the article.
"Microsoft Corp., which plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion pending regulatory review, put an end to its own stack-ranking program in 2013."
Why are "journalist" and "journalism" in quotation marks in these tweets?
I mean, I know exactly why. But felt like asking.
I understand being protective of a peer but this certainly isn't the position to take.
While I of course empathize with everyone who has to deal with the repercussions of what happened, Brian Birmingham was a lead and public spokesman for WoW Classic, not a private figure, and this is a company-wide issue. The lead developer of a high-profile game at a massive company accused his higher-ups of changing one of his employee evaluations to meet a quota. I would be failing to do my job if I didn't report that.
Also, I reached out to him a couple of days ago and never heard back. If he had asked me not to publish his name or email, my calculus would have been different. Not that I necessarily wouldn't have done it — I'm not sure what I would've done — but I certainly would have spent a lot of time thinking it over.
I was baffled when my mom told me that's how grades worked for her when she was in school. So despite doing well, you'd get fucked over if you were far enough down the list of students (in alphabetical order) and they couldn't give out any more of a grade you would have received otherwise. Absolutely absurd.
I suppose I'm sympathetic that the person who resigned might face career difficulties but I'm not very sympathetic to the argument from a Blizzard employee that the labor practices at the company are nobodies business and the press shouldn't be reporting on them.
There is textbook public interest here.
Microsoft got rid of one specific type of stack ranking and replaced it with a different one. From 2019:
Does Microsoft do stack ranking?
Does Microsoft still do stack ranking for reviews? I had read an article saying they were doing away with this, but also read on Glassdoor that it still exists. Any insight would be appreciated.#microsoft
www.teamblind.com
The "moving people into buckets to meet the distribution constraints" part is the stack ranking.
Taught at a uni for 12 years. After the fourth I just straight up not give a shit about moderation curves and gave the faculty hell during meetings. Now our meetings are mostly about dealing with struggling students. I had students asking me out for better grades it was really horrible. Had to report it and the whole thing messed me up for a few weeks.
Yeah but if everyone is on point how much difference is there really between the met expectations and exceeds expectation people.
What happens if you've got a good team though, lol. I got hit with a stacked as a high performer because, and I quote "You're the new guy, and I need to give it to somebody", lol.
If we had to be real, done effectively and ruthlessly we circle back to lets say someone with an infant, going through a family death and morning, taking a big vacayetc…getting a lower score because the new young go getter never took off and 'worked' the hardest
This has been an incredibly common practice in the industry in my couple of decades, and a similar situation was the final nail in the coffin of me being a "lead" several years back. Not falling for THAT one again
update - more details
Thread from the person in question:
View: https://twitter.com/BrianBirming/status/1617688536983175168?s=20&t=ah2Koq2VHPrmxH6PE-63dg
He claims in the final tweet that no one ever reached out to him for the article, but Jason claims he did (and I trust both of them), so it looks like there was unfortunately communication attempts that failed. Still, I support the article, even if ideally Brian would have had the opportunity to provide input or ask his name to be withheld.
View: https://twitter.com/BrianBirming/status/1617688536983175168?s=20&t=ah2Koq2VHPrmxH6PE-63dg
He claims in the final tweet that no one ever reached out to him for the article, but Jason claims he did (and I trust both of them), so it looks like there was unfortunately communication attempts that failed. Still, I support the article, even if ideally Brian would have had the opportunity to provide input or ask his name to be withheld.
Threadmark this, and ideally Fieran can put it in the OP as well. For anyone interested in this story, Brian's perspective is what deserves to be understood.
Yep. Make the workers fight each other and not work together to fight against their bosses. The real warfare is of your class position rich getting richer while the workers suffer. Hope more and more people unionize in this damn economic hellscape.
Stack ranking works if you look at the most successful companies of the last 10-15 years. i guess we could argue about what makes a company successful?
I don't agree with it when it leads to instant PIPs/firings but it does bring results. The 'we are all equal' mindset is a great idea but doesn't work in practice, especially at a large scale. There are people on your team who want to do more, there are people who will slack, there are people who are ok doing just enough.
One company I worked for had raise percentages directly tied to your performance reviews. Sounded pretty good until a manager friend of mine confided that they would get a LOT of pushback from HR if they rated an employee over X%, so basically no one ever got high reviews.
I actually still prefer that system vs lockstep raises, presumably if the range was broad enough.
Agreed. It's a manager's job to talk to their employees, understand them, and make sure they're getting appropriate reviews that reflect their job performance, what they want to do in the future, and ultimately evolve the team to be stronger as a whole.
All of which is a great reason to not tie a managers hands and mandate that they mark someone as underperforming, especially as a blanket company policy that's being applied to all team's regardless of size, methodology, or performance.
No one (and certainly not Brian Birmingham) is arguing that people shouldn't be reviewed as "high" or "low" and compensated as such. He's arguing against being forced to mark people a certain way, and being mandated to lie to his direct reports about their performance in order to meet the review numbers that Acitivion is demanding.
I dislike the system as much as anyone, but there is a rationale here that is hard to argue with: managers aren't all dickheads...in fact, many are actually super nice and if you didn't literally blow up the office, are gonna say you did a great job.
The intent behind quotas like this is to force managers to get real about their direct reports: everyone is NOT above average or a superstar, and on a small team 5% might be a single person (or fewer)...it's not insane to say that most teams of average size have a person or two that needs improvement.
In practice such a system is obviously imperfect, but the intent is to ensure that managers manage, rather than sign off every quarter that everyone is doing great. That causes a different kind of unrest among teams too.
The actual answer is to grade the managers, rather than use their direct reports to bypass that: if a great manager says everyone is doing great, why not trust that judgement? Similarly, if a poor manager says everyone is doing great, then maybe that needs a closer look.
The intent behind quotas like this is to force managers to get real about their direct reports: everyone is NOT above average or a superstar, and on a small team 5% might be a single person (or fewer)...it's not insane to say that most teams of average size have a person or two that needs improvement.
In practice such a system is obviously imperfect, but the intent is to ensure that managers manage, rather than sign off every quarter that everyone is doing great. That causes a different kind of unrest among teams too.
The actual answer is to grade the managers, rather than use their direct reports to bypass that: if a great manager says everyone is doing great, why not trust that judgement? Similarly, if a poor manager says everyone is doing great, then maybe that needs a closer look.
Seems like he loves his team and the work they are doing to even consider coming back, I hope public scrutiny allows Brian to return to his team
Edit: looks like Brian removed the tweet
Absolute garbage measurement of performance. It's all based on vibes and feels. If a manager wants to muscle someone out, they can based on nonsense like this.
We had a 0-4 rating system at a job I once held. 0 lowest, 4 highest. (Not people ranking, just how you were scored on how well you're working)
I was in my performance review going over the scores with my manager and I received a 2 for something that was an absolute yes or no type of thing. I think it was if all of my shots and what not were updated for the year and I was fully compliant (I was working in a hospital system). If you missed even one you don't meet the standard.
Me: Why is this a 2?
Manager: Because the requirement was satisfied.
Me: Well sure, but shouldn't that be a 4?
Manager: No, that's not how this works.
Me: But it brings my score average down. If this is an 'on or off' scenario, shouldn't "on" be a 4 if "off" is a 0?
Manager: We really just don't give out 4s.
Me: * Blank stare *