The stack ranking system is really known as the "GE Way" and is one of the reasons Jack Welsh is famous and made a ton of money selling management books.
IBM also employed the 20/70/10% concept to employee reviews in the 90s.
Sure, but there seems to be a difference between divesting of a conglomerate's lowest performing business units, lavishing on the highest-performing ones, and putting the rest on notice, and applying a similar system to a small team. The latter reminds me less of Welch than of Glengarry Glen Ross: "First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."
For anyone who hasn't seen the movie: it doesn't end well.
With respect to employees, the point of a "forcing function" has less to do with motivation than with finding some way to make change possible in a crumbling organization of fiefdoms whose managers insist that, nevertheless, "all my children are above average." If I recall correctly, Welch even points out that "C" players often go on to be "B" or even "A" players in other organizations, which doesn't change the fact that everyone can't be doing everything right when the overall organization is underperforming, so there are either weak spots, or no alternatives to immediate liquidation.
Finally, I'm quite confident Welch would agree that "blindly applying a vague principle you read in some book, then sticking with it for years because 'it worked for $MEGACORP'" is a stupid idea, regardless of who wrote the damn book!
Well, wasn't Welsh largely applying this to sales people? If what the people do is essentially known and fully measurable then it's easy to look over a few years and say "John consistently delivers less than anyone else" and know you have the whole story. As soon as you get into software development it gets a lot hairier.
Another problem with any ranking system is that a ranking is static but actual performance is fluid. Just look at K1 results and then look at the records of the fighters. They've all fought each other and they've all lost to each other. So Hoost was better than his peers four times, but he also lost to those same people. You can say he is better in "win points", but this would never help you predict if he would win his next fight.
As per Welch, stack ranking works because managers are themselves stack ranked. All the way up to the CEO.
Therefore if a manager plays politics and promotes his inefficient pets, sooner or later he comes ranked last among his peers. So if though he wants, he can't.
He also says that the stack ranking system makes it very difficult for the managers in the 3-4 year after it was implemented, because now they may have to let go some good people to retain the very best.
However it did work to a large extent in GE. Jack Welch's immediate reportees all went on to become CEO's of top companies.
But things like this blind copied and applied don't fly much. You need to implement them in spirit and that's difficult.
Letting go of good people to retain the very best doesn't sound like a problem. Letting go of the very best to retain the most difficult to replace, on the other hand...
Also stack ranking requires a great leader with courage in the top who actually has the vision to take things down to the last employee. For this you need to cut bureaucracy, bring in meritocracy. And do nearly every thing your traditional exec can't.
The reason this fails is some clueless MBA's in the name of case studies take it up and blindly without knowing the spirit behind it apply to anything and everything under the sun.
Each leader has his style you can take some lessons from it. But you can't be that leader copy cloned and template act everything he did. When you do, you only do it ritually and not in spirit.
Which is what cause things like Stack Ranking to no be viable else where. Because you are not thinking as Jack Welch did, you are trying to imitate his action and hope to get the same results.
I can confirm IBM uses an evaluation technique that is modeled off the stack technique. All employees have a band for their job. Rank employees by performance per band. Then assign raises/promos based on performance relative to band.
I can assure you that this description of the system doesn't begin to describe the hilarity involved. Any system where you have people proud to be ignorant of what their subordinates doing then being tasked to do meaningful evaluations is nonsensical in my mind. I guess its a 'growing pain' ... like how a heart attack is a growing pain.
I worked for a very large Mega Indian IT corp. Where many clueless folks got promoted en masse, in the 90's and early 2000's IT rush here.
What I saw was 95% of the middle management layer was thick. Practically of no use, and acted nothing more than an inefficient communication buffer between higher management and devs. They treated developers like tissues, choking innovation at every level. To make it look as though programmers are useless bunch of lot, and whatever good is happening in the organization it was because of them. The qualification of most these managers at best described was 'can write emails'.
Performance evaluation in such companies is a joke, Only managers pets get promoted. And company functions like gangs working for their survival rather than for the company.
For some reason there is always common confusion between legally having a monopoly/monopoly power and abusing a monopoly/monopoly power.
The problem wasn't that MS was bundling a free browser. The problem was when Microsoft forced PC builders to not only include Internet Explorer but explicitly forbid them from including another browser as part of their offering.
Additionally, Microsoft artificially integrated IE into Windows and then tried to claim that the two were designed to work together. It was easily demonstrated that Windows continued to work fine after un-bundling IE.
I'm looking at this as an iOS developer and not a Mac App developer, but I think this is overblown a bit.
In this case, the APIs are the iCloud related features. There are many reasons to allow only approved apps access. First, to some extent Apple are subsidizing the cost of iCloud and they want to ensure that they get their piece of any app using it. Also, it gives Apple the opportunity to make sure that an app that uses iCloud doesn't abuse it. In fact, I've had an iOS app rejected because it was putting to much data in iCloud. (Which wasn't unexpected, the customer for the app was warned it would likely happen)
I'll be worried if it applies to an API not related to a service but rather a core piece of tech.
Just a completely bogus story by someone who must not be a Mac user.
I put my MacBook to sleep and it wakes up instantly. I shut down my MacBook and it takes a min to boot.
I put my iPad to sleep and it wakes up instantly. I shut down my iPad and it takes a min to boot.
It's the exact same interaction. My MacBook will sleep for a day or more with no problem, come back and it's instant on. If it sleeps to the point of killing the battery it hibernates instead where the RAM is written to disk.
I think this guy doesn't understand how well Macs perform with sleep/hibernate/shutdown and he's imagining it works like his generic PC.
Asking how much you should pay to develop a game is pretty much like asking how much does a car cost.
I think the old adage that it takes money to make money is mostly true and applies here as well. Trying to put an app, especially a game, together on the cheap typically results in product that the customer doesn't have an interest in. Getting the right technical and creative resources together is critical.
Sometimes you can strike gold but if you follow this plan you might need to be ready for several failures before experiencing any success.
More time is spent talking about Twitter never being profitable than Windows Phone 7 being a failure. I do actually agree with both of his points of view. I don't think Windows Phone 7 will restore Microsoft to mobile glory and I don't think Twitter will ever make any money.
I've used this before and it's also available in XML format by using the KML format. What's not mentioned and is an extra bonus is that this doesn't require a Google API key. This is just calling a public URL.
Good fix. My MacBook plastic is chipping apart and I just fixed that using a leftover invisible shield I had for my Newton screen that was sitting in my desk drawer.
I never even used a shield on the Newton, I preferred to ride it bare back just like I prefer with my iPhone. This seems like the most pain free option, although it concerns me that I have to fix all my Apple products with screen shields.
Uggg, horrible font for a blog or any type of extended reading. However, interesting moral decision we all face at various points in time.
It's discussed like an economics decision, but I see it more as a gambler's decision. To me it's about the bankroll and the ability to sustain several losses in a row while waiting for the odds to even out.
There is also the possibility that several encounters with the inspector will increase the likelihood of getting caught in the future (the inspector will recognize you, and expect that you don't have a ticket). Kind of like a casino cheat who gets red-flagged by casino security.
IBM also employed the 20/70/10% concept to employee reviews in the 90s.