Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

[dartworth]

Revenue tripled under his leadership; profits doubled. That's some failure.

shrug...

 

[Hugo Drax]

Oh yeah the funny thing about Stack Ranking at Microsoft is people would purposely hire crappy employees to make sure that when the 6 month ranking culling of employee events occur, they have two people to throw in the pot.

And another effect, is the best employees did not want to be in a team with other good employees or even collaborate with them out of fear of the bi annual stack rank slaughter.

Talk about idiotic.

 

[ultimatebob]

I wonder what other companies do stack ranking. It sounds like the most idiotic thing ever. It makes sense that ballmer would push that. It also makes sense why Microsoft is not a 750 billion dollar company today.

Most tech corporations seem to have a similar rating system. Only the top 10% get an excellent rating (and an opportunity for a decent raise or promotion), and the bottom 10% stand a good chance of getting fired. The remaining 80% get good/average ratings, and a pathetic 1-3% cost of living "raise".

Like Microsoft, it doesn't matter if the team is filled with top talent or people who are barely competent at their jobs... Someone has to get the top 10% rating and someone has to get the bottom 10% rating to meet their quota. And people certainly aren't afraid to take credit for other people's work to avoid getting the bottom rating.

 

[techs]

Ballmer was not the sharpest tack in the room but he was in a bad situation.

Everyone was coming after Microsoft after the personal computer explosion. It would have taken a bold and resourceful leader to do anything but carry on the huge profit making system that was in place. And make profits they did.

I can only really blame him for not moving faster when by about 2009 the competition was finally getting its act together.