Old plan resulted in sabotage
The change was met largely with joy.
Hillel Cooperman worked at Microsoft for more than nine years, most recently running the Windows users experience team, before leaving in 2006 to start his own boutique software-design firm, Jackson Fish Market.
At one time during his Microsoft tenure, he managed a team of more than 130 people.
The stack-ranking system, he said, “actively worked against my ability to incentivize my people to work together. You can’t say to people: ‘Work together,’ and then tell them in the same breath: ‘By the way, you’re competing against each other for rewards.’ ”
The system “absolutely” resulted in people sabotaging each other, he said.
“If you’re all great performers, it’s even worse,” he said. “How do you make yourself stand out in that environment? You can try to stand out or you can try to put the guy next to you down.”
One year, Cooperman said, he fought to institute an all-or-nothing bonus system for his team. Either the team would reach its goal and all the people on his team, including himself, would get a certain bonus amount — or no one got anything.
“The fighting I had to do to reward my team with a teamwide bonus — I can’t even tell you how difficult it was,” he said.