Microsoft ditches system that ranks employees against each other

“Terrible culture”

Mark Relph, an entrepreneur in residence at startup accelerator GrowLab, worked at Microsoft for more than 15 years until earlier this year.

Most recently, he led Microsoft’s team responsible for building relationships with the venture-capital community and venture-backed startups.

When he heard Tuesday that Microsoft was getting rid of its stack-ranking system, he tweeted: “Microsoft eliminates the review system that created such a terrible culture in so many parts of the company. Too little too late?” and “People have asked if I’d go back to MSFT. Top of the list why not was that review system. Glad to see it gone. Was terrible from day 1.”

Stack ranking has a place in some companies, Relph said. But implementing it in a large corporation and over a long time is difficult to do.

Plus, the system gave some outsiders a negative perception of Microsoft’s company culture, he said.

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