Microsoft ditches system that ranks employees against each other

“Connect” meetings with workers

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who announced in August that he would be retiring once his successor is chosen, has defended stack ranking in the past, saying: “I think everybody wants to work in a high-performance culture where we reward people who are doing fantastic work, and we help people who are having a hard time find something else to do.”

But Ballmer also said, after the announcement of the company reorganization: “Whether our existing performance-management system needs to change to meet the goal of fostering collaboration is something that Lisa Brummel would take up.”

Brummel said the stack-ranking system was one of several review systems the company used over the past two decades.

Each of those systems “seemed to be right for the time in which they were implemented,” she said. “This big move to something very different from what we’ve had is just that. It’s not saying one system is better than another. It’s what system aligns best with what the company needs to get done and what we need to do to go forward.”

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