[TLUG]: Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

[Mel Wilson]

On Wed, 2012-07-11 at 08:41 -0700, James Mcintosh wrote:
> The article (or excerpt of the article) mentions "stack ranking", the
> compelled rating of employees, and its harmful effects.
>  
> I doubt that this process is unique to Microsoft.
>  
> I think that I first heard of it about Wang, and business periodicals
> praised it back when Wang seemed to have potential.

In academia it's called "grading on the curve".

On reflection, it's a very strange thing to do.  When Laplace started
putting probability theory together, he was dealing explicitly with
gambling, and physics in a big world, and situations generally where
information had to be incomplete.  Why use it in situations where you
know as much as can be known?  The employees are right there; the
students are right there; the year's results are right there.  Calling
on probability is a tacit admission that you're only guessing at the
output of your own process.

Some time ago nakedcapitalism.com got up-in-arms about financial
regulations that tried to treat policy implementation as though it were
something like industrial materials handling.  Regulations stipulated
that if instances of fraud fell below a certain rate, then legal action
would not be taken.  Astonishing!

	Mel.



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