HR hacks -- Ben Burbank -- When I used to work for a very big company, one of the employees figured out that the best way to advance his career was to write negative performance reviews for as many co-workers as possible. This resulted in him receiving a higher annual staff ranking, which in turn led to larger bonuses and stock grants. It eventually becomes difficult, he told me, because you need to make sure to only review people with different managers, so nobody can catch on to your ruse. My trick for avoiding this cycle was to quit and go work someplace much smaller and awesome
Wow. Just wow. So far I have avoided working anywhere with a culture that evil.
Loved that article. I work as a UI developer, and sometimes it helps to remember that story. A couple CSS3 animations here and there always liven up a boring presentation of new features.
It's easy to think that you wouldn't, but in practice many companies have stack ranking systems that are effectively more or less equivalent, and encourage employees to game the system rather than just to do good work. But they are cloaked with more layers of bureaucracy which disguise their natures better.
Stack/Rank is the primary reason why I have never responded to Microsoft recruiters over the years. It results in teams being torn apart as they each try to force someone else to be the "5". And dysfunctional behavior like intentionally hiring a 5 in order to protect the other team members. So you never know if they're hiring you because they want what you can bring to the company, or because the manager needs a sacrificial lamb that year.
HR hacks -- Ben Burbank -- When I used to work for a very big company, one of the employees figured out that the best way to advance his career was to write negative performance reviews for as many co-workers as possible. This resulted in him receiving a higher annual staff ranking, which in turn led to larger bonuses and stock grants. It eventually becomes difficult, he told me, because you need to make sure to only review people with different managers, so nobody can catch on to your ruse. My trick for avoiding this cycle was to quit and go work someplace much smaller and awesome
Wow. Just wow. So far I have avoided working anywhere with a culture that evil.