
Yahoos Bristle at Mayer’s New QPR Ranking System and “Silent Layoffs” - johnjlocke
http://allthingsd.com/20131108/because-marissa-said-so-yahoos-bristle-at-mayers-new-qpr-ranking-system-and-silent-layoffs
======
drgath
I was one of those who was laid-off, or fired, or whatever you want to call
it. I've been really confused over the last week because the reasons for my
termination were pretty vague. But wow, after reading that, so many things
make sense now.

One of the areas this type of a bell-curve system falls apart is for highly
specialized and well-qualified teams, such as the one I was working on. Who
knows, maybe I was a poor employee, but after all the raises, accolades, and
the promotion I received (by my firing manager), I'd like to think that wasn't
the case and it was just a manager put in a tough spot.

Regardless, it was a nice run and the job market is great. I'm taking a bit of
time off, but if you are a company in SF and looking for someone with lots of
JavaScript, Node.js, and frontend experience at startups and (of course) big
companies, links are in my profile.

~~~
kjackson2012
What it means is of your team, you were in the bottom 15% and maybe you
weren't a bad employee, but you weren't even in the top half of your team.

~~~
smackfu
>you weren't even in the top half of your team

That's a pretty poisonous attitude, since half the company isn't going to be
in the top half of their team. And honestly, in my experience, most people
have no idea whether they are at the 50% point or the 15% point.

~~~
kjackson2012
What's poisonous about it? It's the blunt truth. In stack ranking, you don't
have to be the best employee, you just can't be in the bottom 15%. If you get
laid off, it means you're in the bottom 15%. There's nothing poisonous about
that assertion.

It's like they say about escaping a hungry bear, you don't have the be the
fastest runner to survive, you just have to be the second slowest runner.

------
tptacek
If you're a manager in a stack-ranking organization like this, in this market,
why not take a stand? Refuse to classify team members who are not actually
"occasionally misses" as such. If it's straight-up stack ranking, give
everyone a tie for 3rd place or something.

What's the worst thing that happens? You get let go? What a great way to get
let go from a dysfunctional company.

~~~
emmett
While I generally agree with you that stack-ranking is a terrible idea for
software companies[1], my guess is that the goal here is "lay off a bunch of
low performers who were hired over the last 10 years". How do you think they
should handle that? Managers, generally speaking, are never going to rate
their team member down if that means their team will be effected by the
layoff.

\- Trying to bulk-remove low performers is doomed to failure, don't try

\- Bulk-remove on something else, like what projects you worked on instead of
your rating

\- Let them rank as high as they want, then let the bottom N% go regardless of
whether they were technically rated "meets expectations"

\- Some solution I'm not seeing?

This is an honest question -- I've never run (or worked for a long time) a
company as big as Yahoo.

At Twitch, this isn't a problem because you don't have many layers of
management and the number of people is small, so it's easier to get consensus
on what acceptable performance is across the entire organization. But I really
have no idea how you'd manage that somewhere like Yahoo.

If this isn't a one-time thing and Yahoo is moving to a permanent stack-
ranking system...nevermind everything I said. But stack-ranking seems like a
reasonable one-time way to cut deadwood in a very large company.

[1] And maybe in general, I'm just only experienced with software companies.

~~~
vonmoltke
You are absolutely right, and that is what Jack Welch intended when he first
implemented stack ranking at GE in the early 90s. At the time GE was overly
large with an ossified bureaucracy and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of
deadwood employes who were just coasting along occupying a chair. It was
killing the company. Stack ranking was the answer to forcing managers to make
the hard decisions about who was really helping and who was just collecting a
paycheck. It worked very well.

This was only supposed to last as long as required to turn GE around. Like all
good fads in the business world, though, it was taken too far by the MBA
crowd. They now see stack ranking as a great _permanent_ solution to deadwood.
They fail to recognize that: 1) all organizations have a certain minimum
amount of deadwood, as a function of their size; 2) once an organization
approaches its natural level of deadwood, stack ranking hurts more than it
helps.

~~~
craigyk
how do you apply stack ranking effectively if most of the dead weight is in
the branches (middle management) but scoring heavily weights the leaves
(workers) of an organization?

My feeling is that generally a group knows who sucks or is disruptive, and
this is probably the most reliable data source. That's your scoring criteria.
Other modifications I might make:

1\. flatten the org chart for the purposes of ranking. 2\. employees rank best
and worst fellow employees, i.e. up to 10 best, up to 10 worst. 3\. ranking is
two-dimensional to distinguish between "this person is terrible and should be
fired" from "this person isn't a good fit/being utilized well and should be
moved". 4\. Do the above and see if the results can be used to determine who
should be fired. 5\. If you want to repeat this process every year don't set
forced quotas.

~~~
lstamour
From what I remember, Microsoft has the employees rank their peers. 360
feedback. That's part of what then poisons the atmosphere, especially since of
10, the sucker in last place often/always has to leave. People implicitly then
make pacts based often on politics... But at least it's annual rather than
quarterly.

~~~
craigyk
yeah, no system is perfect, but the modifications I suggested I think would
address these issues to large extent. For example, I suggested that employees
would rank their peers on three scales (good, bad, misused) instead of with
"scores". An actual score would hopefully come from aggregating the whole
company and doing some analysis. Hopefully by having some smart people try to
put together an algorithm that seems "fair".

Also, if I remember correctly, MS employees might have had some say in their
peer's rank, but then groups scores would be merged with other groups by
having managers "calibrate" with each other, which more than likely gives the
manager a lot of control in the final outcome.

~~~
squidi
This is not a condemnation but people often like to invent perfect employee
performance systems, as you have done here, and it is akin to people writing
their own cryptography. There is evidence-based research out there - look for
papers by Elaine D. Pulakos for example. My understanding is that no system
works in and of itself and training managers to get the most out of their
people is probably the best thing any firm can do.

------
mathattack
These types of forced ranking systems are very tough. Microsoft has had a lot
of complaints about there's. GE, on the other hand, has had success with
theirs. I've seen them work successfully at large firms where they were
ingrained, and the companies had other cultural norms to increase teamwork.
I've seen it flop at a few software firms.

What they're good for:

\- Forcing managers to make hard decisions and give real feedback. (You can't
just tell everyone "You're doing fine.")

\- Highlighting who at the bottom should be let go, and who a level below
should replace them. (In most firms, the top 10% at a given level outperforms
the bottom 10% at the level above them)

\- Providing internal guidance for larger layoffs.

\- Encouraging constant trimming to avoid those larger layoffs.

The problems of these systems are numerous though:

\- It can discourage teams of superstars from working together on large
projects. "What if only 1 or 2 out of us can be ranked high?"

\- It can encourage selfish behavior and infighting if there aren't other
counterbalancing forces.

\- There is frequently disagreement for anyone not in the chosen group.

\- Much of the differentiation is based on managers ability to fight for their
employees, rather than employees actual ability.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In Marissa's defense, she
wasn't hired to continue "Business as usual".

~~~
allochthon
_Providing internal guidance for larger layoffs._

Just a reminder that if corporations are people, they're sociopaths.

~~~
mathattack
Indeed. But companies have to operate that way.

It's no different from a restaurant thinking, "If the economy doesn't improve,
which 2 of my 20 waiters and waitresses will I let go first? I should let them
know they're on the bubble."

Or perhaps more abstractly an investor saying, "I have 20 investments. If I
need cash, which 2 should I sell?"

------
steven2012
I worked at Yahoo, and quite frankly, Yahoo needs to go through a few years of
culling the bottom 10% like this. After several iterations of this, it could
be a great company again.

What Mayer is saying is that she is willing to sacrifice those employees that
are at the lower boundaries of acceptable, in order to make more room for the
top 85%

And quite frankly, the managers that are complaining about having to put
people at the lower boundaries are highly likely to be underperforming as
well. When I was there, it was mostly filled with bloated and lazy employees.

~~~
wwweston
> in order to make more room for the top 85%

And nothing attracts top developers to an organization like news that they've
got a great stack-ranking system!

~~~
elq
Yahoo isn't exactly an attractive company to many developers now, IMHO.

~~~
cantankerous
Yeah I'd tend to agree. Given the press about the company, I can't say legions
of talented developers are beating down the Yahoo's door to get in.

------
tieTYT
> In 1981, Ford's sales were falling. Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred
> $3 billion in losses. Ford's newly appointed Division Quality Manager, John
> A. Manoogian, was charged with recruiting Deming to help jump-start a
> quality movement at Ford.[19] Deming questioned the company's culture and
> the way its managers operated. To Ford's surprise, Deming talked not about
> quality but about management. He told Ford that _management actions were
> responsible for 85% of all problems in developing better cars_. In 1986,
> Ford came out with a profitable line of cars, the Taurus-Sable line. In a
> letter to Autoweek Magazine, Donald Petersen, then Ford chairman, said, "We
> are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford and the many changes
> that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Deming's
> teachings."[20] By 1986, Ford had become the most profitable American auto
> company. For the first time since the 1920s, its earnings had exceeded those
> of arch rival General Motors (GM). Ford had come to lead the American
> automobile industry in improvements. Ford's following years' earnings
> confirmed that its success was not a fluke, for its earnings continued to
> exceed GM and Chrysler's.

source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

~~~
mathattack
I'm trying to tie this to the original article. Is the idea that performance
reviews are inconsistent to systemic management improvements ala Deming? My
understanding is he was against the annual review.

~~~
tieTYT
I think it's relevant for many reasons. But I was reminded of the information
when I noticed that Yahoo seems to be blaming the 15%.

~~~
bmm6o
... which is why you italicized the 85% bit? But one is a percentage of
people, and the other a percentage of problems. If I'm misunderstanding, it
would be helpful if you explained further.

~~~
tieTYT
Sorry, it's difficult to take that wikipedia article and make a soundbite out
of it. Elsewhere in the source you'll see this:

> Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes
> where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the
> unintended consequences

I didn't use that, because it doesn't have any context with it.

~~~
cpeterso
Does "a poor workman blames his tools" apply to management?

~~~
lstamour
Sounds likely here, though it's a bit creaky :)

------
brimanning
Not that it's quite the same, but I can't help thinking of decimation in the
Roman sense.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_\(Roman_army\))

~~~
VladRussian2
the main difference :)

" The leadership was usually executed independently of the one in ten deaths
of the rank and file"

------
platform
I work for a company with stack ranking. and was forced to stack-rank my team.

The success of this system depends on 3 things a ) qualifications of the
managers doing stack ranking b ) perception management of the employees being
ranked. c ) quality (impact and sophistication) of the projects people are
doing

( a ) is hard to come by in middle-management ranks (because very few talents
individuals stay in those ranks -- they either move up, or move out).

    
    
      ( b ) perception management (essentially ability to blame others, to create inflated perception of your contribution) -- is a horrible thing to do for a technology company who benefits from having introverts who just love to program.

Those will often fall the victim to the 'smoke and mirror specialists'.

( c ) can simply be traced to poor up stream decisions/conditions.

\---- -

But how to actually deal with accumulated incompetency (as it happens
especially in companies that must grow very fast) ?

\--- -

The answers I heard here would work but in combination

a) stack-rank projects

b) within project evaluate performance of project's stakeholders/initiators in
addition to the project team

c) stack-rank all employees by using peer-and-outsider model that takes up 40%
of the overall rank (so that if an employee has excellent enteprise impact,
but an incompetent manager, as noted earlier, -- he/she will not be totally
dependent on that manager's score)... And that also builds up better team
work.

------
jimbokun
This is the "sequester" approach to layoffs.

Instead of deciding which projects are not paying off and cutting them, cut
employees across all projects, regardless of how well they perform. Similar to
the budgetary sequester backed into by the US government.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
Except apparently Yahoo has grown since she joined, so it would seem this has
not been implemented in order to reduce staff size.

~~~
camus2
Dont worry, Yahoo will fire a lot of people soon. Yahoo "bought a lot of buzz"
to drive its stock up so big investors can cash in, they will trim their
workforce soon,

~~~
yapcguy
Yep.

I know this sounds harsh, and this is pure conjecture on my part, but the way
I see it is that Marissa Mayer is on a 5 year contract and after that she is
out of there, regardless of what state Yahoo is in.

If the company is a mess in 5 years time she can blame it on the culture which
was resistant to change. She will simply jump onto the next gravy train via
her big investor and board-room friends.

The WSJ and NYT say her total compensation over this period will be at least
$100m+. All she has to do is sit tight, look as though she's busy, and
hopefully keep the share price up to maximize her share options.

~~~
tesseractive
Considering that the company has burned through multiple CEOs already anyway,
I think the case that the company was doomed if she didn't try some major
moves is both obvious and compelling.

The thing I like is that she's trying both the carrot and the stick at the
same time: trying to make Yahoo a better place to work with Google-style
amenities, while also making staff more accountable and slashing poor
performers.

She's also focusing the company much more heavily on mobile which is both
obvious and necessary, but which wasn't taken nearly as seriously by previous
execs.

I don't know whether it will work or not, but this doesn't seem like a
"marking time" strategy at all.

------
OWaz
Whoa what? “Mayer, in fact, tried to address the issue yesterday morning in a
Q&A, which she began by quoting her favorite children’s book about the value
of experience.”

How do you start addressing concerns of working professionals by quoting a
children's book?

~~~
agilebyte
I have had 2 adults, on separate occasions, quote from The Little Prince by
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry they read as children. If the shoe fits, I have no
problem with it.

~~~
cpeterso
Did Mayer quote from the _The Little Prince_ , too? That article didn't say.

------
gesman
I worked at IBM Research for 6 years and they have absolutely the best way to
achieve the best possible productivity from _all_ employees:

The secret?

"Trust Your People".

I was a contractor, working offsite, from another country. I used to come to
IBM Research facility once a month and we had quick discussion: "Should we add
this? Ok. Let this guy (me) do that". After that I disappear for a month or
two, charge IBM hourly and then present a report of what was done.

Result: we had the best enterprise security product on the market that
actually generated plenty of revenues for the company.

Hats off to IBM and to SRW, JM, JK, BA, and of course DC! Granted we were
smaller team - 20 people in total or so. Lots of new people were coming in and
doing their best to deliver their best.

There was something spiritual about this, but it worked like a charm.

------
yapcguy
Can't believe that employees would actually complain about their work by
posting "on an internal message board for anonymous feedback".

If it's anonymous, I have a bridge to sell you!

~~~
VladRussian2
it is natural selection similar to Darwin prize - if you're stupid enough to
seriously b!tch on internal _anonymous_ board ...

Reminds me about anonymous surveys in some previous BigCo where emailed links
to the surveys contained unique ID.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Both of those situations seem like they would set up massive lawsuits down the
line.

~~~
hackula1
Only if you told them why, in a "right to work" state.

------
qdog
This is a pretty popular thing at many large companies. Everyone somehow wants
to hire the cream of the crop, yet there are only so many cream of the crop
candidates.

My own experience is that after a couple of rounds of these layoffs, most of
the fat is cut from a lot of teams. After that you start knocking off
productive people.

I'd be more impressed by someone who invigorated their workforce and then
selectively cut people after they figured out who wasn't working out. Choosing
a random manager assigned number that wasn't specifically requested to be a
ritual offering of headcount isn't very smart. It'll bite you in the ass
eventually when productive people actually end up leaving because of the work
environment.

~~~
a3n
> This is a pretty popular thing at many large companies. Everyone somehow
> wants to hire the cream of the crop, yet there are only so many cream of the
> crop candidates.

I think in some places it's not so much the desire to hire the cream of the
crop, but a manager or managers wanting to believe that by hiring only the
cream of the crop, _they_ are then the cream of their crop. As a side effect,
it helps them maintain an erection.

------
steven2012
If you read "Straight From the Gut" by Jack Welch, you would know that this is
standard practice that is supposed to weed out the bottom 10% every year.

The "GE Way" was to keep pruning from the bottom, and yes, it would mean that
sometimes decent performers would get cut. In the book, there's an anecdote
about how at some point, groups would take on crappy workers, just so that
they could fire them for the yearly purge.

~~~
pcwalton
> The "GE Way" was to keep pruning from the bottom, and yes, it would mean
> that sometimes decent performers would get cut. In the book, there's an
> anecdote about how at some point, groups would take on crappy workers, just
> so that they could fire them for the yearly purge.

How is that something that should be emulated? Seems like a tremendous waste
of resources to me.

~~~
gesman
Stupidity of top management justifies the response

------
danmaz74
In theory, a system like this could work much better if those "bell" rankings
were only forced on teams which aren't performing well (as a team). This would
both encourage teamwork and lower the risk to let very good people go only
because they're in an exceptional team.

------
paulbjensen
In the documentary 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room', it mentioned that
the company had a "rank-and-yank" system, whereby annually everyone would rank
everyone else. Those ranked in the top 10% would be promoted, and those in the
bottom 10% would be let go. One guy commented "I don't know a successful
company that fires 10% of its employees every year".

------
pico303
Isn't this the system Microsoft is using that has created such huge problems
for the company? There was that Vanity Fair article recently that talked about
what a mess the product teams are at Microsoft. It blamed the stack rankings
in part for creating a hostile environment where nothing could get done.
Nobody collaborates because they want to come out on top of those rankings,
and some even go so far as to sabotage their co-workers to stay atop the
rankings.

I seem to recall the article suggesting that the only place stack ranking ever
worked was GE.

Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.

------
at-fates-hands
Here's the deal. As an employee with boots on the ground, you're usually the
first to see this sort of stuff coming a hundred miles away. Why anybody would
put up with this BS is completely beyond me. If you can get a job at Yahoo,
I'm pretty sure you shouldn't have any problem getting another well paying
job.

I was in a pretty large corporation and they started doing this and a ton of
their top developers started leaving in droves. I'm talking 10 a week, and not
entry level guys. We're talking senior BA's, developers and engineers when it
was at its worst. They had a turn over rate in the 90% range. After 6 months
of not being able to do anything because they were in a constant training
mode, a bunch of directors and middle managers got axed and they took a
different approach. It takes a lot to move the needle, but when it does, it
will make a difference.

------
tonetheman
Meh stack ranking sucks. Bad move.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ran...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ranking_steve_ballmer_s_employee_evaluation_system_and_microsoft_s.html)

------
r00fus
So stacked ranking - why do companies not understand that the granularity
level can't be too low (i.e., teams of 5 or so)?

Or is it just the case that stacked ranking works in theory but doesn't scale
to real organizations (kind of like communism)?

------
pmarca
This discussions are always so outstanding. Has anyone ever actually seen a
large organization where more than 85% of the people are high achieving?

------
001sky
Kara Swisher: She's clearly in the monkey quadrant.

On the topic of the chart: why would you ever work for a place why 85% are
structually constrained to underperform or be average? If 100% of the
empolyees start out the 15% "Target Hires", in a single generatino they have
6/7 failure rate of performing to their potential? Makes no sense if you're
actually any good.

~~~
001sky
_“Because Marissa Said So”_

Glad to see HN dropped the pejoritive title

------
hvass
Can anyone explain how this differs from Microsoft's ranking system? I doubt
Marissa is not aware of that practice.

------
nickbauman
C'mon. Right or wrong, everyone knows the "no working from home" policy was a
way for Y! to do a mass layoff without having it look like one to the street.
This is merely an extension of the same policy. Mayer can afford to make a lot
of mistakes. It's not her dime after all. So she will make them.

------
absherwin
This suggests there's a major problem in the mid-level management that's
communicating the message. Telling a front-line manager to put someone in a
bucket to meet the quota results in bad feelings, poor decisions that lead to
loss of talent and bad publicity.

The alternative doesn't have to be abolishing stack ranking. The manager's
manager should instead ask for justification and help the manager raise
standards if they are too low. If not, he should repeat the same process with
his manager. The +-3% variance indicates that the executive team expected this
to happen. Since the feedback indicates that it's not happening in some (many)
cases, hopefully this has triggered top-down conversations on the right way to
implement.

------
notacoward
When it comes to employee ratings, absolute vs. relative is a red herring.
Both lead to adverse outcomes. With the more common absolute ratings, managers
have an incentive to rate everyone highly, so people who work for honest
managers get screwed. With relative ratings, the weakest members of the
strongest teams get screwed. Rating employees just doesn't work unless the
departments are also rated. If you know the relative strength of each
department then you can adjust the ratings of its members accordingly. There's
still a serious question of what you do with that information, but at least
then it won't be totally distorted by the differences between teams and
managers.

------
analog31
It would be interesting to look at companies with stack ranking and see if any
objective performance measure is a significantly better predictor of a layoff
than: 1) A random number generator; 2) the personality of your boss.

------
joshuaheard
It seems to me there are two problems with this system. One is that you are
grading on the curve so a "less good" but still good employee is getting
fired. The other is that the only person doing the evaluating is the
employee's manager.

I would propose a system where there is an absolute, not relative, scoring
method. Pick 10 criteria and score them with 1 - 10 points. Set a minimum
score for continued employment, say 70 points.

I would also crowd-source the reviews. Not just the manager, but peers and
people that report to the employee would all give a review. Then take the
average review score.

------
smegel
What difference does it make? If your committed to reducing an organisation by
X%, then a certain number of people are going to be fired. And it makes sense
they are the lowest performing percentile.

So maybe some people were rated as "misses" when they weren't, but they were
still the lowest ranked employee in their unit. Would this argument be mute if
they were ranked "least effective" instead?

~~~
e12e
> If your committed to reducing an organisation by X%, then a certain number
> of people are going to be fired. And it makes sense they are the lowest
> performing percentile.

It may make sense to reduce the number of employees. If you chose to do so,
it'd be great if you could keep your (relatively) "best" and fire your
"worst". The _problem_ is that it's really, really hard to _measure_ how good
your employees are. It's even hard to define what a "good" employee _is_.
Especially, perhaps, in a large company.

Take YUI, for instance. How much does someone working in localization of YUI
contribute to quarterly revenue? Is he or she more valuable than the person
responsible for selling ads? How about the community manager for the Traffic
Webserver? How much revenue does he or she contribute? Are the these roles
even comparable?

I wonder how things would look if they went by seniority, and simply fired the
last 10% to join (maybe with the exception of certain "specialists", like the
CEO... ).

~~~
smegel
> The problem is that it's really, really hard to measure how good your
> employees are. It's even hard to define what a "good" employee is.
> Especially, perhaps, in a large company.

At a company level that is absolutely correct. I think it supports the notion
of firing by team - if anyone can measure the worth of an employee, it is
their direct line manager, who is responsible for giving them work and judging
the timeliness and quality of the outcome. However, as this "measure" is
essentially incomparable between teams, it can't be effectively extrapolated
to form a company wide view of the "bottom 10%". Asking each manager to get
rid of their least effective employee both spreads the cuts evenly across
skill sets, while ensuring that the measure of employee worth is being made by
the most qualified person to do so.

> I wonder how things would look if they went by seniority, and simply fired
> the last 10% to join

Well, like firing by team, it is just another arbitrary measure. But I think I
would rather an arbitrary measure that at least tries to take into account
employee worth rather than when they joined.

~~~
allochthon
_while ensuring that the measure of employee worth is being made by the most
qualified person to do so._

This implicitly assumes that the line manager is competent and not spread too
thin.

------
davidrudder
Wouldn't this encourage cross-department collaboration? My logic goes like
this: Collaborating makes one succeed. But, you don't want your team to
succeed, because then you might be laid off. But, people on other teams aren't
in competition with you. So, if you collaborate with them, you can really kick
the ass of that jerk next to you that you used to be friends with.

I'm joking...mostly.

~~~
qdog
The other team will take the accolades for your work, your team will be mad at
you for mot pulling your weight.

------
bretd
I had put down this comment in reply to one of the thread's below...however
its better that i put it as a separate comment too..for a larger
audience...and in appreciation of true leaders..

management is one shit where the board's decision or the management's decision
is responsible for a company's failure..what these guys were doing when they
were hiring or buying companies...is employees responsible for the failures...

In any company's failure, the first one to blame is the management because
they failed and that's why a lay off has to be done..I had always felt that
layoff is an easy way for a CEO or the management to wash off their hands
rather than trying to solve the problem at hand..

A leader is someone who leads his team and makes other perform...

In management, I have found most people just licking the bosses above
them...and i hate these bunch...in such a management structure, one actually
creates a bunch of followers who are unfortunately called managers..

There are exceptions...and they are very few...and these are actual leaders
who have the power to turn things around..

------
727374
For now, all the yahoo services I use stink as much as they always have. It
will take years for these sweeping cultural changes to pay off, if the do.
Definitely a heroic effort on Mayer's part, considering the shelf life of
Yahoo CEOs is so low.

------
EGreg
This is silly in my opinion. If she wanted to prune the comoany to make room
for more (acqui-)hires do it in stages. First let the managers feel like they
can more easily fire the most underperforming people. Donmt force them to do
so.

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dinkumthinkum
I mean at this point Yahoo is an anachronism, they might as well go all the
way with it. Perhaps this will accelerate the inevitable and we can all just
be done with it.

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sakopov
Am I the only one wondering why Yahoo! is still around? I struggle to even
comprehend what the hell they even do today after jumping out of the search
engine race.

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gesman
Every "good" girl secretly fantasy to have a dominatrix whip in her hands.

"Welcome to the real world!" \--Morpheous

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SurfScore
If you want to make an omelette, you've gotta break some eggs.

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hacker789
_> I feel so uncomfortable because in order to meet the bell curve, I have to
tell the employee that they missed when I truly don’t believe it to be the
case. [...] More often than I’d like I’m told we are executing a certain way
‘because Marissa said so.’_

If you have an underproductive department with overprotective management,
layoffs (and negative performance reviews) won't happen as frequently as they
should.

Maybe members of management just want to protect their respective fiefdoms.
Maybe they have their empathy makes it difficult to lay people off. Maybe they
genuinely believe their teams are doing well. _Maybe their teams actually are
doing well_ , and exceptionally few layoffs (if any) need to happen.

Regardless, "because Marissa said so" is a perfectly valid answer. There will
be collateral damage, but it's likely that she's dealing with some extremely
protective, entrenched management who won't negatively review anyone on their
teams unless they're forced to.

~~~
bcoates
If you've got an underproductive department with overprotective management,
I've got a suggestion for where you could trim some fat.

I have difficulty comprehending the logic that trusts someone to monitor,
assess, and organize a team's work, but doesn't trust them to take
responsibility for the performance of the whole team and micromanages their
staffing from above.

~~~
hacker789
_> I have difficulty comprehending the logic that trusts someone to monitor,
assess, and organize a team's work, but doesn't trust them to take
responsibility for the performance of the whole team and micromanages their
staffing from above._

I hear you.

I imagine Mayer would like to fire those overprotective members of management,
but I can't imagine how she could know exactly who they are at this point.
This review processes should hopefully help shine a light on some of them.

