Thoughts?
1 Like
Fire Blizzard and let Tencentās MMORPG replace them?
Itās a scummy system used by many big tech companies besides Activision.
3 Likes
Itās been discussed in several threads now, but basically the idea is this:
You have limited budget, managerial positions, and resources to train staff. So there needs to be systems in place to determine who you want to keep and spend resources on. Any appraisal system is going to be doing this, so even if a company does away with stack rating, and adopt something else, it will happen. You can look up the 9-box as well. It allows more room to analyze and assess people, but itās still some form of rating.
In my experience, appraisal systems are fanfare. Thereās separate meetings entirely to run through a list of identified people and decide these things. E.g. āok this person has potential to be a senior manager in 5 years, we will engage them in more projects and overseas opportunities.ā Everyone else not identified are just average, and the people that the company wants to weed out will be ignored or put on a PIP.
The real issue is the company culture that HR policies reflect. Reward and performance structure influences how people work, hire, manage, and interact with each other.
It can create unnecessary conflict and competition within teams because people are aware of the rating system and feel the need to sabotage teammates. It can lower morale if you start to observe that people who work less, but are more favored end up with a higher rating anyway.
Itās a system that leaves a lot of room for error and in some cases even discrimination. It can cause significant talent drain as well if managers start to feel threatened and want to maintain their power and position. E.g. good employees are coerced into leaving.
However, in certain cases, it may work. It depends a lot on what type of organization you want to build, and the type of industry youāre in. But in general, more nuance is needed for more complex organizations.
But the most important factor here is that itās a good indicator of a poor quality HR department because they are not staying up to date with strategic management techniques. This has more serious consequences simply because it shows that their HR is not thinking about how things are actually affecting the employees.
4 Likes
This is the second thread on this in the last couple days.
Every company Iāve ever worked for has had a system like this.
OP, are you implying that there is something unusual about how BlizzAct does its performance ratings? Or is this just a case of someone whoās never had experience in this trying to stir things up over something they have no clue about?
itās one way to drive productivity up. Enron did it.
1 Like
Iām linking a video and asking for thoughts on the subject. Nothing - nothing lessā¦ I could link other videos talking about the topic if you like.
I canāt help but think of that TV series The Recruit whereby his colleagues are actively trying to undermine his performance to save their own skin.
Maybe a blessing in disguise for my line of work, but my employer cannot afford to let anyone go for āperformanceā issues unless they are risk issues such as breach of duty, care, privacy violation, theft, intent to harm, neglect, harassment, abuse, or not adhering to standard policies (being on time, being dressed appropriately, etc).
1 Like
I actually have a team of employees under me, and I recently fired one of them, because I had to kick someone out of the team as I simply didnāt have enough of a budget to keep them all on.
Wasnāt an easy thing to do, but I had to pick someone. Gave them two weeks notice though, as I played the situation fairly and professionally, but luckily they found another job in time. And that was part of the reason I ditched them actually, as I knew they had something else to fall back on, even if it wasnāt an easy thing to do, they actually did the most for me, which is why their feelings were deeply hurt, but I know I made the right decision and they are going to do well in their future career.
1 Like
My thoughts on the matter are such that they would almost definitely earn me a forum suspension. Because, you know, saying what you mean is Trolling.
This is probably a big part of why this game has suffered so much for so long.
Welcome to corporate America.
Your KPI is X. If you are higher or at X then you are fine. If you are well above X you are a high performer. If you are below X you are subject to discipline. If everyone is hitting above X then X wasnāt a good goal and will be increased for the next cycle. If everyone was below X then X should be lower. Not all systems are going to fire people for being lower than your peers. Who in their right mind would want to force 10% turnover when you have acceptable performers? Yeah lets risk the new people sucking worse. If you must lay someone off then pick the worst person or someone that is expendable. You still essentially rank your employees but you donāt punish them for hitting the goals you told them to hit. I AM KRUMTOILET!!!
You have to rate every employee, and yea, I guess that guy just wanted to say all his employees are the same (which they are not).
If more managers did a better job of rating their team members we wouldnāt have things like the mess yesterday. But sure, everybody does a great job. Promote ahead of peers.
Blizzard is not for gamers I guess.
This confirms it.
Yes. Weāve already beaten this topic to death in several long threads. Stack rating is often counter-productive and unfair to employees.
And, no, this is not ācorporate Americaā. Most companies, even most large corporations, do not employ stack rating. Many of those that did have dropped it, and many others have adopted variants allowing managers to spare employees unfairly low ratings, and grant deserving employees atypically high ratings. The impact of very low or high ratings can also vary widely from company to company in terms of both rewards and consequences. Low ratings in most systems are often treated as indicators for additional training or role reappraisal unless they are recurrent.
The articles Iāve read say Blizzard implemented stack rating in 2021.
Thoughts? Itās an Activision Blizzard system forced on Blizzard and they recently started pushing the demand for the quotas to be met.
The folks at Blizzard Entertainment hate the system, they donāt like the quotas and ignored them for years. When they cracked down, Brian refused to comply and Brian was sacked.
Somehow I doubt YongYea focused on that itās an Activision Blizzard policy.
On that note, I seen a snippet from one of the articles that it was used at Microsoft like 10 years ago then ditched, because it was causing problems. Which is kind of funny because the company that will likely become ABKās parent company found out it was a bad idea ages ago.
ABK is going in reverse. Introducing a system that breeds office politics into their company that is still trying to heal from having social issues in the work environment.
Iāve been thinking more about this issue, as I see both sides to it, as Iāve BEEN on both sides.
On the one hand I totally agree with what everyone is saying, that workplace politics like this can be really bad, makes people less engaged, less productive, more likely to quit, and so on.
At the same point though personally I think thereās a way to navigate workplace politics without necessarily selling your soul, as not all workplace politics is necessarily ābadā. Itās only bad when it becomes the sucking up, badmouthing, and rumor mongering, that kind of workplace politics I find a bit annoying, unless of course there are seriously lazy workers in the company that are dragging things down,
I know though if I was in the bottom 5%, and there would always be a bottom 5%, well that means I have a 95% chance of NOT being one of those people at the bottom. So if you end up being at the bottom 5%, thereās only one way that could happenā¦are you confrontational, do you have an attitude problem? Are you too lazy? If you end up at the bottom, the best thing you can do is use that constructive criticism as a tool on how you can do better and improve your performance.
But you know one of the biggest regrets is when I had to fire someone, as I felt bad about doing it, because it was true that were actually doing the most for me, but in the end, that was actually costing me the most money, plus feeling they were trying to suck up to me too much, making me feel like I had to give them more regular shifts then the others, got a bit much. It was really sad to let them go, they told me they were sorry they failed me, but I told them that itās not a failure, itās just a lesson.
So I am not actually against the idea of there being a bottom 5% as there will always be someone thatās doing something they could improve on, and you gotta ask yourselfā¦is competition in the workplace, necessarily a bad thing?
Think this through, the alternative is that if everyone gets a participation award, well that can encourage laziness, dependency and whatnot, thereās a time and place for participation awards, but I donāt think this is one of these,
The fact that is competition to do well, come up with creative and new ideas in my opinion, isnāt necessarily a bad thing, I actually LOVE the fact that we know exactly when in Dragonflight we are going to be getting new content etc, I think thatās a great thing, and I do believe even if I am not playing WoW as much as I should, I canāt deny that things have improved a bit since the BFA/Shadowlands era (as much as I hate to admit that given my love of Sylvanas 
)