We are talking about ranking people against each other, not judging performance as a whole.
Performance measuring can be done a million ways w/o literally having managers make lists like they are making a "Top 10 albums of 2022" article.
I don't see a problem with ranking employees against each other. For example you won't find a sales team at any company where this isn't the case. It can often lead to high performing teams if done in the right way.
1. There’s ways of upholding accountability outside of ranking people like sports teams. You can have better incentives and rewards for doing well which doesn’t put employees against each other, especially when you are expecting them to out perform the last quarter in perpetuity. Sooner or later growth will stagnate.
2. Every generation has had a or multiple recessions. Correlation =\= causation.
Employees are always up against each other whether they like it or not. Some workplace systems make it more transparent than others. If people want to kid themselves into thinking they aren't being judged against their peers by management then by all means people can be as delusional as they want to be but it's not even close to being the truth.
For the rest, see above.
Shitty middle management processes is not what produces good games
No, but a bit of healthy workplace competition never hurt anyone either. But apparently competition is now seen as a dirty word in society, all the way down to schooling systems. The world's gone soft.
They're forcing 5% of the employees to be bottom ranked even if their work indicates a higher one, if they hire people or some gets promoted, it means others will be thrown into the bottom because of their formula.
I actually don't advocate for systems as rigid as stack ranking systems as most companies implement it in a way whereby the bell curve is too steep (the reason for that is often financial but that's a different discussion entirely). But if you're a manager and that's the system that's been put in place by executives then it's something you've got to account for, or like in the person's case being discussed here, leave and seek employment elsewhere.
That's not to say stack ranking systems can't work, they absolutely can but you need to ensure the right profile of people are being employed (those who are willing to take utmost accountability for their work and performance) and create a culture that softens the harsh competition element up a bit (smaller scale milestone team based rewards on a weekly/monthly basis).
These things aren't black and white.
