The infamous "Rank & Yank", a worker rating process that is being dropped by many big corporations but is still used at Amazon -- and the NNSA weapon labs, of course -- is detailed in the NYT article below. The article deals with the leadership vision and working conditions of white collar staff at Bezos' company. It's a long article but well worth reading:
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Each year, the internal competition culminates at an extended semi-open tournament called an Organization Level Review, where managers debate subordinates’ rankings, assigning and reassigning names to boxes in a matrix projected on the wall. In recent years, other large companies, including Microsoft, General Electric and Accenture Consulting, have dropped the practice — often called stack ranking, or “rank and yank” — in part because it can force managers to get rid of valuable talent just to meet quotas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html
2 comments:
The "rank and yank" rating system is hated by most of the employees at the weapon labs. Therefore, it is unlikely that lab executive management will ever get rid of it.
If the labs actually did fire the bottom 10% of employees every year (I highly doubt it), the quality would go up significantly at the labs. The problem is, you can't provide a "stick" to threaten employees when there is no "carrot". The only tool in management's toolbox is fear, since there are no financial rewards for staff.
Then again, if they paid at or above industry levels, they could hire only the best and wouldn't have to fire as often. But, lets face it, its not about quality--it's about the appearance of having no safety and security violations (tax payer efficiency and quality work be damned!).
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