#ranking

I’m still pretty new to this whole process. My first year was MAC, and in my second year my manager told me, a couple of people in ranking room talked for me, so I was moved one level up in the ranking(VG to E). I was confused because I always thought your own manager is supposed to be your biggest advocate in that room. This year I have a new manager, and I honestly don’t know how it will go. How does the ranking process actually work? Do some managers walk into the room already planning to put someone on a PIP, or do they usually fight not to have anyone from their team placed on one?

The sole purpose of D&S is to ensure that Hipos rather than the most qualified candidate is selected for the best roles. Ranking follows role meaning that your ranking is highly dependent on your role being visible and valued by management. The cycle perpetuates.

Literally can’t sleep at night. I joined XOM last March and didnt have the MAC one, so it’s my first ranking experience. From what I’m seeing in posts here and hearing in the office, people seem surprised by being PIPed and say the outcomes are predetermined. Is that actually how it works? Do most people experience the same thing?

People are really on edge lately about the ranking/layoffs.
Employees look at each other as competitors as we walk around campus.
People feel compelled to speak up in meetings to state the obvious in an effort to show their knowledge.
It is really awkward.

What other stupid observations have you seen?

When are the ranking sessions? When are all ranking sessions completed?

It’s a dirty game. They rank their own favorites at the top, then use those inflated rankings to hand them spotlight roles, visible projects, keynote slots, everything. And because those opportunities are handed to them on a silver platter, they get ranked high again. It’s a sick cycle. I wish some one tells new hires its not about your work its the way they choose to see your work

One of the classic excuses for a low assessment at ExxonMobil is not being mobile. They talk a good game about caring but then if you aren’t willing to move and change jobs every couple of years they will say your potential is limited and drop your ranking. Of course it is okay for people to spend their entire career in Houston but forget it if you are a Pioneer employee wanting to stay in Midland.

In our department, there’s this section head no one knows what he actually does. He hasn’t done technical work for years and spends most of his time walking around the kitchen area on the fifth floor(S2), chatting with people, flirting with women from different departments. I’ve heard they are never ranked lower than “average/good” by default, regardless of how useless they are.

My ranking has fluctuated wildly. It makes no sense.

Ready for another round?

Over 300 people have already left since the September 29 announcement, projects are scarce, meaningful work even scarcer and the long-term outlook for Canada couldn’t be clearer. Naturally, this seems like the perfect moment to proceed with the ranking cycle.

For those unfamiliar with the tradition: everyone gets ranked against colleagues worldwide, the curve must be filled and a pre-determined slice of the population will inevitably land in the “Needs Significant Improvement” category because nothing says modern leadership like deciding in advance how many underperformers you need.

From there the process is beautifully efficient: a helpful Performance Improvement Plan, a quiet exit and the reassurance that this isn’t a layoff just the system working exactly as designed.

Given the current morale and the steady stream of departures, the timing is almost poetic. If anything, the exercise should help clarify priorities for the few remaining optimists.

After all, when the future of the business in Canada looks this bright, someone will surely be eager to relocate to Edmonton and help keep the Strathcona refinery dream alive.

Anyone bothered to watch the training? Any material changes to the ranking system?

For old timers forced ranking used to be done in November and then the paperwork/PR would follow in either December or January. Just curious when are the ratings finalized now? We got our ratings this week, but the question is when were they finalized behind the scenes / negotiated who get what rating ?

🚨 H-1B APPROVALS BY COMPANY IN DFW🚨
KPMG LLP - 2,675
UT Southwestern Medical Center - 1,379
Dallas Independent School District - 1,290
AT&T Services Inc - 1,204
Texas Instruments Incorporated - 1,040
AECOM Technical Services Inc - 682
Southwest Airlines Co - 473
….
Telecom giant AT&T Services Inc ranked fourth with 1,204 approvals. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, AT&T secured a $146 million federal contract from the Department of Homeland Security and continued expanding its foreign workforce while conducting domestic layoffs.

I am several months into a new role that I knew from day 1 was not a real job. I was due for a move and they clearly didn’t want to waste one of the few visible jobs on me so this is what I was given. Anyone been in a similar situation? Feels inevitable that my ranking and potential will be dropping. Anything I can do about it? Advice? I am just planning to find a new job in my own outside of EM. Just the push I needed as I am in my early 40ies and quickly approaching the age where moves become more difficult due to age discrimination.

Like the song by Calvin Harris ft. Ne-Yo - "Let's Go"

Please see these 4 posts and quotes from other threads.

From the Washington Post (April 2, 2023): “Feel free to spill the beans, ex-employees. Your former boss can’t stop you.”
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgea4gzm

From the NLRB (Feb 21, 23): "Board Rules that Employers May Not Offer Severance Agreements Requiring Employees to Broadly Waive Labor Law Rights
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeacnt5

From the NLRB about "Concerted Activity"
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeakdsm

From the NLRB about "Social media"
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeb10b8

Quotes:

March 6, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jnq61rxs
"Unethical conduct needs to be exposed
BNY is force ranking long tenured employees with PM or BE and depriving them from the Severance, it so disgraceful towards people who have given so much to the company none of the past reviews matter. We should report this in social media if we do in number that will speak for itself…. When we don’t have NDA what are we loosing?"

June 9, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jwysz9hk
"time for managers to take a stand. Bullsh-t that good employees now being called underperformers to not pay severance. UNETECHAL.

COMPANY NEEDS TO PAY OR GET CALLED OUT"

June 11, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jwysz9hk
"Until we band together as a large group nothing is going to change. And I don't see enough people with a backbone willing to to this. Too many sheeple afraid of losing their jobs. Well most of us are probably going to lose them anyway so might as well fight for it instead of lay down."

June 27, 205
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jygkgb3m
"We need to get together and start a forum to keep in step with their plan of “reduce staff with minimal expense” (don’t pay severance)
Power in numbers .
Could someone set it up ?Or should I ? Is there interest???"

September 3, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k47t0dan
"This place is toxic

They’re trying to break us so we leave and they dont have to pay severance. We have all experienced it or witnessed the behaviors. , U.S staff treated like 2nd class citizens, wrongful terminations, intentional forced ratings etc. The list goes on and on. Its not going to stop until we all come together and try to do something. We need to report them to your states EEOC . Get An investigation going."

September 25, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k60fr4h8
"Contact your local senate office for the district you live in. Bring as much light to this as you can because if he has his way all americans will be out of a job soon. All he cares about is India and now Manchester his homeland."

October 17, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k7rjbb40
"mgmt does push back and literally gets told its not optional by upper mgmt. if lower level dont make changes which we havent, upper does it regardless. Everyone needs to report the company or it wont stop. We all have local leaders and each state has EEOC plus put it on record with ethics. Mgmt knows there are forced rankings can testify too the bullsh-t as well. Stay silent this sh-t continues while we get let go and india makes out taking our jobs"

December 4, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kbjgv9en
"We need to band together as mgrs on this sh-t. Screenshot any emails or teams messages that show these are forced as proof"

December 6, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kbk9pt5n
"absolutely and every single person here should contact the media to raise enough eyebrows about the topic. They have an email for topic suggestions
cwc-news@interactive.wsj.com. Make sure the subject mentions BNY financial institutions firing US employees and falsifying performance ratings to help do so. We have to get media attention"

December 17, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kcq1468q
"You can turn it in to your states EEOC. As a mgr i can 💯 confirm they forced ratings and changed them after we entered them to hit their reduction %. People have challenged this and the attempt to not give severance and noted on this site they have won. Others noted journalists or lawyers looking into this and wanting details. Check out the “fight them” post"

Hey XOM people. We’ll be adopting your forced ranking system this year, PIPs for 0.7s etc. So many rumors here and nothing from management when we ask so I thought I’d go to the source. Is the distribution by team regardless of size or does the distribution go up to a GM or VP level? We have PIPs already but they’re used for disciplinary purposes. I’ve only met one person on a PIP. They were let go but it was pretty egregious. Now we’re going to use them as an “improvement tool” or something.

Can anyone comment on how ranking panels go. Would like to improve next year.

How do they plan to control for managers that survive on looking busy rather than been productive and will use the forced ranking to get rid of top performers who naturally tend to eliminate busy work within their teams and also control for managers that will play favoritism with their buddies that they don’t see as competition.

Our place stack ranks for reviews and it's terrible for morale. What about in office hours? When you rto do they mandate hours? 8 min? What about activity and keystroke reports? The salary is comparable but rto five days is a red flag. I can't ask the recruiter some of these things but they matter for quality of life.

Management keeps saying how they cannot get any Americans to work in the Permian but then those who want to work in then Permian are told their career is limited and ranked poorly for not being mobile. WTF?

Ever wonder why your management says such nice things to you about your future with the company and potential but then ranks you poorly? It is because they need you to stay and be the one to take the low ranking!

Got my fkn 2 and tons of BS from my manager. Post your result if you want

Timo was the only company that I know that put using a system as a metric. Like the new T-life system, employees are expected to use T-life with every customers upgrades. There was an instant recently, where ann Employee went to a store to do an update and the store wouldn’t allowed them to upgrade because T-life was malfunctioning lol. When is T-Mobile going to learn that they can’t throw metrics on the ranker to coach the front line? They need to invest in leader leadership development for performance management. Using something should be a compliance base not a behavior. These people are id--ts when they come to people leadership. They coached their people through constantly changing the comp and ranker to get the results they won’t versus investing in their Frontline leadership to performance managed the right way. Through consistent feedback and coaching. The coaching system is a joke at T-Mobile. With other companies is mandatory to show your work and how you are investing in your team there’s not a system like that at T-Mobile. There’s not even much a time in attendance policy! lol. They leave gray areas in the system and in policy so that the employees can exploit these gray areas and if the exploit get excessive they terminate the employee for not doing it the right way lol…that is devil sh-t right there. True fake it to you make it leadership model.

IBM at #8.

The press release:
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/12/09/3202657/0/en/The-Drucker-Institute-at-Claremont-Graduate-University-Releases-Its-2025-Ranking-of-America-s-Best-Managed-Companies.html

The announcement:
https://www.cgu.edu/news/2025/12/drucker-institute-2025-management-rankings/

The list:
https://drucker.institute/annual-data/annual-ranking-data-2025/

Root Causes:

1. Forced ranking
2. PIP % goals to reduce headcount
3. Sponsorship and false high ranking of sponsored id--ts
4. Continued degradation of employee treatment and reduced benefits
5. PIPing competent 50+ HC10 employees to replace with low cost/low quality 3rd world cheap labor
6. All productive work only happens so can put on PDS to avoid PIP

Results:

1. Loyalty approaching zero
2. Pride in EM already zero
3. Employees treat each other like competitors hoping to avoid the PIP
4. Teamwork only occurs if employees think their contributions will look good on PDS
5. Supervisors and coworkers constantly and falsely claim successes of others on their PDS
6. Most employees advise college graduates not to interview with EM
7. Sponsored id--ts given easiest assignments for very short durations, and transferred at the slightest indication their stupidity will be traceable to them. Leads to dangerous false confidence, zero skills attained, and inflated arrogance.

Bumping it up so it’s not lost in replies. This deserves its own thread. OP: @cq+1kcsvj34s

If I accepted a role in June, going from wage (union) to mpt, will I be ranked the first year?

Stack rankings combined with trying to be more like Amazon has hurt the work environment. You end up focusing more on how you can present the impact of your work during performance management instead of true collaboration and creativity. They are pretty bad they do not care about employees they talk a good talk but it’s all bs loyalty comes from treating people not like slaves

I love how leadership claims forced stack ranking isn’t happening. It is. 100%. India is not part of it. So if your team has 15 US and 5 India the rankings are only for the 15 US. That means one or two of you will get less than meets even if you do meet the job. And even if the Indian team is far worse. We got it in writing which is only because our manager is new and didn’t realize she shouldn’t email that kind of thing. Keep the paper trail coming! Document everything people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

##The new Comdex ranking scores are out and Mutual of America Life scored a 57 and ranked 185 out of 222. Below Mutual of America, was Nassau Life and Genworth and a few others##

https://myannuitystore.com/comdex-score/

Tax management is ruthless. The income tax group used to be where a new hire can enter into the company and advance. Then they migrated work to BA. Then they brought over people from BA for jobs limiting opportunities for US employees. Those brought in from BA then become managers and protected their own in rankings. All the new hires brought in have quit or been PIPd.

Think about that. This BA Management klan ran off all their new hires. They are either terrible at identifying talent, terrible at developing people, or clearly bias in their assessment as the only people that remain are their friends.

It’s happening all over. Look at the announcements and the amount of jobs coming to the US. They aren’t developing US employees, they are developing GBC as a priority and will follow the same pattern of protecting their own. The manager that brought over the person from GBC won’t admit their mistake so they are protected and become managers eventually. They need to show GBC that opportunities really exist to get out of India or Argentina or Brazil.

If you are US employee you are at a huge disadvantage. This company doesn’t want you and doesn’t care about you. When you’re working late covering your incompetent management, remember that. Log off and go enjoy your life. Don’t worry about getting a low ranking for choosing not to work late, you were going to get a low ranking anyways. And if you weren’t, the salary increment isn’t worth it and the future career opportunities aren’t there.

I have a hard time to believe that.

We are #1 layoff-er today:

https://x.com/TheLayoff/status/1989030202857714022?s=20

Its an open secret now that there is a quota for performance ratings this year, similar to last. no 5s are allowed at all and there is a minimum number of 2s per team that must be allocated or senior leadership will draw names from a hat.

My question - Do any people leaders know if offshore team member's 2s count towards this quota? Our team is 18 offshore and 4 onshore. Would we be forced to lose another onshore person?

We used to have 9 onshore team members before this madness. any more onshore layoffs would mean we are on call and doing releases at night once every 3 weeks, which is insane. :( All the offshore folks are also at a university student level skill-wise, despite senior level titles, so they dont help with anything.

What does it look like, what metrics, and are managers given guidelines on HOW to order their direct reports?

someone eli 5... how did Fiserv win so many awards until last year and fall this hard so fast?

How's everyone's sessions been going? Getting forced to give at least 5% lowers? Gonna be a fun message to deliver to whoever gets short end of stick even if you have a team of high performers, who probably are doing more after the recent cuts.

It's obvious Shell is just trying to increase the attrition rate beyond what the proper re-orgs are already doing.

We made the top list today:

https://x.com/TheLayoff/status/1988002354655097205

Now that the ranking lists have been submitted to HR and Legal, is there clarity on when VPs, AVPs, and SDs will receive confirmation of the impacted employees? Or is it simply understood that those identified as low performers will be RIFed?

Are there any particular CL levels at which you are safe for life? Might give something to aspire to..