Google it of you don't know the story. Make a person a manager and tell them they have to stack rank people. Suddenly they feel totally justified making up problems and documenting made up deficiencies in case they need to cut you later. It creates an atmosphere where every interaction becomes an excuse to gaslight or present things using the worst interpretation possible. It's crazy how easily people can move from "we're all one team" to "I'm documenting this conversation to make it seem like you did something wrong". And of course the employee is also documenting everything in case they need to backstab their boss. The team goes from people who work together to people who collect dirt on each other and run to the hr. Don't you wish you could just spend your time focused on work instead of trying to sabotage other people so you don't get cut instead?
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Sometimes the baby is ugly
BE was mad that low performance people got severance so is forcing managers to IM people out. Across the board all teams have to lose someone by EOY. So mad because a person losing a job gets a cushion of a couple months pay while she gets $20 million for throwing around buzzwords and outsourcing jobs. The level that people hate her is crazy but justified.
Intel was the poster child for this practice and look at that dum p ster fire now.
@a5 okay BE that’s just what OP was saying. Thanks for stopping by.
@bx, Wrong—reviews happen everywhere -- not ranking. The abuse happens when they're subjective, undocumented, and warped by non-performance BS (RTO compliance, location bias, age/tenure favoritism, etc.) with zero real KPIs or scorecards. At WF, forced distributions + zero transparency turn it into a layoff prep tool, not growth. Not every org is this lazy about it. Microsoft ditched strict stack ranking back in 2013 after it ki-led innovation and turned teams into backstabbing contests—switched to actual feedback via 'Connects.' Adobe, Accenture, Deloitte, and others swapped annual rankings for ongoing coaching/check-ins, saw lower turnover and people actually engaging. Meanwhile, WF's big 'agile transformation' was supposed to bring exactly that kind of modern, collaborative mindset... yeah, how's that working out? Still hiring coaches with no real support, still 'Wagile' half-measures, still eating our own. Upskilling and networking remain the only reliable escape hatch
#wagile
"Every company ranks their employees."
Is patently false. Just look up the wave of backlash against performance reviews. Forcing your employees to justify their existence each year has been proven to be a fruitless task that does nothing but burn out management and employees with a pointless exercise in supplicating higher levels of management's need for feeling like their optimizing the organization.
Plenty of companies have abandoned pitting employees against each other, and seen net benefit from the change. Acting like this is the only game in town just shows you're stuck in the past.
@b0, Every company ranks their employees. That is what performance reviews are about. But what is the ranking? Is it based on an objective KPR. Is there a scorecard anywhere? No. So you deal with management, RTO, age and location factors which are ever changing. Confused? you bet. Main thing is to focus on being productive in the market to come. Upskill yourself and/or join groups to network.
@b0
"The whole org chart needs to be pancaked, eliminating 2-3 layers of executives and managing directors"
We tried that.
It was called spans and layers.
Then the JPm's and BNY's and the others came in and hired their buddies and loaded the orges up again.
Every company ranks their employees. Thats how it works. Every company also lays off 3-5% of their workforce every year. Thats also how it works.
WF is still too bloated.
The real issue with the layoffs is that the managing directors are not getting eliminated, even when they are a massive failure and overpromise and underdeliver technology. They have no incentive to manage themselves out of the job by improving things. The Executive level managers have zero idea what work is done three layers below them.
WF needs fewer people laid off for the sake of location. The whole org chart needs to be pancaked, eliminating 2-3 layers of executives and managing directors. MDs make 2-3 times what the worker bees make and are bordering on elderly. What is xboost? lmao.
that is what happened to me.
so tired of preserving evidence.
but those are very critical for your lawyer.
No one is reading that. Make a paragraph or two dummy