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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Athletics is an actual competition where the expectation is that "you win".

When you hire 12 baristas are they competing to make the most coffees or is their job to handle customer's orders? If their job isn't to compete with each other then don't stack rank them. Use other metrics like #of incorrect orders or w/e and decide what you think they should've done and if they did more than that give them a bonus. If they do less then maybe you need a new employee.

> Microsoft always suffered from rewarding egotists and political animals over people who did actual work.

That has nothing to do with grading on a curve. You can assign people to the top of a curve based on "egotist" criteria or based on "work". Nothing about a curve or stack ranking requires it to be based on "real work".

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> When you hire 12 baristas are they competing to make the most coffees or is their job to handle customer's orders?

Both? Handling customer orders is how the sport is played, but at the same time they are competing for the most points (money) in that gameplay.

So, all your baristas working a graveyard shift are going to be at the bottom of the stack ranking in terms of revenue/time. What do you now do?

What do you do in athletics? Do you tell the kids (graveyard shift) they aren't allowed to participate in sports anymore because they can't compete with the big leagues (peak hours)?

Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

> What do you do in athletics?

Why do you talk about athletics? Baristas are not athletes. Coffee shops are not the olympics. You are stretching this analogy beyond its usefullness.

> I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others? Thank you.

To address the meat of your comment. It sounds like you are proposing to grade the baristas working the bad shifts and the good shifts separately in different "leagues". The problem with that is that assumes that you are aware of all the factors which form the different leagues. If there are clear "night time" vs "daytime" barista groups that works. but if you just assign baristas as scheduling works out then you will realise that some people (randomly, and through no fault of their own) will be assigned to the slower shifts. Will you fire a perfectly good barista who is meeting the expectations of your establishment just because scheduling worked against them in that evaluation period? That is what stack ranking did in the case of microsoft.

> Why do you talk about athletics?

Because that's what the discussion is about...? Did you forget to read the thread?

> Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others?

If words shown on a computer screen are putting you down, it's time to go outside. You've lost your sense of reality.

> Because that's what the discussion is about...?

The thread seems to be about how one would manage baristas. It spawned off where lesuorac pointed out that baristas working for a coffe shop are different from athletes in that they are not competing with each other.

> Did you forget to read the thread?

> You've lost your sense of reality.

I guess that’s a no then. I hope you have a good day.

> The thread seems to be about how one would manage baristas.

What gives you that impression? It isn't not about baristas, but namely about a parallel between baristas and athletics. That was the context that was setup at the head of this particular thread branch, and we haven't change the subject (aside from that irrational attempt related to being "put down", whatever that was).

> I guess that’s a no then.

Correct. There is no logical place for pointless emotions here. Save it for human interactions.

> It isn't not about baristas, but namely about a parallel between baristas and athletics.

And what is the paralel? That is what i was asking and that is what you are dodging to answer. Why do you feel that the management of baristas can be usefully inspired by lessons from the management of athletes?

> Save it for human interactions.

Thank you for your candor. It is good to know that you don’t characterise our conversation as a human interaction. Puts it into perspective, and explains a lot.

I mean you do tell the kids they can't participate (in that league). There are woman playing ice hockey but none of them have survived an interview (professional try out with an NHL team and so they've all been told no.

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It's novel because it's not how its done.

It's a big part of the stack rank hate is that people just blindly rank everybody and then adjust compensation that way. Taking more granular detail into account just isn't done.

But also because you're hired to do a job. If you do the criteria of the job then you should get a satisfactory rating. Similar to test taking, if you demonstrate knowledge of the material then you should pass. If you got 99/100 questions right and everybody else got 100/100 then you shouldn't get an F despite you being the worse of the group.

> Taking more granular detail into account just isn't done.

Where'd you dream up that idea? I operate a restaurant, so I at least have first-hand experience in overseeing barista-like workers, and I don't know how you could possibly ignore such details?

I'm sure I'm not perfect at it. I'm certainly not accurately capturing the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa. But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times.

Perhaps we've gone so deep into the thread that you've forgotten how we got here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41983561

Perhaps with a statement like "But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times." then you understand why people don't like stack ranking because yes people do ignore blatantly obvious things.

Not forgotten, but not particularly relevant. The context we followed only inherited the athletics analogy and how it parallels with baristas.

Sometimes it is necessary to ignore the blatantly obvious. You can't meaningfully alter the ranking of a sports team because their star player was out with a broken leg. You have to accept the circumstances for what they are.

But I'm not sure that translates to something like shift times which are fundamental to the game.

That's great. If you regularly fire the barista who brings in the least amount of money then you will find that nobody sane will take the slower shifts.

Because how much money a barista brings in is mostly a factor of how busy the coffeeshop is. Which is largely a factor of what time the clock shows, and that's not something a barista will be able to influence. (baring circumstances where a barista is so incompetent that costumers walk out of the shop.)

Why the hell are your baristas competing? Why are you not just measuring whether or not they are acceptably good at their jobs? If they are superior, promote them. If they are acceptably OK, keep them. If they suck, fire them. You shouldn't have to arbitrarily put someone at the bottom of the curve; that's ridiculous.

> Why the hell are your baristas competing?

Because that's what is necessary in a market economy? If they don't put in effort to compete, the customer will find another team of baristas that will. It is not like it is hard to find another coffeeshop.

> you shouldn't have to arbitrarily put someone at the bottom of the curve

What is arbitrary about it? The reality is that more coffeeshops open than can actually be supported by coffee drinkers, so it is an economic necessity that some end up shuttering due to being at the "bottom of the curve".

You compete with your competitors, not with your fellow employees. That's some dog-eat-dog toxic crap.

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