PIPs and STACK RANKING?! What Is Microsoft Doing?!

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Hey folks, I'm just headed to CrossFit here on Friday morning. I'm going to go to the comments for a question. I think it's a good one. Uh it's relevant for me, I guess, and uh folks that are reading the news and all sorts of stuff and we'll talk about that. So, this is from the comments. I just wanted to get the person's name before I actually got onto the road here. So, let me do that and then switch my map over. Uh this is from Anthony Sim 563 and uh essentially they were asking for some of my perspective on the PIP and stack ranking culture that's at Microsoft because they've been uh reading a lot about it, the upcoming changes in the news. So I figured we'd talk about that. Uh, so thank you Anthony for submitting this.

Um, before I get into my answer on it, just a reminder for folks if you want questions answered on software engineering or career topics, um, just add them below in the comments of the video or you can send them into Devleer on social media. That's my main YouTube channel as well. Has more uh, edited down, polished videos, tutorials for programming, resume reviews, and a podcast. On top of all that, all sorts of things for software engineers and a live stream every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific. So, if you like Code Commute, which is what you're watching right now, if you enjoy it, uh, and you like the topics, then check out the live stream on Dev Leader Mondays at 7:00 p.m. Pacific because it's the same type of thing, but I use the chat and we go back and forth and have a, you know, people can have questions there.

I'll engage the audience and stuff. So, it's I'm The difference is that I don't have a chat pulled up and stream this live while I'm driving. That would be pretty ridiculous. Um, okay. So, the first thing I want to address is like um when we see this kind of thing happen in like the news and stuff um almost always there's some level of like either misunderstanding, misrepresentation, uh whatever else, right? Like to be 100% transparent, I have been at Microsoft for just under 5 years now. There has never been stack ranking involved in anything I do at all. I don't know if there was stack ranking once upon a time at Microsoft. It's been around for 50 years. I am sure it's a fair statement to say at some point there has been stack ranking. I'm sure that's a fair statement. I don't even know if it's true, but what I can tell you with certainty is that for 5 years or just under now, I have never been asked to stack rank anyone.

Uh I've never been in people conversations within my organization where there was stack ranking involved. So, not a not a thing. It's not been communicated to me in terms of an upcoming change. Um, but I if I read between the lines on like what's um being communicated in terms of like the news and the press and stuff, I I think I know where this is coming from. Um, but I I wanted to kind of talk about this a little bit before getting into some of the details because this is the kind of thing that's like super dangerous. Um, and so I'm not like a I hope Anthony, the person that asked this question, pardon me. Um, and like a burp hiccup kind of thing. Um, I hope they understand. I'm not like directing this at them.

I do think it's a really good question, but um I think it's a good example of how um we can see us a bunch of stuff get, you know, perpetuated and posted in the news and then because it's being discussed in the news, different news outlets posting it, it starts to like make it look like it's a fact because different sources are talking about it. But what we need to realize is like all of these, you know, news outlets, whatever is publishing this stuff, it doesn't to them, it doesn't matter if the information is actually accurate, which sounds kind of weird, right? It doesn't actually matter. What actually matters is that they're a business and they make probably a majority of their money from ad revenue online. And how do they get ad revenue? that they need to get you to click.

And they get you to click when they have titles and topics that are like, "Ooh, that sounds pretty messed up or that sounds scary or that sounds intriguing or you know, some emotion is evoked in you, right? They want your curiosity." I've talked about this in other videos I've made and it's literally the same way that like YouTube videos work, right? Um, I don't do it on either of my channel channels really. Like, you know, you need a good thumbnail that's going to like that's why you see all the stupid faces where people are like and it's like the most amazed like surprise face and then the video is like how to, you know, how to write a for loop in C and it's someone like freaking out like I can't believe this is happening. And it's like it's it's dumb, but people click that stuff.

That's it. People do it because it works. The same thing with the titles, right? They essentially need to be like clickbait. Essentially, they're as close to clickbait as possible, but the difference is that you need to be able to deliver on that title somewhere in the video. Otherwise, then people just realize, okay, you clickbait, and then it starts to like erode the trust. But if it's clickbait, close enough to clickbait where people are like, oh I wonder what that's all about. And then they go, oh, I see what they were getting at. Like, I'm already here. I'll watch it. Um, but the point is that news outlets or whoever's publishing articles and stuff on these topics, even creators, right, just to get the engagement on their post, they it doesn't matter if the information is accurate because they're getting what they need out of it.

If they if they're like, "Oh, it comes out that's not the right information." Like, they can backpedal and be like, "Oh, well, this site said it or that was from the source I had." and like sorry like you know no no harm no foul we just keep moving on but what's happening is that it's painting the incorrect picture right so if there's stuff out there right now if there's articles saying like Microsoft is now doing stack ranking um it's kind of like what I've I and I don't know I don't I've never worked at Amazon but I have heard at Amazon it's like they they call the bottom x% of employees every you round of performance reviews. So to do that, you would literally need to stack rank. Like that's not it's not been communicated and it has not been the case for me for just under 5 years.

Like that's it's just I'm just telling you my lived reality, right? Um but I think the like another example of this is like when we see especially with things like AI news and you'll have uh either executives or someone who's you know the face of a company in some capacity um they might make a statement like some are outright saying like AI is absolutely replacing coders in like 2 months like see you here, but some are like, and I I did this for Mark Zuckerberg's Joe Rogan interview. Um, I did like three videos on this channel about that topic. And I like when I watched that interview, I did not get the impression that Mark Zuckerberg said, "We're building AI to replace software engineers." Like I actually interpreted what he was saying was to like to help enhance what software engineers can do. Later in the interview he's like is that going to potentially result in some some job changes job loss.

He's like, "Sure, potentially, but like the the intention is not like in his interview the that he's saying the intention is not we're going to go make AI so that we can fire all the engineers." And some of the statements that he makes that I think people misinterpret at least from my perspective is that he's making a claim that in X number of months the code that AI writes will be at the level of you know X engineer and that there uh what was the other like I don't know if it's a stat but he was saying like most code in code bases will be written by AI. I like if you think about that statement that sounds like therefore there must be little to no real programmers and just AI. But I think what that actually means is that a disproportionate amount of code like more code is being created by AI.

You could that that could be a factual statement if you kept the exact same number of software engineers and you just use enough AI agents to go write more volume of code. That statement could still be factual, but instead what people do is go, "Nope, that's what he said. He said they're firing everyone. We don't need any software engineers. It's the end of the world." and then that gets perpetuated and then other people keep posting it and here we are. So I think that this stuff just is too easy to get misrepresented. So I think it's really good when someone's able to ask about this kind of stuff. Now what I'm not able to do is I can't like verbatim share like any um you know internal conversations about how performance reviews and stuff are done like that. But I am telling you that it's not stack ranking or if it is stack ranking, it is yet to be uh you know messaged to us uh just for what it's worth.

It's it's just not a topic that's come up. Okay. On I want to talk about PIPS as well. If you're not sure what a PIP is, a PIP, it's a performance improvement plan. Um, generally in I'm not sure if this applies to other industries as well probably, but in software engineering when people hear PIP, what they automatically assume Oh, buddy, buddy, buddy. I got to pass this guy. There's a guy in the car pooling lane who is just like veering into my lane. I give him a little toot and he moved back but um watching it in slow motion like please open your eyes. I know it's early. Um performance improvement plans when people hear this the automatic assumption the automatic assumption is that if someone is on a performance improvement plan therefore they must be getting exited from the company. It is a it's a deceiving way to try and, you know, fire an employee and all that you're doing is documenting firing them, but the goal is to fire the employee.

And like the the problem with this statement is like that might be statistically how people use that in industry. Statistically, that might be the case. I literally don't have data to prove that. I actually assume that that's the case because how else would people arrive at that conclusion if it wasn't statistically more likely. Um, but you know, happy if someone has data on that, happy to to hear about it. But I have literally used performance improvement plans in my career. I've been an engineering manager for just under 13 years. It's like 12 years and I don't know like 10 months kind of thing. I have literally used performance improvement plans and helped turn people's performance around because the goal of the tooling is to be able to document so that people can make progress. That's the goal of it. Now, you might argue that like no, the goal is to document to exit someone and it's just uh you know masquerading as something else.

And like that's why I'm I'm sitting here going I can't tell you how every manager is using the tools at their disposal. So for the person um for Anthony that was asking this question, right? Like uh PIP culture at Microsoft and stuff um again I've not heard there's not like we're introducing a PIP now. um that is like specifically designed just to go fire people or something like that if there like since I've been at Microsoft as a manager if there are people that are underperforming right so we have what's called a connect at Microsoft um in my organization we do connects twice a year they're basically a uh mandatory level setting conversation between you and your manager. Generally, the employee writes their connect in a way that's almost like a resume, right? Like, here's all the awesome stuff I'm doing, the impact I'm delivering, like your accomplishments, and here's some things I'm focused on improving, and here's what's coming up for me.

I think it's a really cool tool. Um, I realize that people don't like writing this kind of stuff because they feel like it's paperwork, but, um, it's a really good way to document your accomplishments. It's helpful for me if you're transitioning managers. It's helpful because now you have a literal written record that you and your previous manager have agreed on. So that's awesome. Um, but on a connect you can have your like a manager can indicate to an employee that they're not meeting expectations. Okay. So this has been a thing as long as I've been at Microsoft. So, you know, for roughly 5 years, and I'm sure before, um, so if someone's not meeting expectations, well, what do you do? Well, you have to go navigate that as a manager. So, like, you would probably, I think if you were a good manager, you would be trying to do something like a pip.

And probably someone's freaking out hearing that going like, "Oh, what you mean? you're going to try to just fire them because they're not performing well. Like, no. Literally, try to come up with the plan to improve their performance. Have the conversation with them. Talk about what things need to be improved. Come up with some type of plan and work with them to improve it because the nice thing is roughly 6 months from that point in time, there's also going to be another connect. It's another good checkpoint. So if people are improving, it's another awesome spot to be able to document and say, "Hey, look, this person was not meeting expectations. Look at all the awesome stuff they were doing to turn that around. Boom. We can document it. Awesome. Move forward." Right? And if they're not, then they will also have on their their next connect that they're not doing well.

Now, the only commun, this is why I was saying I think I know where this is coming from. The only communication that I've had at all regarding any of this has just been a reminder that like if you have people that are like continuously not meeting expectations. Basically, as managers, you need to be looking into that more carefully because if you have for like a full year that someone is basically like completely missing the mark, they're like, are you you're you're the manager trying to work with this person on this stuff. Like, what's going on? That's the only communication I've had. And I think that is absolutely fair. I don't think that's that shouldn't be anything new to anyone. Right? If you had someone that was underperforming for a full year straight, if you were able to say, "Hey, look, it's just taken that long and they're absolutely turning things around at this point." Great.

Like that could be a great success story. Unfortunately, it took so long. But if after a year you're still like, ah, like no, they're not. They're missing the mark. And it's like, okay, well, are are you focusing the right amount of attention for helping this person? Are you doing that and they're not turning around? Like, we probably need to have a conversation about that. If you have underperforming employees for a sustained period of time, this should not be a Microsoft specific thing. This is just like managing employees. So, I'm wondering if there was some combination of this information where it's like, hey, there's been conversations about this plus layer on any other type of data, whether maybe that's just like what else is going on in the industry and someone's misconstrued this a bit. Maybe there's a huge communication I haven't even heard of yet. I can't rule that out.

But in terms of anything I've heard, you got it now. So, I hope that helps. I think that's a great question. Um, but yeah, that's I'm just being transparent. I'll see you next time.