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Stack Ranking

For the past year I have read Michael O. Church‘s blog about his Google experience with stack ranking: the employee performance management program that Silicon Valley firms have adapted from Jack Welch (GE), Andy Grove (Intel), and venture capitalist John Doerr.

 

Business Insider has just published an excerpt from Nicholas Carlson’s new book on Yahoo’s stack ranking experience under current chief executive officer Marissa Mayer. Carlson’s reportage includes in-fighting teams, stifled innovation, and performance review politics. It echoes Kurt Eichenwald’s indictment of stack ranking at Steve Ballmer era Microsoft.

 

This year, I will be revisiting the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile), Alan Fish (Knowledge Automation), and others, as I continue to see stack ranking being applied in many different organisations.

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Worth Reading

Robert Fripp‘s soundscapes for Microsoft’s Vista and Worldwide Telescope software.

Stephen Kinsella‘s Economics for Business lectures.

Carl Jung’s Red Book and The New York Times coverage of the behind-the-scenes battle to get the memoirs published.

Joshua Gans take note: how inventors are using auction theory to protect their patents, via firms including Pluritas, Intellectual Ventures, Allied Security Trust and Rational Patent Exchange.

Christopher Hitchens and The New York Times obituaries of neoconservative ‘godfather’ Irving Kristol.

Foreign affairs maven Robert D. Kaplan on the Al Jazeera network.

Australian Treasury press release and consultation discussion paper on R&D tax incentives.

The merger battle between University of Melbourne and Melbourne Business School.