#ranking

Huge problem with project assigned employees who are not part of the GP family. GP used them to fill the bottom of the rank group. HR has seen data and does nothing to stop it. Avoid project assignments at all costs if you value your ranking.

More evidence of how corrupt the system is. Supervisors begging those out in NSI to take the PIP because they are needed and the company doesn’t want them to quit. Supervisors promising before PIP even starts that it will be passed. Clear evidence there were no issues to begin with and that the low ranking was just evidence of how broken the assessment system is.

You get moved often, and when you do you will run into a crazy i secure manager who just thrives on power and is absolutely incompetent. they ill see your rise and out of envy tank your ranking — this was not possible or allowed in previous ranking system. an important check to not let people move too much at the whim of a crazy manager. why is this even allowed? is our HR crazy? the amount of talent we lose actively and passively because of this is not worth whatever this process is going for. please do the right thing, do the human thing — EM managers are not trained or capable of running fair talent management processes, protect the employees.

On an earlier thread several asked for a repost of content paraphrased below:

For a career at the company, your performance vector has to be a net positive for 20 or 30 years. You can go up and down a bit around the middle bucket and be ok as long as you work hard and are diligent and a team player.

But if you drop and stay in lowest two buckets for more than two - four assessment cycles you should be concerned over perceptions of the perceived baggage you now carry as a perceived low relative performer longer term, as the unconscious bias of your rankers is very difficult to overcome.

With that backdrop, after the 2020 8-10 % MLRP program followed by 4q20 15 % voluntary and involuntary; there is net exodus of roughly 23 - 25 percent of your peer / ranking group on gross average in many instances.

So... what this now means to you is...In 5 months from now in May 2021 there is probably to be rationally expected between another 3-10 % MLRP program on top of this reduction in 2020.

So the end result in June of 2021 is roughly 26 - 35 % of your peers in your current rank group are no longer present after next rank cycle in 2021. Probably most of them that will have left the company populating the “ni” and “good” designated lower two quintiles.

So after May 2021 the ranking system and the math both requires any remaining ”Goods” to become “NI” or “NSI” and many “very goods” have to either become “Goods” and “NI” to make the math work on the forced rankings with quintile buckets still required.

Then fast forward and replay this into May 2022 - assume no layoffs but anything between a 3-10% MLRP process consistent with what happened this year.

If you think you are “very good” now you truly really are , but in the relative world of next rank cycles, on a relative ranking basis the “very goods” must have to mostly now become mostly “NI” and a some “goods” in just less than 18 months from now.

Math and forced rankings are hard to overcome the actual reality of how the game evolves for anyone ranked less than 50% because the usual 5–7-year progression of falling to lower quintile and outcome is now accelerated in the last year by the 23-25 % real reduction that occurred this year and another 3-10% that would potentially be exposed to MLRP and PIP in May 2021.

It is brutal system when expressed mathematically.

Best of luck with all future endeavors.

Any current “very goods” please really note , you are now at best “ni” or “good” in lowest two quintiles right now today as we step into next ranking cycle.

Don’t get mad at your bosses when they tell you this, just say you are smart and understand math. Don’t make them uncomfortable personally because they also know and disagree with the math, but they can’t say they disagree with the math.

It is what it is... no use being an a..hole when everyone knows math is math.

Have a financial plan already in play and always have other options in play. There is no long term loyalty so be the boss of your own destiny.

And you must unfortunately fully understand that when you drop into the bottom 25-30 percent there is really no recovery for you to have long-term career with the company.

It is sad to have to write this guidance. It was not like this 15 years ago.

Keep technical skills current and avoid going management track where most of your technical skills will become obsolete in 2-5 years.

Any layoffs in August/September?

Finally my RSUs are starting to vest and guess what. They tanked my ranking. This is the game they play. Force you out before your RSUs vest! How can I go from top to bottom so quickly? Convenient for them!

If you aren’t given the right role you will never get the ranking you want. What matters is visibility and perception not actual merit.

Past 5 rankings alternating between O & OWD. 5 different assignments in different org. Don’t have a sponsor, or at least idk how it works. Just happy go lucky.
Is there a thing as unsponsored?

So many people in their late 40-s like me were given poor rankings this year. Clear message they do not want us anymore and don’t want to pay pensions. They may get their wish.

What pay raise do I expect with Outstanding ranking this year? Does my Good ranking from last year matter?

CL27 | 47 y o.

I am starting to think they are just cycling all the non sponsored people through NI and NSI now. Is that the game they are playing?

If you are not sponsored the day is coming for you to be dropped in the rankings for no reason. You’ve been warned. When it happens it happens fast.

I received several formal recognition letters and awards from management and then somehow dropped all the way to NI a place I have never been even close to. Manager couldn’t explain any reasons why.

I’ll be getting RSUs this year for the first time. Are the RSUs based on a maximum dollar amount of your CL and ranking or is it a set number of shares no matter what the stock price is? I.e you get 20 shares at $100 and still 20 shares at $150 stock price.

What’s the projection on salary escalation by rank and CL increase for 27?

I’m in the MAC program. My manager told me people can be ranked anywhere from NSI to O even in MAC, but my teammate said that in the first year (MAC) people are automatically ranked “Good.” Which one is actually true?

I’m starting to see a lot more BTC expats in my building….nothing against them, but will they at least be ranked for performance against US local team members?

Do execs have similar ranking process as the rest of us?

If so, do they have similar levels of MLRP?

Just curious. Has everyone heard this every year since they started? Why do they even say it? Where are the not em very competitive rank groups?

There's a wave 2 WFR aligned for October. There is also a McKinsey run project ongoing ...And employee F26 ratings have been moved up to July. What's OpenText up to?

The overall theme of why Capital One’s performance system is criticized as "worse" than General Electric's (GE), or what other stack-ranking companies do, boils down to a core concept: The We-ponization of Bureaucracy. [1, 2]
While older models were brutally transparent, modern iterations—like the twice-yearly PIP system reported at Capital One—subject employees to a continuous state of institutional gaslighting. [2, 3]
The primary factors driving this theme include:
## 1. The Trap of "Performative Improvement"

• The Old Way (GE): Jack Welch's model was harsh, but it was direct. If you fell into the bottom 10%, you were told you were at the bottom of the curve and immediately let go. It was an agonizing but quick corporate severing. [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
• The Modern Shift (Capital One): Rather than a clean termination, employees are funneled through a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). Because these PIPs are often driven by forced quotas rather than individual capabilities, employees describe being placed on a months-long simulation of "improvement". They are forced to work exhausting hours trying to clear unachievable hurdles, which serves primarily to build a bulletproof paper trail for the legal department rather than help the worker. [2, 9]

## 2. Double the Frequency, Double the Trauma

• The Grinder: Most historic stack-ranking systems occurred once a year. Doing this twice a year means employees spend roughly four to five months out of every twelve writing self-evaluations, self-promoting, and playing politics just to avoid the bottom tier. [1, 4, 10]
• No Time to Recover: By the time a mid-year or end-year cycle finishes, the next cycle begins immediately. This prevents teams from ever establishing long-term trust, psychological safety, or collaborative momentum. [11, 12, 13, 14, 15]

## 3. High-Performing Teams "Sacrificed" to Math

• In a rigid stack-ranking framework, individual excellence does not protect you. Employees on exceptionally high-performing teams are still forced into the bottom 10–15% category ("Below Strong") purely because the mathematical curve dictates a quota. Managers are forced to amplify microscopic flaws into major performance issues to justify why a perfectly competent engineer or analyst is being marked for termination. [2, 4, 9]

## 4. Severe Institutional Outdating

• What makes this particularly striking to industry onlookers is that the rest of the corporate world evolved. Major pioneers of the system—like Microsoft, Adobe, and even GE itself—publicly abandoned stack ranking after proving it destroyed innovation, fostered a "brilliant je-k" culture, and cratered employee retention. Operating a highly aggressive version of this system in the modern era is widely viewed as a regressive step backward into toxic workplace culture. [2, 16, 17, 18]

[1] https://www.aihr.com
[2] https://www.glassdoor.com
[3] https://www.glassdoor.co.in
[4] https://www.youtube.com
[5] https://clearcompany.com
[6] https://www.businessmanagementdaily.com
[7] https://www.chegg.com
[8] https://www.officernd.com
[9] https://news.bloomberglaw.com
[10] https://hbr.org
[11] https://www.reddit.com
[12] https://www.attendancebot.com
[13] https://www.culturemonkey.io
[14] https://www.businessinsider.com
[15] https://taggd.in
[16] https://lattice.com
[17] https://teamgps.com
[18] https://www.perdoo.com

How do I get a Sponsor? I just transferred to another team and I do not know any of the Supervisors like the others on the team do. I need a sponsor obviously to be able to get a ranking that will allow me to keep my job, so how do I go about getting a good sponsor?

So did everyone get the message that forced ranking will apply, meaning if you’re in a team of stellar performers, someone will still end up in one the bad categories. Way to motivate the workforce! Of course this is all to get those who are bottom ranked to either quit in frustration or be PIPed out. What a cluster this company has become.

Some groups have traditionally received a special distribution so they can rank more people highly. This has been ended and the groups that used to have it are not going to be happy with this year’s results.

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how 500 leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

AT&T ranks #375 overall with an Overall Score of 44.2, making it a clear laggard in the table. The headline surprise is that AT&T has a strong AI Rank of #33, close to Verizon’s #26 and well above many industrial and financial firms. Innovation is also not terrible at #181, which suggests the table does not see AT&T as technologically irrelevant.

The issue is that AT&T fails to convert AI readiness into broad future-readiness. It ranks #390 in Talent Readiness, #352 in Resilience, and #465 in Agility, which overwhelms the positive AI signal. The Goldman-style read is that AT&T looks like a company with technological investment capacity but legacy operating drag. The data suggests it may understand the AI transition, but the corporate system does not yet look adaptive enough to benefit fully from it.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Oracle ranks #91 overall with an Overall Score of 57.7, just below the Software & Services industry average of 58.1. Its standout attribute is extraordinary: Innovation Rank #7, one of the best scores in the entire dataset. Talent is respectable at #106, but the rest of the profile is less convincing.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The surprising weakness is AI Rank #262, especially given Oracle’s public positioning around cloud infrastructure, data, and enterprise software. Financial Fitness is also weak at #327, while Agility is only #230. The table appears to reward Oracle for durable innovation capacity, but not for being a fully balanced future-readiness leader. The analyst implication is that Oracle has strategic assets, but the ranking does not view the company as operating with the breadth of Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, or ServiceNow.

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Verizon ranks #149 overall with an Overall Score of 54.5, which places it above the median but not in the leadership tier. Its strongest dimensions are AI Rank #26 and Resilience Rank #48, a combination that says the company is being credited for technology readiness and durability. In the telecom group, Verizon sits 2nd out of 3 listed companies, behind T-Mobile but well ahead of AT&T.

The problem is operating speed. Verizon’s Agility Rank is #447, one of the weakest in the dataset, and Innovation is only #250. The strategic read is that Verizon screens as a resilient, AI-aware incumbent, but not as a company that is structurally fast-moving. That matters because telecom is moving toward network automation, edge compute, enterprise connectivity, and AI-enabled service models, where organizational velocity will increasingly separate winners from regulated-utility-like carriers.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

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 ?

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KPMG LLP - 2,675
UT Southwestern Medical Center - 1,379
Dallas Independent School District - 1,290
AT&T Services Inc - 1,204
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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.