Firing via evaluation at Yahoo

Apparently Yahoos are upset at getting rated low ‘unfairly’

http://allthingsd.com/20131108/because-marissa-said-so-yahoos-bristle-at-mayers-new-qpr-ranking-system-and-silent-layoffs/

I’m afraid that’s how ratings work. All ratings. You get ranked on “your performance” intermingled with the biases of the evaluators and the tests/work itself and the luck of the outside world/customers/markets.

Great people fail to make it at great places like McKinsey and Goldman.

But once these places are known for being demanding, elite, machines for people-quality… the winners and the losers both benefit.

Winners, well they won.

Losers, well they were somewhere truly elite, full of the best people; a fact that will attract more such people.

Today Yahoo isn’t such a place. Standards will make it better.

Seems you can’t complain about this system unless you have a better one, and every one I’ve ever seen is flawed in similar ways.

(I bought YHOO shares recently, after the Mail brouhaha — principled redesign of an aging product — and this gossip increases my conviction. Just like Reed Hastings and the stick-to-your-knitting move on Flixster increased my conviction back at $80/share.)