Editing Vitality curve (section)

==Former companies==
===Microsoft===
Since the 2000s, [[Microsoft]] used a stack ranking system similar to the vitality curve. Many Microsoft executives noted that company "superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings", and that ranking stifled innovation, as employees were more concerned about making sure that their peers or rival projects failed than of proposing new inventions, turning the company into a "collection of non-cooperating fiefdoms, unable to catch on to many technology trends".<ref name="auto">{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer|title=How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate America's Most Spectacular Decline|date=July 24, 2012|magazine=Vanity Fair}}</ref> The stack ranking system was relatively secretive for a long time at Microsoft; non-manager employees were supposed to pretend they did not know about it.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/08/microsoft_ceo_steve_ballmer_retires_a_firsthand_account_of_the_company_s.2.html |title=Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer retires: A firsthand account of the company's employee-ranking system |access-date=2014-09-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140906223735/http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/08/microsoft_ceo_steve_ballmer_retires_a_firsthand_account_of_the_company_s.2.html |archive-date=2014-09-06 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[Microsoft]] was involved in lawsuits regarding its forced ranking system as early as 2001. Detractors argued that the use of the system in small groups was inherently unfair and favored the employees who socialized more heavily over actual technical merit. At the time, Microsoft officially claimed through Deborah Willingham, Microsoft's senior vice president for human resources, that it had no such "stack rank" system.<ref name="abelson">{{cite news|last1=Abelson|first1=Reed|title=Companies Turn to Grades, And Employees Go to Court|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/business/companies-turn-to-grades-and-employees-go-to-court.html|access-date=14 February 2018|work=New York Times|date=19 March 2001}}</ref>

In 2006, [[Microsoft]] began to use a vitality curve, despite intense internal criticism.<ref>{{cite news
|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer
|title=Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant
|magazine=Vanity Fair
|date=July 3, 2012
|first=Kurt
|last=Eichenwald}}</ref> Posts on "the curve" by Who da'Punk, an [[anonymous blogger]] internal to the company, on his blog [[Mini-Microsoft]] became a hot topic of commentary by other presumed employees.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2005-09-25/online-extra-a-rendezvous-with-microsofts-deep-throat|title=Online Extra: A Rendezvous with Microsoft's Deep Throat|newspaper=Bloomberg.com|date=26 September 2005}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.networkworld.com/article/2222736/microsoft-has-become-everything-it--despised---insiders-tell-vanity-fair.html|title=Microsoft has become everything it 'despised,' insiders tell Vanity Fair|first=Andy|last=Patrizio|date=July 6, 2012|website=Network World}}</ref>

According to one source,<ref>{{cite book |title=Renegades of the Empire|author=Michael Drummond|date=1999|publisher=VISION|isbn=1-901250-42-3}}</ref> by 1996 Microsoft had already adopted a stack ranking system which led managers to deliberately retain subpar staff in order to keep their higher performers:
<blockquote>
Microsoft managers are generally supposed to allocate reviews according to the following ratios: 25 percent get 3.0 or lower; 40 percent get 3.5; and 35 percent get 4.0 or better. Employees with too many successive 3.0 reviews are given six months to find another position in the company or face termination. A manager who is top-heavy with valuable or talented people doesn't want to be forced to give them 3.0 reviews. So these managers kept a few extra slabs of deadwood around so as to save the higher reviews for the employees they want to keep.
</blockquote>

In a memo to all Microsoft employees dated April 21, 2011, chief executive [[Steve Ballmer]] announced the company would make the vitality curve model of performance evaluation explicit: "We are making this change so all employees see a clear, simple, and predictable link between their performance, their rating, and their compensation".<ref>[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2014835496_microsoft_employees_will_get_pay_raises.html "Microsoft increasing employees' pay"], ''Seattle Times'', April 21, 2011. Retrieved 2011-04-25</ref> The new model had 5 buckets, each of a predefined size (20%, 20%, 40%, 13%, and 7%), which management used to rank their reports. All compensation adjustments were predefined based on the bucket, and employees in the bottom bucket were ineligible to change positions since they would have the understanding that they might soon be yanked.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}

Following Ballmer's announced departure, on November 12, 2013, Microsoft's HR chief Lisa Brummel announced they were abandoning the practice.<ref>{{cite news|last=Ovide|first=Shira|title=Microsoft Abandons 'Stack Ranking' of Employees|url= https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303460004579193951987616572| access-date=13 November 2013|work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |date= 12 November 2013}}</ref><ref name="bits2013">{{cite news|last=Wingfield|first=Nick|title= Microsoft Abolishes Employee Evaluation System|url= http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/microsoft-abolishes-employee-evaluation-system/?_r=0|access-date=13 November 2013|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=13 November 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-does-away-with-stack-ranking/|title=Microsoft does away with stack ranking|first=Mary Jo|last=Foley|website=ZDNet}}</ref>

The practice at Microsoft became a topic of significant media attention following [[Kurt Eichenwald]]'s 2012 ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'' article called "Microsoft’s Lost Decade".<ref name="auto"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134719/microsoft-windows-office-loyalty-lost-decade|title=Microsoft's loyalty to Windows and Office blamed for a 'lost' decade, says Vanity Fair|first=Tom|last=Warren|date=July 3, 2012|website=The Verge}}</ref><ref name="abcnews.go.com"/><ref name="slate.com">{{Cite web|url=https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/stack-ranking-steve-ballmer-s-employee-evaluation-system-and-microsoft-s-decline.html|title=The Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft's Decline|first=Will|last=Oremus|date=August 23, 2013|website=Slate Magazine}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcmag.com/archive/attacking-stack-ranking-299902|title=Attacking Stack Ranking|website=PCMAG}}</ref> According to a subsequent article by Nick Wingfield in ''The New York Times'' Bits blog, "While that story overstated the harmful effects of stack ranking in the view of many Microsoft employees, it clearly represented the views of many others...The negative publicity around Microsoft's old employee review system reverberated loudly around the company, according to people who work there...The executive who spoke [to Wingfield] on condition of anonymity recalled Ms. Brummel saying: "I hope I never have to read another article about our review system ever again."<ref name="bits2013"/>

===General Electric===
General Electric, by far, was the most famous company to use the form of corporate management. However, since Welch's departure from the company, less emphasis has been placed on eliminating the bottom 10%, with more emphasis placed on team-building.<ref>Betsy Morris, [https://money.cnn.com/2006/07/10/magazines/fortune/rule5.fortune/index.htm "New rule: Hire passionate people. Old rule: Rank your players; go with the A's"], 11 July 2006 ''CNN Money''</ref> During Welch's leadership, the system was dubbed "rank and yank".<ref name="slate.com"/> ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported in 2015 that the company dropped the evaluation method.<ref>{{cite web |first1=Jodi |last1=Kantor |first2=David |last2=Streitfeld |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html |title=Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace |work=The New York Times |date=August 15, 2015 |access-date=August 19, 2015}}</ref>

===Other companies===
Companies that previously used the system but have abandoned it include [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] (2001),<ref name="ford">{{cite news|author1=Norihiko Shirouzu|title=Ford Stops Using Letter Rankings To Rate White-Collar Employees|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB994804781223744805|access-date=14 February 2018|work=Wall Street Journal|date=11 July 2001}}</ref> [[Adobe Systems]] (2012),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=534355695 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130808065113/http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=534355695 |archive-date=2013-08-08 |title=Human Resource Executive Online {{!}} Rethinking the Review}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/11/29/adobes-stock-up-68-since-it-dumped-stack-ranking-will-microsofts-follow/|title=Adobe's Stock Up 68% Since It Dumped Stack Ranking, Will Microsoft's Follow?|first=Peter|last=Cohan|website=Forbes}}</ref> [[Medtronic]], [[Kelly Services]], [[New York Life Insurance Company|New York Life]], [[Juniper Networks]],<ref name="marcus"/> [[Accenture]] (2016),<ref name=move/> [[Goldman Sachs]] (2016) and [[Gap Inc.]]<ref name="gell">{{cite news|last1= Gellman|first1 =Lindsay |title= Goldman Sachs to Stop Rating Employees With Numbers|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-dumps-employee-ranking-system-1464272443 |access-date=14 February 2018|work=Wall Street Journal|date=26 May 2016}}</ref>