The Day Marissa Mayer's Honeymoon At Yahoo Ended
Throughout Mayer's first year at Yahoo, QPRs and complaints about the calibration system came up often at Friday FYIs. Even at the otherwise celebratory FYI just preceding Mayer's one-year anniversary, someone asked about the "demotivating" nature of the program. Then, in October 2013, Mayer agreed to let employees ask questions anonymously. Finally given the chance to vent without fear of repercussions, employees submitted hundreds of angry questions. One question got 1,531 votes from employees, making it the first one Mayer read. I was forced to give an employee an occasionally misses, [and] was very uncomfortable with it. Now I have to have a discussion about it when I have my QPR meetings. I feel so uncomfortable because in order to meet the bell curve, I have to tell the employee that they missed when I truly don't believe it to be the case. I understand we want to weed out mis-hires/people not meeting their goals, but this practice is concerning. I don't want to lose the person mentally. How do we justify? Eight more questions had more than a thousand votes.
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"Could you please address why managers are forced to have an average rating for their team? If everyone on the team exceeds expectations, the manager is not allowed to rate each member as such."
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"The salary of many of current Yahoos (joined before Marissa joined as CEO) needs to be normalized with that of new/returning Yahoos. I'm a manager and was asked to give a salary which is at least 20-30 percent high[er] than that of what other employees in my team with similar experience are making, so approval goes through hiring & executive committee. When I asked if there is a way I can increase [the] salary of my current employees, there was no proper answer from management or HR. Can this be addressed?"
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"[Is it] true that we will cut 20 percent of the work force in a silent layoff based on QPR results?"
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"Based on my experience, I don't feel like the process was done correctly nor was I treated fairly. My former manager did not provide feedback or guidance, other than to say that higher-ups decided the numbers and he had no input. Considering how important these ratings are, can we have a legitimate appeals process?"
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"During the QPR process, is it true that the manager of each team has to bucket their team members into 1 of the ratings; below expectations, meets, and exceeds? There has to be a person at each level? Is it also true that if the individual receives below expectations 3-4 quarters in a row that they will be terminated? Is Yahoo using a practice of eliminating the weakest link? But what if the 'weakest' are only scored that way because managers are forced to put them there?"
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"More often than I'd like, I'm told we are executing a certain way 'because Marissa said so.' This explanation leaves out valuable context. There was probably a good reason for the decision, but that's absent from this pat answer. Can we ban the practice of "because [executive] said so" and encourage people to explain why a specific choice was made when relaying those decisions to others?"
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"The latest round of layoffs affected those with "misses expectations" on their QPR. I lost a colleague in this last round of layoffs who had all "meets" from their most current QPR; they got the axe because of PRIOR misses on their QPR. Is this a message we really mean to send? That improving ultimately doesn't matter because you might get sent to the guillotine anyways, because of previous performance? Is it true we force managers to assign some "misses"-thereby forcing layoffs periodically?"