Every company I've ever worked for has used stack ranking for performance appraisals. Each company had their own method, but there was always a bell curve and you were fit into it somehow. Although I never saw anyone fired because of poor rankings, a poor ranking generally meant you should start looking for another job.
This article makes a good point that what might have worked for GE in a given time doesn't mean it will work for every other company. It's really hard to objectively measure performance if there are no metrics to be measured by. Sure, utilization is a useful metric, but so much of your utilization is out of your control: at a lower level, you can't totally control the projects you're staffed on and the work you're assigned. The last thing you want to do is create more unnecessary internal politicking in an organization, and ranking employees against each other promotes exactly that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/07/13/why-stack-ranking-worked-better-at-ge-than-microsoft/
This article makes a good point that what might have worked for GE in a given time doesn't mean it will work for every other company. It's really hard to objectively measure performance if there are no metrics to be measured by. Sure, utilization is a useful metric, but so much of your utilization is out of your control: at a lower level, you can't totally control the projects you're staffed on and the work you're assigned. The last thing you want to do is create more unnecessary internal politicking in an organization, and ranking employees against each other promotes exactly that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/07/13/why-stack-ranking-worked-better-at-ge-than-microsoft/
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