The two things could be completely unrelated. We have zero evidence that this policy has any impact, positive or negative. Seems odd to frame the two as related.

Counterpoint - MSFT had stack ranking for years and stagnated until they ended the policy in 2013, followed by Nadella becoming CEO in 2014 and it’s hard to argue that MSFT hasn’t seen an incredible revival. One could draw a series of similar comparisons, from stack ranking had zero impact on the company performance, to stack ranking being the barrier to MSFT success, all the way to the removal of stack ranking actually CAUSED Nadella to be appointed CEO. We have just as much evidence for any of those possibilities.

What has Microsoft innovated? As far as I can tell, they turned into a cloud provider after AWS paved the way and wrung out some extra revenue by turning Office into a subscription.

So the whole innovation amounts to simply being a cloud provider?

I think a lot of people overestimate the importance of AWS. It's both funny and sad to see people think they need AWS for the most basic compute tasks that are easier and cheaper to accomplish without AWS.

There's actually many blogs and distributed services that use zero AWS, and have higher availability than AWS, and which don't have to provide a status update telling their customers that "even Netflix is down", passing the buck. When Netflix is down, my site's up, so that's a really bad excuse however you look at it.

I am using the dictionary definition of innovate.

>To begin or introduce (something new) for the first time.

>To begin or introduce something new.

>To introduce novelties or changes; -- sometimes with in or on.

I believe that qualifies AWS as an innovation, the context being comparing Amazon's innovative-ness to Microsoft's innovative-ness since they ended stack ranking.

> The two things could be completely unrelated

Yes. Could be unrelated, could be related. We can't run a clinical quality controlled experiment to make that determination.

My initial point was that Amazon has produced stunning innovation while maintaining this HR policy. So at the very least, it doesn't appear to have held the company back in a meaningful way.

Much of the framing of stack ranking in these comments is that it is deeply inhumane. Over time, this type of framing undermines our conception of what actually inhumanity looks like. For reference, China's treatment of the Uyghurs is inhumane. Malaysia's treatment of the Rohingya is inhumane.

This claim is a laughable, being made by wealthy, coddled people who are complaining about a company's approach to accountability. But here's the thing, if someone can get a job at Amazon, they can get a job at just about any company. Particularly in tech, which has seen an imbalance of labor supply and demand for going on 30 years. So I say again, if you don't like stack ranking, don't work at Amazon.

This is just whataboutism.

Yes, for any sort of maltreatment, you can identify somebody else engaging in worse. Precisely because of this fact, identifying somebody else worse tells you exactly nothing.

So your premise is that everything “the most innovative, productive company in the world” does is absolutely perfect and can’t have a single shortcoming?

I mean surely questioning current ways of working is how you stay innovative and respond to a changing world? it feels odd to imply they have reached peak innovation and should just stay the same.

Are you insinuating that there's some sort of cap on innovation?

Yes. For instance, natural resources, financial & human resources, time, and physical reality come to mind.

So if we consider every single (known) possible permutation of "ways to do something" do you really think that amazon is anywhere near the possible cap? I have my doubts, and this is even thinking we won't figure out some new way to bend physics to our will