Why did Yahoo adopt Microsoft's mean-spirited HR policy?

...the one Microsoft just ditched

Marissa Mayer
(Image credit: (Mario Tama/Getty Images))

Employees at Yahoo are starting to raise a ruckus over Marissa Mayer's "Quarterly Performance Review," a program that reportedly forces managers to rank their staff on a "modified bell curve," reports Kara Swisher at All Things D. On internal message boards, employees are complaining that the practice led to the recent firings of more than 600 workers.

If forced bell-curve reviews sound familiar, that's because Steve Ballmer at Microsoft famously employed a similar system called "stack ranking" that many have criticized as one of the root causes for the company's decade of sliding profits and shrinking market share. Coincidentally, on Tuesday morning, Microsoft announced an immediate end it its stack ranking program, and said it would start placing more "emphasis on teamwork and collaboration," as well as "employee growth and development."

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Carmel Lobello is the business editor at TheWeek.com. Previously, she was an editor at DeathandTaxesMag.com.