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RE: Walden takes your money and gives you a mediocre education -
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Mar 17 2009, 9:18 PM EDT by
SteveGall |
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Thread started: May 12 2008, 2:27 PM EDT
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Walden instructors are not present in the classroom and basically the students run the classroom. The only thing the teachers do is give grades and they are very prejudice when giving grades. If you should happen to challenge any of them, they will find a way to fail you and they will not, under no circumstances, refund your money. They are nothing more than rip-off artists. If you want a quality online eduation go to Capella. In California the students who took and passed the State tests for a license to practice were from Capella. The students from Walden failed the test. You don't have to believe me just look under the California Board of Psychology website and go to school and students who took and passed the tests. Capella students had not problem with the tests and passed them with all the knowledge they had acquired, Walden students, on the other hand, couldn't even pass the basic tests. DON'T WASTE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY AT WALDEN.
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Last Reply:
RE: Walden takes your money and gives you a mediocre education -
By: SteveGall,
Mar 17 2009, 9:18 PM EDT
I graduated from West Valley college in Saratoga CA and I have attended other universities including San Jose State and University of California at Santa Barbara, so I can also speak from experience. In total, I found Walden challenging and fair. One must realize that providing online courses is something entirely new in higher education; Walden is making every effort to do a good job. Your education is what you choose to make it; learning is up to you. Walden fairly presents you with that opportunity, anyway I found it so.
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Anonymous |
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Another Bitter Ex-Microsoftee with an Opinion
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Human Resource Management
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Mar 6 2007, 9:17 PM EST by
Anonymous |
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Thread started: Mar 6 2007, 9:17 PM EST
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I'm a 10 yr MSFT veteran who spent 5 of those years in management. I got screwed plenty of times by the stack ranking system before I leaned how to manipulate it by playing the office politics game. I actually even achieved the coveted 4.5 review one year which meant I was #1 on my team but there were plenty of other years that I worked just as hard and had fantastic results but it "wasn't my turn".
After being promoted to management my opinion of the company continually declined as I was forced time and time again to lie to employees or provide weak excuses to fit them into the right spot in the stack rank. This is an incredibly flawed system and no matter how HR chooses to dress it, it won't change until there is a serious shake up among all levels of management.
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Anonymous |
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Data is questionable
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Human Resource Management
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Mar 2 2007, 4:10 PM EST by
Anonymous |
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Thread started: Mar 2 2007, 4:10 PM EST
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I'm an MS manager (have been for 7 years, and was a dev 5 years before that). I totally agree with Kevin on this. As compelling and enlightening as some of Mini's blogposts are, this article seemed really sloppy to me. You can't just cull comments from a blog (particularly one in which the comments are likely leaning toward coming from folks who've had the bad experiences or bad teams) and call that "research" -- it's not representative data. Reading this, I found myself wondering what teams these poor souls are (or were) on -- I have a very different experience with stank rankings both as a manager and as a recipient IC, and have never encountered any such blundering or cattiness. I'd add more, but Kevin already covered it well.
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Anonymous |
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Stack ranking = Discrimination at Microsoft
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Human Resource Management
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Mar 1 2007, 1:17 PM EST by
Anonymous |
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Thread started: Mar 1 2007, 1:17 PM EST
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As a 10+ yr employee, I found Steve Gall finding quite accurate except for the fact that he missed how stack ranking directly perpetuates discrimination. Even though MS has grown increasing diverse with minorities comprising nearly 40%, management has steadily remained about 90% male / Caucasian.
How can this happened in a supposedly enlightened company? Easy, managers stack rank employees weeks before they ever read a performace review. Lacking objective peformance data, managers instead rely on their gut instincts in this "lifeboat" exercise. Inevitably, the employees they throw overboard are the ones that are least like them. It should also be pointed out that there is NO training for stack ranking and HR even goes as far to disavow its existence. Couple this with the fact that managers are not required to receive civil rights or diversity training (less than 1% ever enroll in the HR course) and you have an environment that self perpetuates discrimination.
The disastrous effects of this management "in-breeding" are self evident: lack of innovation and competitiveness in a global marketplace, talented employees being purged from the company simply because of their race, age or gender, and legal consequences such as the $4B class action lawsuit in 2002 that was filed by African American employees. Although the company claims to have done away with stack ranking as part of an HR overhaul last year (including the firing of the prior VP), as an insider I can tell you that the practice is still alive and well, just more cleverly hidden. Its no wonder that other competitors are flying past Microsoft when their managers stubbornly cling to stack ranking and a 1950's like fear mentality towards diversity.
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Anonymous |
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Very true
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Human Resource Management
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Feb 27 2007, 6:20 AM EST by
Anonymous |
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Thread started: Feb 27 2007, 6:20 AM EST
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I am an ex-Microsoftie, and I left precisely because of the demoralizing effects of "stack ranking". I was working in a star-studded team, and clearly when you gather a bunch of superstars you don't want them competing with each other. Every member of my team deserved a 4.0 (compared to the bozos in some other teams). Having to give them 3.5s and 3.0s only motivated them to move to the bozo teams, or to greener pastures outside Microsoft where they don't do stack rankings.
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Anonymous |
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Poor scholarship
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Human Resource Management
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Dec 3 2006, 11:44 PM EST by
Anonymous |
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Thread started: Dec 3 2006, 11:44 PM EST
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This is Kevin Schofield, the one quoted in the article. The author show a very poor understanding of how stack ranking is intended to work, and has clearly not done his homework. He also quoted me out of context -- I was making the point that I found stack ranking to be a useful exercise for many purposes. The threads on mini-Microsoft make the point over and over again that there are groups that were applying it the wrong way: they used it as a shortcut to decided performance review scores, when it was never intended for that purpose. Stack ranking is a very useful diagnostic tool AFTER performance reviews are complete to point out when there are anomalies.
The tactics you cite are true in pretty much any organization; it's important to get noticed for good work that you're doing and to have a good relationship with colleagues and superiors. That is completely indepedent of whether an organization chooses to use stack rankings, and is certainly of equal importance in an organization that relies upon 360 reviews.
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