In defense of stack ranking, it does solve a very common problem -- managers who never fire people who deserve to be let go.
This ultimately rots an organization from the inside, as it leads to attrition of higher performers because they're forced to work with useless people.
You see this a lot in companies that rarely fire people, because managers optimize for accumulating direct report count (whether or not those direct reports are doing valuable work).
companies need to do much better about letting managers go. I get it, they are hard to find. and those that actually have any engineering management skill at all are even harder to find. and every time you hire a new one you're taking a risk that they'll be a absolutely terrible manager. a terrible manager can cause a huge swath of destruction.
but the answer can't be an army of useless middle managers diluting the impact of the people who actually do want to help the company and providing cover for people like them that are just phoning it it.
This ultimately rots an organization from the inside, as it leads to attrition of higher performers because they're forced to work with useless people.
You see this a lot in companies that rarely fire people, because managers optimize for accumulating direct report count (whether or not those direct reports are doing valuable work).