When did Microsoft start "stack ranking" employees?

Factual Questions
1

My impression is that Microsoft adopted the widely-loathed “stack ranking” employee-evaluation system in the late 1990s-early 2000s.

Does anyone know exactly when?

2

What is stack ranking?

3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

4

From the above

5

This is interesting, now I know the name for this practice. It sounds like what <another large software corporation> does.

6

Thanks for link, jz78817.

I read a number of articles but none specified *when *MSFT started stack-ranking. My impression was that it started earlier than 2006; apparently not.

If anyone’s interested–good articles re MSFT and stack ranking: