One step forward; two steps back. Stack ranking sucks for a very simple reason: you are not judging people on their own merits. But seriously - this has always baffled me.

My favorite line from  the Vanity Fair article is a quote from a  Microsoft engineer:

"One of the most valuable things I learned was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.”