It’s hard to believe that success is due to Stack Ranking. Many US companies have also moved away from it.
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There is a certain logic to it, and that is roughly how things should work—pay raises being determined by performance—but it sounds a bit stiff and forced. The fundamental problem is likely always how to evaluate an employee’s actual performance, at whatever level they may be, and how to prevent the evaluator from leaning too much on either personal bias or a single, highly objective metric that clever people then optimize at the expense of other work. Meanwhile, the best performers might not stand out that well because the metric is too one-sided and prone to manipulation.
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We used to have a system like that right here in Finland maybe 15 years ago. In practice, the manager had to rank team members into good and bad ones.
I was in a small 2-person team and we had a really tough year where we clearly exceeded our targets. The supervisor was ordered that one subordinate must be marked as good and the other as bad… The supervisor stated he wasn’t going to stick around for that kind of bullshit and resigned; I don’t know how things went from there…
I have nothing against evaluation, but a system that decides in advance how many succeeded and how many didn’t is fundamentally crap.
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Nonsense, stack ranking is no longer relevant today, and the current drivers of the US economy (Mag 7) have mostly abandoned it (well, maybe Amazon is swimming against the tide as usual, but at least I have a poor image of that outfit as an employer). Personally, I see the same risk as with bad OKRs: you get what you pay for, and this creates an incentive for employees to play office politics and bolster their own roles at the expense of others, which hardly serves the interests of most companies.
The problem is not firing poor employees (which is perfectly justified), but rather that employees are artificially forced into a predetermined distribution that may not reflect real productivity differences at all. If recruitment has been spot on and the company is doing well, there is no reason to fire anyone; instead, you should give promotions and bonuses to keep the successful staff happy.
I don’t know about Nokia’s case—perhaps the new CEO concluded that the place has too much bloated deadwood and wants to smoke them out over the next few years without actual redundancy negotiations, and thus create a new culture. Perhaps this works as a temporary tool.
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Isn’t it statistically a challenging model to apply a bell curve (forced ranking) to experts if the sample isn’t truly random but already pre-selected (at least they’ve tried to hire the best people for the right roles)?
I can’t really think of many positive things about that change. For me, at least, Nokia dropped off the list of potential employers.
Nokia holds statutory negotiations (YT) almost every year, so they can get rid of low performers anyway.
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Many US companies (Nasdaq ones) have also shifted to steadily laying people off once or twice a year, but no longer officially on a stack-ranking basis. I don’t know what the underlying process is – it could still be SR or then something more sophisticated(?).
On the scale of these companies, those numbers often don’t cross the news threshold.
Update: 2025 income approx. €46k
2026: forecasted income €52k, significant uncertainty included in the estimate
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How much have the forum members managed to negotiate in additional salary when moving from specialist roles to managerial roles (5-10 subordinates + team leadership responsibility)?
Currently, my gross salary with 10 years of experience in construction sector specialist roles in the public sector is €4,700 / month, and this year there is a potential opening for a manager role for a team of 6 (with a salary increase). Education: M.Sc. (Tech.).
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A grand.
And considering that in specialist roles, bonuses depend purely on your own contribution, the real difference is even smaller. After taxes, the net income is about the same. As a unit manager, I have over 10 direct reports, and over 50 in total. So the CV says thanks, but my health doesn’t. And I had to give up flexibility. I don’t recommend it.
Update to the thread: As a top-level specialist, the gross salary was over €7k; now it’s over €8k. This seems to be a sticking point above which it’s hard to climb in the Finnish IT sector unless you end up at a company like Supercell, become an entrepreneur, or patiently build a career toward the C-suite.
The salary is still high enough that there’s plenty of “fun money” left, and I can put several thousand a month into investments, so for now, I keep grinding while running away from burnout. I am, however, considering a significantly lower salary if a genuinely rewarding job were to come along.
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Often, the pay is quite in line with annual billing. Depending on the primary focus of management duties and billing targets, each organization surely finds a balance between the two. As an example, I have 15 direct reports and am expected to bill 120-150k per year in addition to my management work.
Well, that’s definitely not true. For example, in the public sector—let’s say Kela or the Tax Office (Verottaja) etc.—if you’re a supervisor for a team, there are definitely no billing or sales targets… and similarly, if you’re a team lead for a group of coders in an IT company, it’s the same deal. Sales are handled in completely different rooms, not in the open-plan office where supervisors sit with their subordinates these days.
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My area of responsibility’s revenue has grown from 5 million → 70 million and the number of teams from 1 → 15, while my base salary, adjusted for the cost-of-living index, has remained the same. On top of that, there have been bonuses of max 20% of annual income, 12% last year if I remember correctly.
So, it doesn’t automatically correlate with anything. Someone mentioned above how it looks good on a CV; I’ll second that. You also get good experience, but otherwise, I’m starting to be ready to look for an employer who is also willing to pay for that expertise instead of just giving promotions.
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I made a similar transition myself a few years ago. MSc in Computer Science, working in my field.
A difference of a thousand a month in base salary is a pretty good estimate, but in addition, a higher multiplier is applied to all bonuses, and in the end, the gap becomes maybe 2,500–3,000 euros per month depending on the year—before taxes, of course. Significantly less after taxes and contributions.
The number of technically interesting tasks decreases, replaced by organizational tasks that are occasionally a real slog (filling out a poorly designed Excel because someone tells you to, instead of thinking about, say, optimizing code for power consumption). The biggest problem is that you can no longer focus on anything for more than an hour, at least at the office. Work changes from long-term concentration into fragmented multitasking.
Right now, I’m in a greedy phase and have decided to endure those negative aspects, but the old role would definitely be mentally easier. By a lot.
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I’ve been reading through the thread. It’s been proven here many times how the multiplier effects of progressive taxation creep in everywhere.
At the New Year’s dinner table, I had to admit that many earned more than I do and that I might have what it takes myself. However, it would require trading my current ultra-secure and relatively easy job for the unknown.
If there were some magic trick to put my current gig on the back burner and go do something more ambitious for a few years, I’d probably give it a go.
Then, for example, I looked at a job advertisement for a position that would be a great fit for me, where the exact salary was listed. 300 EUR more gross per month, a slightly shorter commute. No point in switching. Even a thousand gross is so measly that I wouldn’t dare leave my current one.
I’ve experienced a minor burnout before—unsurprisingly in sales. It’s the ultimate discipline, but everything in its time. Maybe that’s exactly why my current role, where there are no sales or billing targets of any kind, feels childishly easy.
Sometimes I smile to myself at my colleagues if they think something is difficult or stressful. They should go try working for a listed company for a while; then they’d start to appreciate their current jobs in a completely different way.
Summa summarum, instead of / in addition to pushing your salary to the max, I think that in progressive-taxation Finland, it pays to think carefully about the actual content of the work.
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An update. I still work as a communications and marketing specialist at the same company as in 2022, when I was earning €4,200/month. Now, at the start of 2026, my salary is approximately €4,750/month (base salary €4,520 + phone and lunch as fringe benefits ~ €230). The salary has been increased by general raises and one moderate personal raise. Additionally, there is holiday pay and an annual bonus, which is usually about one month’s salary. So, annual earnings are on the better side of €60,000.
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You said you work in the public sector? Doesn’t the public sector have a salary scale and a pay grade for the position? Government agencies, the Finnish Defence Forces (PV), and municipalities usually/always have a salary system with pay grades in use.
When I switched to a managerial role about 8 years ago, I think I got a raise of over a thousand.
I agree with @kirkland’s experience that the work becomes multi-tasking crap and involves a lot of administrative nonsense. I’ve kept my mind sharp by doing specialist work every now and then or by coaching my own experts.
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Yes, there are salary tables, but HR has unfortunately made them as difficult to interpret as possible. And even my own manager is pretty much clueless about these salary matters.
I am now 28 years old, a Bachelor of Culture and Arts (UAS) by education, and I work in the Helsinki metropolitan area as a digital marketing specialist in a large Finnish company’s in-house team.
1/2023: €3,200/month
6/2023: €3,250/month (general increase)
2024: €3,410/month (general increase + personal raise)
2025: €3,550/month (general increase + personal raise)
2026: €4,150/month (change of job and role)
I will, of course, gladly accept salary increases in the future as well, but I am already very satisfied with my current salary, as I had personally thought I would only reach my current salary level with my education and in my field in a few years. My current cost of living is also quite reasonable, so at least for now, I don’t imagine future salary increases improving my quality of life significantly anymore.
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I changed jobs at the start of 2026 to a product house (IT sector). In the new job, the salary is €8,100/month; the work itself hasn’t significantly changed, but AI/LLM has certainly had an impact in my field.
I have been very satisfied with my salary for a long time; I primarily look at the overall package. I usually enjoy staying at the same workplace for longer periods.
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Working in IT sales. Approx. €7,800/mo. 36 years old. Some travel within Finland is required, but I can mostly work from a home office.
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