Microsoft is killing off its controversial stack-ranking system today. While it could be viewed as an internal change that won’t affect consumers directly, it will have a broad effect on current and future Microsoft employees that may just shape the future of the company. For years Microsoft has used a technique, stack ranking, that effectively encourages workers to compete against each other rather than a collaborative Microsoft that CEO Steve Ballmer is trying to push ahead of his retirement.

Stack ranking is a process where each business unit's management team has to review employees' performance and rank a certain percentage of them as top performers, or as average or poorly performing. Former Microsoft employees have claimed it leads to colleagues competing with each other, especially when some employees in a group of individuals need to be given poor reviews to match the method. It’s a system that’s similar to Yahoo’s new alleged internal process of ranking employees.

Could this end a cannibalistic culture?

In a closer look at Microsoft’s turbulent history and mixed management decisions, Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald blamed a combination of Microsoft’s obsessive focus on Windows and Office and the company’s internal stack ranking-system for a "lost decade" and cannibalistic culture. Eichenwald interviewed a number of current and former Microsoft employees who all cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside the software giant.

According to an internal memo sent to Microsoft staff today, the process is being axed. Microsoft HR chief Lisa Brummel issued the memo, according to sources who spoke with The Verge. "This is a fundamentally new approach to performance and development designed to promote new levels of teamwork and agility for breakthrough business impact," says Brummel in the memo. Microsoft is planning to focus on teamwork and collaboration, alongside an emphasis on employee growth and development. Brummel says there will be “no more curve” so that managers will be free to allocate rewards to teams and individuals as they see fit. A lack of ratings should help there too. Ultimately, the changes could help attract talent to the software giant as it looks to move beyond its Windows roots. Here's the full memo from Brummel: