Stack ranking existed at MSFT before Ballmer became CEO, i.e., when billg was CEO.
It was a practice that Jack Welch brought into the corporate world and Microsoft was just guilty of following what were thought to be best practices at the time.
Source: worked at Microsoft before Windows Mobile was a thing.
As an aside, Windows Phone was my favorite phone OS and Ballmer seemed like the one who actually cared about it a lot.
