5 ms·

If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?

by novok 7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago
People who aren't critical to the core product, or whose projects aren't big revenue generators. They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable.
- balls187 7y ago
  > They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable. Why would you do that vs moving the high performers to the business critical projects?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Any number of reasons. They might be high performers in skill sets not needed in those business critical projects. You might be leery of the time needed to get up to speed on something completely different.
  - lostcolony 7y ago
    So you're saying software devs are just cogs that can be easily replaced?
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      Yes
      - lliamander 7y ago
        You can't just swap out members of a team, or add more members to a team, and expect the result to be faster execution (in short run) even if the new team members are high performers. In the first case, you're losing team members with tribal knowledge of the system and its requirements. In the second case, you're exponentially increasing the pathways of communication. In either case, you still have the ramp-up time for new team members.
    - balls187 7y ago
      No. I'm implying that rather than laying off top performers you find them a different role in your organization. Granted if the skill set is incredibly niche--such as hand optimizing HC12 assembly and you've moved to ARM then perhaps not. It's hard to imagine a scenario where an entire project teams skillset is so niche that they couldn't find a home for top developers in other parts of the org.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    Because they might not be high performers there? There is no such thing as an objective "high performer" in any area.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    Not necessarily a bad idea, but disrupting those business critical teams by just swapping out people could actually slow down execution and hurt revenue.
braythwayt 7y ago
If you could chose low performers, lay them off, and be more focused and higher productivity with the remaining people... _Why haven't you already done that?_ Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. The word gets around that you have low standards, and it's hard to recruit. The only way to get your money's worth from them is to put them in death marches and grind them down until they burn out and quit. I am always extremely suspicious of claims that a company is going to lay off its poor performers and magically be better. If they're telling the truth, they are actually saying that their existing managers are incompetent. There's a reason that all tech companies try to brag that they only hire the top performers.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  >If you could chose low performers, lay them off ... _Why haven't you already done that?_ There's a reason that all tech companies try to brag that they only hire the top performers. Performance of an engineer is relative to his environment. I was a top performer on some teams/projects and a low performer on others. Even if they ace your hiring process, you still can't know how they'll fit with the team long term.
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    Fine, but laying off people who don’t work out is an ongoing process in all companies. If people haven’t already been let go as a part of the company’s existing management review process, what changed suddenly that the company can suddenly lay off a bunch of people in one go and “improve?” Another way to think about it is that everyone has some productivity, some contribution to the company’s net progress. If someone’s contribution is negative, they should already have been let go. If their contribution is less than others, maybe “bottom 10%,” but it is still positive, you may be letting go a relatively poor performer in a round of layoffs, but you’re still shedding a person with a positive contribution. You are going to be worse off, no matter how you sugar-coat it.
- zachrose 7y ago
  > Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. If you define performance as change over time then this would seem to have nothing to do with mistakes. From what I've read about the space shuttle programmers, they would have been classified as low performance (low change over time) but who also made with very few mistakes (as I understand their process). At the other end you could have high performing programmers (lots of change) with high defects that they're always fixing (which could in turn qualify as still more change).
tim58 7y ago
I'd cut at the team or department level. I'd choose teams/departments based on KPIs and necessity.

If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?

by novok 7y ago

If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?

People who aren't critical to the core product, or whose projects aren't big revenue generators. They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable.

balls187 7y ago
> They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable. Why would you do that vs moving the high performers to the business critical projects?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Any number of reasons. They might be high performers in skill sets not needed in those business critical projects. You might be leery of the time needed to get up to speed on something completely different.
- lostcolony 7y ago
  So you're saying software devs are just cogs that can be easily replaced?
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    Yes
    - lliamander 7y ago
      You can't just swap out members of a team, or add more members to a team, and expect the result to be faster execution (in short run) even if the new team members are high performers. In the first case, you're losing team members with tribal knowledge of the system and its requirements. In the second case, you're exponentially increasing the pathways of communication. In either case, you still have the ramp-up time for new team members.
  - balls187 7y ago
    No. I'm implying that rather than laying off top performers you find them a different role in your organization. Granted if the skill set is incredibly niche--such as hand optimizing HC12 assembly and you've moved to ARM then perhaps not. It's hard to imagine a scenario where an entire project teams skillset is so niche that they couldn't find a home for top developers in other parts of the org.
- Legogris 7y ago
  Because they might not be high performers there? There is no such thing as an objective "high performer" in any area.
- lliamander 7y ago
  Not necessarily a bad idea, but disrupting those business critical teams by just swapping out people could actually slow down execution and hurt revenue.

braythwayt 7y ago

If you could chose low performers, lay them off, and be more focused and higher productivity with the remaining people... _Why haven't you already done that?_ Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. The word gets around that you have low standards, and it's hard to recruit. The only way to get your money's worth from them is to put them in death marches and grind them down until they burn out and quit. I am always extremely suspicious of claims that a company is going to lay off its poor performers and magically be better. If they're telling the truth, they are actually saying that their existing managers are incompetent. There's a reason that all tech companies try to brag that they only hire the top performers.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
>If you could chose low performers, lay them off ... _Why haven't you already done that?_ There's a reason that all tech companies try to brag that they only hire the top performers. Performance of an engineer is relative to his environment. I was a top performer on some teams/projects and a low performer on others. Even if they ace your hiring process, you still can't know how they'll fit with the team long term.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  Fine, but laying off people who don’t work out is an ongoing process in all companies. If people haven’t already been let go as a part of the company’s existing management review process, what changed suddenly that the company can suddenly lay off a bunch of people in one go and “improve?” Another way to think about it is that everyone has some productivity, some contribution to the company’s net progress. If someone’s contribution is negative, they should already have been let go. If their contribution is less than others, maybe “bottom 10%,” but it is still positive, you may be letting go a relatively poor performer in a round of layoffs, but you’re still shedding a person with a positive contribution. You are going to be worse off, no matter how you sugar-coat it.
zachrose 7y ago
> Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. If you define performance as change over time then this would seem to have nothing to do with mistakes. From what I've read about the space shuttle programmers, they would have been classified as low performance (low change over time) but who also made with very few mistakes (as I understand their process). At the other end you could have high performing programmers (lots of change) with high defects that they're always fixing (which could in turn qualify as still more change).

tim58 7y ago

I'd cut at the team or department level. I'd choose teams/departments based on KPIs and necessity.