4 ms·

Everyone is still doing it, they just aren't transparent about it now.

by trenning 7y ago

tedivm 7y ago
Source? I've literally never worked at a company that regularly fired the bottom X% of workers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lmeyerov 7y ago
  Large orgs regularly do this. E.g., most of the banking industry, esp. the non-wall st side, have had layoffs every few years for awhile now. It can be called all sorts of things, and it adds up. When you think about it, it makes a sad sort of sense at scale. Hiring mistakes mean, at scale, a good number of jobs aren't fits for the people you hired, half the people out there are below average to beginwith, and a good number end up toxic (they slow down orgs!), and over time, these folks cost more money and suborgs decay. We've all inherited WTF+NIH projects and worked with people who drain energy. So even if an org doesn't do explicit layoffs or stack ranking, and hiring committees and employees have good intentions, a healthy org should be fixing hiring mistakes somehow: it can't all be retraining / reshuffling the deck. Arguably, the numbers mean most tech companies are _unhealthy_ orgs because the high demand for engineers makes the healthy level of rehiring tough to do. The result is toxic devs get retained and the tail wags the dog from a business perspective. E.g., I bet some of the #MeToo issues in tech, deep down, relate to the difficulty of curating a top org at scale, with very few exceptions (Netflix?)
- mulmen 7y ago
  There are several notable companies still doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Companies_using_the_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Companies_using...
- jimthrow 7y ago
  Of course it’s not called that It’s called a corporate restructuring. Or they’ll just fire a few people here and there until they get to 10%. They call it “we re heading in a new direction”
- achow 7y ago
  At Microsoft itself. If a manager has $100 budget for hikes and rewards, she has to invisibly stack rank to distribute it with some logic (and not give $10 to each in 10 people team)[0]. Stack ranking was not about firing at Microsoft (or any other place), it was about distribution of bonus and hikes. [0]Spreading the peanut butter: https://www.compensationcafe.com/2014/03/spreading-the-peanut-butter.html https://www.compensationcafe.com/2014/03/spreading-the-peanu...

Everyone is still doing it, they just aren't transparent about it now.

tedivm 7y ago

Source? I've literally never worked at a company that regularly fired the bottom X% of workers.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lmeyerov 7y ago
Large orgs regularly do this. E.g., most of the banking industry, esp. the non-wall st side, have had layoffs every few years for awhile now. It can be called all sorts of things, and it adds up. When you think about it, it makes a sad sort of sense at scale. Hiring mistakes mean, at scale, a good number of jobs aren't fits for the people you hired, half the people out there are below average to beginwith, and a good number end up toxic (they slow down orgs!), and over time, these folks cost more money and suborgs decay. We've all inherited WTF+NIH projects and worked with people who drain energy. So even if an org doesn't do explicit layoffs or stack ranking, and hiring committees and employees have good intentions, a healthy org should be fixing hiring mistakes somehow: it can't all be retraining / reshuffling the deck. Arguably, the numbers mean most tech companies are _unhealthy_ orgs because the high demand for engineers makes the healthy level of rehiring tough to do. The result is toxic devs get retained and the tail wags the dog from a business perspective. E.g., I bet some of the #MeToo issues in tech, deep down, relate to the difficulty of curating a top org at scale, with very few exceptions (Netflix?)
mulmen 7y ago
There are several notable companies still doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Companies_using_the_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Companies_using...
jimthrow 7y ago
Of course it’s not called that It’s called a corporate restructuring. Or they’ll just fire a few people here and there until they get to 10%. They call it “we re heading in a new direction”
achow 7y ago
At Microsoft itself. If a manager has $100 budget for hikes and rewards, she has to invisibly stack rank to distribute it with some logic (and not give $10 to each in 10 people team)[0]. Stack ranking was not about firing at Microsoft (or any other place), it was about distribution of bonus and hikes. [0]Spreading the peanut butter: https://www.compensationcafe.com/2014/03/spreading-the-peanut-butter.html https://www.compensationcafe.com/2014/03/spreading-the-peanu...