Note, the fatal mistake in Microsoft’s case was not laying off the bottom 5%, it was laying off the bottom ranked people WITHIN small groups, even if said group

Note, the fatal mistake in Microsoft’s case was not laying off the bottom 5%, it was laying off the bottom ranked people WITHIN small groups, even if said groups were doing very well. If you’re going to lay off the bottom x% every n period of time, it might be fine. But you’d better be damn sure your metrics are good (sales comes to mind though even then there’s a lot of ambiguity). If you’re dropping the weakest performer in groups you’re not only going to create the most toxic environment ever, you’re going to lay off plenty who are probably middle of the bell curve. Microsoft’s plan was, in addition to being unwise, just poorly reasoned statistically.