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> I highly doubt you're a high performer. They could also be young/naive, but.. yeah. I'm old enough to have survived large layoffs a couple of times in my ca

> I highly doubt you're a high performer. They could also be young/naive, but.. yeah. I'm old enough to have survived large layoffs a couple of times in my career. In both instances a very large number of the "top performing" survivors left the company within a couple of months. Large layoffs tend to breed a sense of insecurity and insecurity tends to get the remaining people to scurry, and the first out the door are naturally going to be the ones with the most options because their skills are highly sought after. Putting it in very superficial terms... assuming you manage to get it right with choosing the "Cs" and lower on the layoffs, the As generally bolt soon after and you end up with a company full of Bs. At least that tends to be how it goes in my real world experience.

fzeroracer 4y ago
A lot of things managers and higher ups don't see is the human connection. You can look at the metrics, organize people by stack ranking and then fire the quote unquote worst performers, but those worst performers can also be core to the business in other ways by being good team players or good to work with. That's when you get Jim the all-star programmer leaving because John the slightly underperforming guy gets laid off and he no longer has anyone with relevant interests to talk to. That's assuming that John is underperforming as a whole and not just underperforming relative to his team, which his team could be generally high performance. So then instead of a 150% programmer and a 90% programmer, you end up replacing both of them with 110% programmers for a net loss in productivity.
type-r 4y ago
Depends on the current ratio of A/B/C/lower. If Musk thinks that As are currently rare at Twitter, then having a company full of Bs left could be a big improvement. I have no idea if this is true, but Twitter's profits and pace of innovation don't necessarily make me think they're filled to the brim with rockstars.

fzeroracer 4y ago

A lot of things managers and higher ups don't see is the human connection. You can look at the metrics, organize people by stack ranking and then fire the quote unquote worst performers, but those worst performers can also be core to the business in other ways by being good team players or good to work with. That's when you get Jim the all-star programmer leaving because John the slightly underperforming guy gets laid off and he no longer has anyone with relevant interests to talk to. That's assuming that John is underperforming as a whole and not just underperforming relative to his team, which his team could be generally high performance. So then instead of a 150% programmer and a 90% programmer, you end up replacing both of them with 110% programmers for a net loss in productivity.

type-r 4y ago

Depends on the current ratio of A/B/C/lower. If Musk thinks that As are currently rare at Twitter, then having a company full of Bs left could be a big improvement. I have no idea if this is true, but Twitter's profits and pace of innovation don't necessarily make me think they're filled to the brim with rockstars.