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Interesting, but I think they're over-thinking it. A lot. At any given moment, most companies can probably justify cutting 10-15% of dead weight. But when you
by chiefalchemist 4y ago
Interesting, but I think they're over-thinking it. A lot.
At any given moment, most companies can probably justify cutting 10-15% of dead weight. But when you cross that line, that's a much different smell. The most talented get a whiff, update their CVs and head for the door.
The goal is to cut the bottom and leave the top. Take off too much bottom and your top will leave "voluntarily".
- rootusrootus 4y agoYeah, I was going to say, the average BigCorp has probably 30-40% dead weight. So cutting close to half of that is probably not a terribly heavy lift. Most managers already have a stack rank, in their head at least.
- marricks 4y agoYeah, exactly, and you only actually use 10% of your brain. Probably don’t need two hemispheres to be honest.
- rootusrootus 4y agoSince we know that to be false, I assume you're just being a smartass. If you disagree, there are more polite, constructive ways to say so.
- marricks 4y agoSorry if it seems flippant, but I provided just as much justification for my argument as you did.
- nhooyr 4y agoNo, you made a straight up false claim. He was merely estimating at an unknown.
- grassgreener 4y agoYou made up a statistic, what good does it do to spread misinformation?
- rootusrootus 4y agoYou are calling it false, yet you haven't provided any citations either.
- izacus 4y agoThat's not how burden of proof works. You can't just brain fart random numbers and then demand others disprove it.
- mlyle 4y agoHe made an estimate of dead weight based on his experience. I think we can all agree it's >1% and <99%. Of course, "dead weight" is a ill-posed, incompletely defined notion, so definitional issues abound, too. The next step is to discuss the usefulness and your own perspective, not to mock.
- paulddraper 4y agoExactly. Take a look around and imagine your company with 10-15% less. Most people don't find that such a terrible idea.
- verst 4y agoThat really depends on the distribution of the layoffs. The 10-15% percent aren't necessarily all bad performers but might just be people working on teams that are to be disbanded entirely.
- ilyt 4y agoYeah, if it is mandated "all teams cut 10%" it can be disaster. Team that managed to hire good people and fire bad performers already ? You're basically taking productivity out. Ops team that every other software team is dependent on and already overloaded ? Now every other team will feel delay in dealing with their stuff.
- madengr 4y ago
- dehrmann 4y agoI found the context interesting, but this line addresses the question nicely without much overthinking. > 10-15% seems to be the number that reflects “big enough that I can tell myself and my investors or board I am doing it, but not so big that it causes truly uncomfortable conversations for the team”
- salawat 4y agoBecause generally their workload goes up concommitantly, because there is no backfill.