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Big public companies need an excuse to fire as many people as they would "naturally" want to fire given 1. just how many people they hire, 2. how often those pe
by derefr 4y ago
Big public companies need an excuse to fire as many people as they would "naturally" want to fire given 1. just how many people they hire, 2. how often those people turn out to be duds, and 3. how often they pivot strategies internally that no longer necessitate even better-performing people.
They can't normally fire as many people as they want to fire, without looking bad / "appearing weak" and therefore losing stock value.
But if "everyone's doing it", then they won't look bad/weak.
See also: raising prices. If one company does it, they just lose market-share. But if they do it because "everyone is doing it", then margins can go up vertical-wide without anyone having to explicitly collude in an anti-trust sense.
- UncleMeat 4y agoAnd yet, I'm looking at a team that was affected by layoffs where solid (or even high) performers were fired while also having been in meetings this week to discuss low performers who weren't fired. "Getting rid of duds" is clearly not what is happening, at least at Google.
- cratermoon 4y agoGetting rid of high-earners is more correct. Among the highest earners, they pick the bottom 10% of the performers. Or do some MBA-ish cost/productivity calculations and lay off based on some (probably nonsensical, for programmers) "valuation".
- UncleMeat 4y agoAlso not what happened on my team. The system did not prioritize more senior vs more junior engineers (in terms of level). Nor did it prioritize people who had unusually large sign-on packages.
- soupfordummies 4y agoSo what do you think it was then? Just randomized?
- UncleMeat 4y agoI think that there was some VP or senior-director level review of which teams would get cut by how much. Then I think that there was some procedure for choosing people on these teams based on level, tenure, and rating history. But I have no idea what this procedure would be.