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Seems like managers are often asked to stack rank before layoffs...

midoridensha 4y ago
That's about the only time I can think of where it makes sense. If you have to lay off some people, then obviously you want to get rid of the lowest performers. But if times are good and everyone is performing well enough and contributing, why get rid of them? If they're not performing well enough, then you shouldn't need stack ranking to figure that out, and you don't need to arbitrarily set a percentage of employees to put on performance improvement plans or fire.
- dasudasu 4y ago
  The rationale is that there can only be so many employees and if natural attrition is low then they’d prefer to re-roll on mediocre performers in an attempt to capture the top ones.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    That's a bad rationale. Mediocre performers, are, by definition, average. Unless your hiring process has completely changed, you're not likely to get anyone better if you toss out a mediocre performer and hire someone new: the new person could be better, or could be worse. Moreover, the mediocre person is experienced and productive; the replacement will not be, and probably won't be for a long time. (If the mediocre performer isn't productive, then they're not mediocre unless most of your employees are terrible, and should be fired for bad performance.)
- ilyt 4y ago
  But then you should probably look at what is not earning money or facilitate earning money. But that's kind of irrelevant when layoffs are coz shareholders want more returns this yeah, not because company has problems...
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Earning money is not really relevant to whether people are good employees or not; that's based on the market, management decisions, etc. I'm sure there were lots of great employees at BeOS, but the fact that the product failed financially wasn't their fault. Companies change product strategies all the time to pursue profit, trim unprofitable ventures, etc., and that's all fine. But it's dumb to lay off good employees when they can just be re-deployed somewhere else, assuming the company isn't having financial hardship that actually requires them to shed headcount.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > If you have to lay off some people, then obviously you want to get rid of the lowest performers. It depends. In medium and large (and even some small) organisations, the intention behind layoffs is not only to save on the salary bill, it's to cut those divisions, projects, groups initiatives and work units that are a net loss or that are not contributing to the bottom line. IOW, the intention should be to get rid of certain positions; it's a side-effect that people are usually in those positions. For example, at Amazon I would imagine that even the high performers in the Alexa team would be considered for layoffs over the low performers in the cash-cows. It's positions that get laid off, not people.
- astrange 4y ago
  Google's layoff was apparently pretty random; I wonder if they actually did lay off people at random. That'd avoid discrimination lawsuits at least… There seems to be an assumption people will interview for their own job again at the end of the severance period.

That's about the only time I can think of where it makes sense. If you have to lay off some people, then obviously you want to get rid of the lowest performers. But if times are good and everyone is performing well enough and contributing, why get rid of them? If they're not performing well enough, then you shouldn't need stack ranking to figure that out, and you don't need to arbitrarily set a percentage of employees to put on performance improvement plans or fire.

dasudasu 4y ago
The rationale is that there can only be so many employees and if natural attrition is low then they’d prefer to re-roll on mediocre performers in an attempt to capture the top ones.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  That's a bad rationale. Mediocre performers, are, by definition, average. Unless your hiring process has completely changed, you're not likely to get anyone better if you toss out a mediocre performer and hire someone new: the new person could be better, or could be worse. Moreover, the mediocre person is experienced and productive; the replacement will not be, and probably won't be for a long time. (If the mediocre performer isn't productive, then they're not mediocre unless most of your employees are terrible, and should be fired for bad performance.)
ilyt 4y ago
But then you should probably look at what is not earning money or facilitate earning money. But that's kind of irrelevant when layoffs are coz shareholders want more returns this yeah, not because company has problems...
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Earning money is not really relevant to whether people are good employees or not; that's based on the market, management decisions, etc. I'm sure there were lots of great employees at BeOS, but the fact that the product failed financially wasn't their fault. Companies change product strategies all the time to pursue profit, trim unprofitable ventures, etc., and that's all fine. But it's dumb to lay off good employees when they can just be re-deployed somewhere else, assuming the company isn't having financial hardship that actually requires them to shed headcount.
lelanthran 4y ago
> If you have to lay off some people, then obviously you want to get rid of the lowest performers. It depends. In medium and large (and even some small) organisations, the intention behind layoffs is not only to save on the salary bill, it's to cut those divisions, projects, groups initiatives and work units that are a net loss or that are not contributing to the bottom line. IOW, the intention should be to get rid of certain positions; it's a side-effect that people are usually in those positions. For example, at Amazon I would imagine that even the high performers in the Alexa team would be considered for layoffs over the low performers in the cash-cows. It's positions that get laid off, not people.
astrange 4y ago
Google's layoff was apparently pretty random; I wonder if they actually did lay off people at random. That'd avoid discrimination lawsuits at least… There seems to be an assumption people will interview for their own job again at the end of the severance period.