>Is it possible that you can have a department of 300 people where you can't find 12 people who are below-average performers? Yes. Is it likely? No. I mean, be

>Is it possible that you can have a department of 300 people where you can't find 12 people who are below-average performers? Yes. Is it likely? No. I mean, below average performers will be around 40-60% just because how averages work. The problem is that the question is "is their performance low compared to team", while the question you should be answering is "is their performance low compared to the market. If team's management is on point with hiring the "worst" won't be that much worse than average anyway, so if you want to replace the bottom few % you essentially waste time as new hires might be at same productivity level. On other side if you recruiting sucks and 20% of the dept does the 80% of the job, it isn't going to help either.