She tells me that she's seen the situation most often with older people who "have kids" or "have a family to take care of" - they either keep them in the role d

She tells me that she's seen the situation most often with older people who "have kids" or "have a family to take care of" - they either keep them in the role despite substandard performance, or covertly or overtly adjust the role expectations, and sometimes they get promoted into roles that seem to have been created for them (like "director of project management") or roles they aren't specifically qualified for (like a manager/team lead role). She really believes any business with more than 50 people has at least 1 or 2 employees of this type, and more so if the culture of the firm tends to skew towards government contracts or older people--but when pressed for data, she said that was just her gut feeling. > the fact that there are eight employees doing the work of three at the grocery store does not count If you know three people could do the work of eight then fire 5 people or modify a process. The business is choosing to be inefficient, or there may be other factors. It may not really be inefficient if the cost of the 8 people is lower than the cost of automation or whatever is needed to improve the process. People are expensive in the U.S. so I tend not to assume that but it is possible.