The firing is not motivated by the ratio. It's not a handcuff saying you must find x% of the workforce to fire. It's setting a bar that when evaluated on a cur

The firing is not motivated by the ratio. It's not a handcuff saying you must find x% of the workforce to fire. It's setting a bar that when evaluated on a curve a certain percentage of your employees wind up being below that bar. You derive the ratio from how aggressive you expect your bar to be. But no one is saying you need to fire people. They're saying they expect a certain amount of lower performers and if they don't see it, they want to know reason. But it also only manifests at much higher populations than an individual team. Totally possible a small enough team has everyone >= meeting expectations.