At some point, as a manager, you put your own career/reputation on the line. It is important to remember we are discussing outliers here. 4s & 5s represent 20%

At some point, as a manager, you put your own career/reputation on the line. It is important to remember we are discussing outliers here. 4s & 5s represent 20% of the company. My blog post does not impact that other 80% really at all, and within the 20%, 7% likely really deserve to be let go anyway (IMO). It's a big company. With any sufficiently large population there will be problems. I'm not a MS apologist, but at the same time MS produces some pretty damn good things regardless.