What Ballmer forgot is that Welch himself said the "trim the bottom 10%" model didn't work once a company got larger than a certain size. I'm not sure that siz

What Ballmer forgot is that Welch himself said the "trim the bottom 10%" model didn't work once a company got larger than a certain size. I'm not sure that size is the issue. I think that the percentage of deadwood a company has being static is the problem. A typical 10,000-person company probably has enough deadwood to make a 10% cut safe: a mature company that's accrued enough slackers and incompetents can endure a cut of the obvious nonperformers and few will be upset about it. Even many of the nonperformers will agree, to some extent, that it's time. Besides, the company will have a cut anyway if it underperforms. But if you cut 10% every year, after two or three iterations you are cutting good people, and the cultural effects of that make the process not worth it.