[TheOtherHobbes]

>I've been fortunate, I suppose, to work for generally decent employers

Perhaps you've worked for employers when they could afford to be decent - which is not quite the same thing.

Being fired for being too expensive is a very real thing. Ask anyone laid off by IBM recently, or who was put on a PIP and fired for non-performance a few months before qualifying for retirement and a company pension payout.

Tangentially, talk of non-productive employees always reminds me of this:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/dec.be...