[ericb]

It's been my experience that, if a company has not had recent layoffs, there is almost always a bottom 10% that is bad enough to be worth cutting. This has been most noticeable to me at companies of 100+. I've always wondered if smaller periodic layoffs would work better than waiting for a downturn to make hard decisions, which seems like the norm.

[latch]

For very large companies with hundreds of projects, figuring out the "bottom 10%" can be challenging. An average developer on a poor team will look like a rockstar to his/her manager, while a really good developer on a stellar teams will look average at best.

[ericb]

You're talking about average and good. I'm talking about firing "terrible." I find cowardice often prevents hiring mistakes from being corrected quickly, and the accuracy of the interview process is not high enough to prevent those bad hires consistently at most companies.

[moultano]

That's also a great way to ensure that your employees never take risks, ever, and spend most of their time marketing their work rather than improving it.

[ericb]

Not really, in my experience. At most company's I have worked at, there were some people who were either not carrying their weight, or were in support roles with poor interpersonal skills, or management roles but shirked responsibility. Marketing would not have helped the bottom rung, and very often, they were not smart enough to consider or be able to market their work in the first place.

[agotterer]

Downturns are often an excuse to lay people off. If you do layoffs in a booming economy people immediately assume theres something wrong at your company. In a downturn its considered "acceptable", since everyone is on hard times. So it's a great excuse to cut the "fat" and get rid of dead weight.

[rosshudgens]

This would become a morale nightmare if employees were ever aware this was taking place, unfortunately. Pretty hard to pull off with consistency/as a standard because of this.

[jfager]

Jack Welch strongly advocates for this approach, and it's how GE operated when he was CEO (I don't know if they still do or not). NetFlix also does something similar.

Why do you think it would be a morale nightmare? If you're doing well at your job, wouldn't you take comfort in knowing the person down the line who isn't pulling his weight will be cut out of the company at some point? High expectations are motivating.

[matwood]

Well you could be pushing people to only be about themselves and their team and not the company as a whole. Why would I want to work with and help another team if it means I may move them above the 10% line and me below?

So while you're right that it would push people to do their job well it could also push them to submarine others.

[jfager]

The point is that companies shouldn't waste a lot of time trying to salvage or put up with people who aren't helping them succeed. If a person is hovering around the bottom 10% and they think the solution is to screw someone else over, they probably should go. I know I wouldn't want to work with them.

[afterburner]

The idea is the manager doesn't know the sabotage happened, and only sees the results. The failed sabotages, yeah, of course those don't help.

[rosshudgens]

It wouldn't be a morale nightmare for me, but for those people who aren't as motivated and are just sitting at the poverty line in terms of their progression in the workplace, knowing about stuff like this can loom over their head and create a plague of gossip and backtalk in the workplace.

[strlen]

If I recall correctly, Netflix does this: cutting n percent of the workforce on a yearly basis ("adequate performance gets you a generous severance package").

It's countered by paying above market salaries and ensuring that these salaries _remain as such_ (even going to the point of where employees aren't discouraged from interviewing elsewhere to "sample the market").

Microsoft, I believe, does something similar. Whether it's the right approach is another matter.

[larrywright]

It would only be a morale nightmare if the decisions were made randomly (or for political reasons), and not based on performance/job fit. My experience is that people tend to view letting underperformers go as a positive. It's far more damaging to morale to keep the underperformers around.

[hga]

As I recall Intel did and maybe still does this. At one point it got over 10% a year....

[dhyasama]

Enron did something like that IIRC. It may have even been based on peer reviews.

[ericb]

Guilt by association doesn't make a case either way.

[ojbyrne]

Intel also.