[strken]

I think I understand what the author is trying to get at - people are sometimes clearly incompetent to do the role they're in - but firing them is a necessity, not an opportunity.

In fact, taking every available opportunity to fire people is biased by the metrics you use. No metric of developer productivity is ever as good as actually working in the same team, and so you'll probably lose:

- anyone who writes tests and refactors code, for being slow

- anyone who maintains the profitable parts of your software, for not having a list of impressive new features they worked on

- anyone who takes time to help their co-workers, because they'll look less productive on paper

- your most senior, most multidisciplinary, and most intelligent employees, because they'll appreciate the first three groups the most, because they can get another job faster, and because firing competent employees sends the message that the business is struggling

[jacquesm]

This holds even at the largest companies. For instance it is reasonably well documented that when working for Microsoft the only way to get promoted is to work on new stuff.