[ironmagma]

It's a grand pronouncement, and also pretty detached from reality to claim that companies never fire talented people. A few counterexamples: Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Jerry Seinfeld, Nikola Tesla... the list goes on.

[mamon]

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule:

1. Sometimes talent is hard to recognize, as in the people that you listed.

2. Sometimes the whole company is such a bad situation that they have to fire whole teams/branches indiscriminately.

But still, I think that parent comment about "a lot of talented people being out of work for a long time" is not true.

[ironmagma]

> Sometimes talent is hard to recognize

I would say that's most of the time. Companies often have to outsource their head-hunting because so many of them are so bad at it, and entire companies have been created (e.g. TripleByte) because other companies can't figure out how to properly measure talent.

And arguably, the main reason in the first place that managers hire so many people they are OK letting go later on is because their managers (one level up) aren't able to properly observe it happening, on account of the measurement being so poor. If the measurement is that poor, you're basically guaranteed to have hired lots of great people who won't have the opportunity to flourish.