[PaulKeeble]

Having been the company of determining that high performance teams needing psychological safety he has decided the best course of action is to threaten them all to work harder or get made redundant. I am sure that will have the desired effect. In every business I have ever worked in the sniff of redundancies and the threats that came from management were devastating to creativity and productivity and caused a mass exodus of talent.

[bogantech]

If I was one of the few productive people in a company of lazy slobs the prospect of the dead weight being cast off would make me happy

[candiodari]

I have never known layoffs to actually "cast off dead weight". And, frankly, even if they miss that by 5% (ie. 95% layoffs are actually dead weight) they will still kill morale in the entire company. And, let's not forget, even the slightest hint of layoffs will make every middle manager, from VP to team leader, become totally untrustworthy. From your perspective as an IC, to each other, and to C-suite execs. They will lie and cheat, in groups, sabotaging whatever effort there actually is, from the C-suite, to cast off that dead weight.

And once morale is gone, it is a very short time until there is nothing but dead weight.

If there is a way to cast of dead weight with layoffs, I've never seen it happen. I've seen layoffs kill companies entirely, and make them into dead husks, unable to die, but even less able to live. But that's the best possible outcome.

[brnt]

You are assuming those that lay off are able to discriminate what's useless busywork and what's true innovation. Or that the latter is in fact what they are truly after.

Google makes money with ads. Tons of Google's engineering is utterly besides that core business. Productive might mean an excellent ad salesperson, and lazy slob a programmer only working on irrelevant efficiency.

[salawat]

Counterpoint: All that dead weight still, nevertheless, represented work that ultimately needed to get done.

That work is now your problem.

Tut, tut, Bogantech.

[birdyrooster]

Given that you start with a straw man of “company of lazy slobs” which is an obvious exaggeration, your conclusion is hardly useful.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

It looks like you've never experienced office politics.