[bruce511]

You're being down-voted (not by me) because your point is both cynical, and common as a caricature of management.

Employees need to feel safe because that improves their ability to focus on the job at hand.

Employees that do not feel safe spend time updating their resume, playing office-politics games to make others look worse, spend time with other employees (detracting them) to either spread rumours or get gossip.

In an unsafe environment, where the unsafty is internal, people don't "work harder" they work much less.

If the risk is external, then yes, people can pull together for the common good. When covid started our staff accepted huge pay cuts so that all jobs could bd preserved. They did a fantastic job, and all ultimately got back-pay, and all jobs were preserved. But that was "us against the world" - cuts included management, and salaries returned from the bottom to the top, not the other way around.

[quelltext]

That sounds like a great employer.

I only have anecdotal data but from recent discussions with friends who got laid off, they all lost trust in their company's leadership and losing arbitrary team mates has made them unhappy and reduced morale. I don't know if it's something special this time but if great teammates you worked with since before the pandemic are cut off while ones joining after and never having achieved or released anything remained (paraphrasing) does that. These layoffs seem haphazard.

[rsj_hn]

Higher management doesn't know who is productive and who isn't. The good lower-level managers have that visibility, and let's say the poor (or mediocre) managers don't.

But whoever has that visibility, they would have already taken steps to get rid of underperformers and replace them with good performers. Therefore good managers have disproportionately good people.

So when the senior management says "everyone lay 10% off", the good managers lay off good and bad people, and the poor managers lay off random people. The result is lots of good people get laid off, even if everyone is trying to avoid that.

[fbdab103]

>But whoever has that visibility, they would have already taken steps to get rid of underperformers and replace them with good performers.

Putting a lot of faith in management to cull weak performers. Depending on the organization, it can take a lot of effort and political capital to get rid of someone ("What do you mean you want to fire the guy you just hired?"). Significantly easier to just coast and let them hang around without any boat rocking.