| > It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead weight which is much bigger than 6%. Pretty much my experience that when a company keeps growing, at some point most corporate employees will not actually be contributing anything. Paradoxically, constraining teams with resources (but allowing them to make their own decisions) makes teams more efficient than if they had resources. Necessity is the mother of invention -- when people are forced to deal with the problem they will find a solution. Corporations are worst possible places to be efficient -- not only you have the resources (and most people get lazy when they don't have to be inventive) but you are also typically not even allowed to be inventive as companies typically work towards centralising decisionmaking rather than allowing teams to steer themselves. Same goes for hiring. I worked with teams which hired anybody because the manager was forced to hire quickly or loose budget. Or managers hired people just to enlarge their estates because headcount was how they decided who is more important. So I completely understand why companies are laying off people. The only question is whether they are too optimistic about being able to identify who to lay off, exactly. In my experience it is pretty difficult even for managers to understand who are best contributors in their teams. Get removed 2-3 levels from a line manager (2-3 levels is where the decisions would typically be made) and you can pretty much dream about understanding who to lay off, individually. |