[vineyardmike]

> That seems absurd. I've worked at big companies. They sometimes have staff, often _lots_ of staff, like whole orgs, that are a net drain on the company. What's the alternative in that situation?

It’s tough. Look at Amazon. They cull the bottom 5% every year. It has a negative affect on morale because everyone is continuously on edge and having a bad month or two can be dangerous. Look at a layoff, it craters morale and reduces productivity.

The best bet seems to be to grow slow, hire and retain the best, and fire the low performers only as needed.

After that, look at corporate giants like IBM. They are laying off, yes, but historically they just lurched along, providing a paycheck to everyone.

[ajkjk]

I worked at Amazon (a while ago) and they both (a) did not do that and (b) what firing they did not, imo, affect morale. If anything the fact that really bad engineers were quickly removed was probably a net positive for morale.

There were a couple of dubious episodes, though, where a bad manager tried to do something to people they didn't like. Sometimes it worked (aka, negatively affected people) and sometimes the manager got in trouble instead. So it's not like all good. But it was heavily dependent on the managers you ended up under.