[reaperman]

He's advocating that the powers-that-be should consider targeting a slightly underdamped hiring system. Where they over-hire, and as they're overshooting the goal then reduce the rate of hiring, allowing the normal low rate of attrition to bring the PV back down to the SP.

e.g. a one-half critically-damped system. something following a standard first-order ODE like:

  \frac{dh}{dt} = K_p (h^\* - h) - K_i \int (h^\* - h) dt - f(h)

where h is the instantaneous number of employees, h* is the desired number of employees, f(h) is your attrition rate as a function of current number of employees, and Kp and Ki are "rate of hiring" coefficients which will be your proportional and integral terms of a PID controller to control your rate of hiring. The point is, the "rate of layoffs" here is zero and doesn't appear as a term.

Is this a proper model for a human organization? Who the fuck knows but it's the model you're advocating for and I'm just re-explaining what the other guy you replied to was suggesting in the first place, but this time using your framing. Yes, he also mentioned they should consider a slightly over damped system but he 100% did advocate for considering an underdamped system.

[aeternum]

Right, I was advocating for underdamped. Yes you overshoot, but you generally spend more time near your setpoint (optimal value).

[reaperman]

Ehhhh, your argument was more that "severely underdamped" could be the best, even if it requires an additional forcing factor (firing/layoffs) to bring it back down to the setpoint.

The person you replied to was arguing that perhaps something a bit more mildly underdamped could get rid of the requirement for that extra complication (firing / layoffs).

[aeternum]

Yeah, and I disagree. Goal should be to get to the setpoint as quickly as possible even if you overshoot as human nature is to keep the status-quo which generally means talented people wasting their time at obsolete companies.