[throwaway0010]

"Mass firings, however justified, represent broken management"

I don't think you've supported this opinion very well. Here's a counterpoint: Hiring and firing are a completely normal part of a business cycle. Every company should expect to have some ratio of hiring to firing. And yes, a firing typically means imperfect hiring practice (which is not the same as imperfect management) -- but here's the key I believe you may not understand: The world is imperfect. We can bank on the fact that we make mistakes; we will always make mistakes.

Your other assertion that morale will suffer is empirically false. I know many folks at companies with this sort of practice in place and it boosts their morale because they don't feel like they're dragged down by under-performers. Maybe it lowers the morale of those who are under-performing, but that's not exactly a problem, is it?

[easytiger]

Those all sound like armchair Aristotelian arguments to me. In my experience "this policy" or some varient thereof seeks to indicate a management failure and has sparked exoduses from profitable companies. Of course every business and every culture is different.

A business that seeks to rate people at failing at something there were at once determined capable and then later not needs to take a hard look at themselves. Perhaps the individual has mitigating personal issues; maybe the job hasn't grown with the person; maybe the company itself has changed and is less compelling as a person.

At least having given them 6 months of value to prove their worth and then changing your mind indicates something somewhere has changed.

Also what is this definite metric of performing you just invented? Either the individual is doing the job or when they slipped you didn't help put them back on track.

If it is a skilled job I can't imagine the cost of firing then rehiring and retraining someone to do the job in your company simply because you failed to pay attention to an employee at once every couple of weeks to see how they are getting on.

Nonsense, in short.

[throwaway0010]

The only nonsense here is your belief that a hiring process can accurately predict future results. Hiring is incredibly difficult: Vast volumes of literature have been written on the subject. Mistakes are common; your idea that business ought not correct for mistakes is pure fantasy.

[potatolicious]

I think you failed to read the entirety of my post. Of course firing is a normal part of company operations - I stated that explicitly, multiple times in my post.

Mass firing however, is not.

Hiring will be imperfect, no matter how hard we try. Once in a while someone bad will make it into the company, and it's of great importance that the company identify and fire these people in a timely manner.

Note the last part: timely manner. Unless a company has been completely asleep at the wheel, there is no scenario under which people will suddenly go "woah woah woah! these 200 people must go!". To let go of so many all at once suggests you either weren't policing bad hires actively and let too many under-performers stick around for too long (and are just now getting around to cleaning house), and/or suggests a knee-jerk overreaction to some stimulus, and now you're about to throw some baby out with the bathwater.

Firing is normal. Mass firings are not.

And your "empiricism" is backed by your own personal anecdotes. Funny. In any case, I agree that individual firings can be morale-neutral (never morale-positive, despite your claim). When you fire Bob, who's been underperforming, only the people who work with Bob hear about it. Everyone knows Bob is hard to work with and not very good at his job, and people don't feel threatened by Bob's firing.

This isn't true when you're firing 200 people. People in the company hear about it, but they don't know everyone on the list - in fact, they may not know anyone on the list. So now the "obviousness" of the firings isn't so obvious, and people start wondering just how bad these people were to get fired, and they start wondering about their own performance. This is the start of a bad cycle, and morale is going to drop no matter which way you play it.

Firing 1 person has a tremendously different dynamic than firing 200 people.

So, we agree that firing people who can be saved is a good idea. We disagree fundamentally on whether or not mass firings are a good idea.

[throwaway0010]

'Unless a company has been completely asleep at the wheel, there is no scenario under which people will suddenly go "woah woah woah! these 200 people must go!".'

Of course there is. You're projecting this as black and white, but in reality performance is a curve and the company's economic context determines where that curve ends. Companies growing rapidly hardly ever fire. Companies faced with a squeeze (and perhaps a shortage of profitable work) will be willing to move higher and higher up the performance curve.

Your platitudes about morale are simply untrue. I mentioned before specific peers as counter-examples, so let's also name the company: Netflix has a policy of firing people who aren't top-level performers. It's flatly impossible to make these kinds of determinations reliably before a hire -- the ONLY way to maintain a team of A-level players is to fire people who you've hired and who turn out not to perform.

This is not theory, this is fact in practice. It works great. People who don't make it don't like it -- and that's largely unimportant. People who actually are A-level performers love it. It's great for morale.

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-should-we-fire-...