| 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. |
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-...