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Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

If true, it seems like a silly way to reduce headcount. The employees who feel like they need the job will move, but those who know they can get a job elsewhere will not. This adverse selection leads to some of your best employees leaving, with your worst staying.

Better to just pick and choose who you want to keep.

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> This adverse selection leads to some of your best employees leaving, with your worst staying.

Doesn't matter. Failing public companies like IBM and Yahoo don't care about better vs. worse employees; what they care about is reducing costs, and that tends to make better employees more likely to be laid off, because they're more expensive. Wall Street doesn't give a damn how good your employees are; it just wants them to be cheap.

That seems overly cynical. I doubt Google would be the company it is today by hiring cheap employees.

Is Google a failing public company?

This is called the Dead Sea Effect:

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...

Agree with your point and think your right.

From the companies perspective, downsizing via changes on remote policy they spin a negative news headline into a positive ("Yahoo no longer allowing remote" vs "Yahoo lays off 2,000") and it is way lower risk in terms of labor law.

"The employees who feel like they need the job will move, but those who know they can get a job elsewhere will not. This adverse selection leads to some of your best employees leaving, with your worst staying."

So your argument is that the employees that choose to stay must be bad because there can not be other reasons for their decision but the limits of their career prospects? Even if that might be true to some degree, I'm afraid that if you use this logic to guide yourself it will someday backfire badly.

Not sure about the US, but in France it's pretty common to use these kind of sub-optimal ways to reduce headcount, like offering a "resign bonus" for the volunteers.

Obviously highly employable people will leave, but the company saves the risk of strike, lawsuits, bad press etc. that come with lay-offs.

That's common in the US as well.

"Better to just pick and choose who you want to keep."

But cheaper if they pick themselves.

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