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Comment by janderson215 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand how so many people perceive the world this way. I work with a top tier of people but also have a couple of duds in my 85 person org. We would definitely be a better company if we got rid of 10 people. Some people are a net negative and eat up important resources who should be spending their time doing things that provide more value versus trying to help the duds.

What am I missing here? Can someone please help me understand the other side aside from taking away peoples livelihood = bad and rich people want all the money for themselves

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Why do those people still work there? They should be let go individually to find something more compatible. Mass layoffs are not the way to make that decision.

Acquiring company is concerned about terminations coming back as lawsuits, so unless there is something really egregious is puts so much work on valuable people to follow the required PIP process (I’m talking a months long process) that it changes the equation again and makes it worth it for those duds to suck the time out away from our valuable people who happen to be managing them.

The result is that good people end up loafing because of lowered morale.

If you are in the US you can just fire them for no reason at any time, making employees fight to the death to not be in the bottom 10% is fun for management to squeeze a bit of extra performance out of people but not for anyone else.

If you are in the rest of the world, batch firing "the bottom 10%" for the stated reason of performance (they normally lie and say it is for a different reason) still requires the exact same amount of effort as doing it when there are actual performance issues.

Properly managed teams deal with actual poor performers, and your bottom 10% employee might be a top 1% employee any other company.

Unfortunately acquiring company wont let us just fire people, including those who live in an at-will state. I’m leaving the company in 2 weeks so it won’t be my problem anymore as an employee, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around why people object to layoffs/firings in general.

Zuck fired a large number of “underperformers” (obviously if they’re based on performance reviews there is plenty of room for error) and critics said that firing people for that reason destroys their dignity. I see it as giving them an opportunity to actually earn their dignity. I know that the people who are duds in our company have a negative reputation, so is allowing them to keep their job and bad reps really keeping their dignity? To me, that results in a middling (at best) society. It’s a dangerous trait to keep in a culture. Letting people exist in a way that doesn’t allow them to flourish is a very cruel thing to do to them and to the future of humanity.

Are you a top tier person or a dud?

I can say objectively that I was listed as one of six or seven key people in our acquisition and have been one of the two most important people in our integration/migrations since then. I’m certain there are people who could do better than me, but within a non-theoretical reality and being responsible for our application development, that is a decent indicator that I’m a valuable member of the team.

Subjectively, I’m not the programmer’s programmer or a great PM, but needing to serve both of those roles has given me a perspective that allows me to identify value in projects where two people in segmented roles would not. Being able to squeeze another 100% of value with 5% of work every once in a while is a good feeling.

I’m not so arrogant to say that I’m a top tier person, but I hope this answers the question without saying so. I also want to say that I wouldn’t be able to do the things I could do without fantastic business and operational teammates. It makes it all the more frustrating when I see duds in the same role who I know are making more money than great contributors.

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