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Comment by drgath | Hacker News Reader

I was one of those who was laid-off, or fired, or whatever you want to call it. I've been really confused over the last week because the reasons for my termination were pretty vague. But wow, after reading that, so many things make sense now.

One of the areas this type of a bell-curve system falls apart is for highly specialized and well-qualified teams, such as the one I was working on. Who knows, maybe I was a poor employee, but after all the raises, accolades, and the promotion I received (by my firing manager), I'd like to think that wasn't the case and it was just a manager put in a tough spot.

Regardless, it was a nice run and the job market is great. I'm taking a bit of time off, but if you are a company in SF and looking for someone with lots of JavaScript, Node.js, and frontend experience at startups and (of course) big companies, links are in my profile.

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What it means is of your team, you were in the bottom 15% and maybe you weren't a bad employee, but you weren't even in the top half of your team.

Worth noting that I was promoted to that team due to being an overachiever on a lower expectation team. So here's the issue... I could have stayed with the old team and ensured my job security, but instead I chose to go with a tougher challenge and surround myself with smarter people to learn from, but I ended up stack ranked out by the very manager who promoted me in the first place.

Ah well. Despite what happened, it was the correct career move and I'd do it again.

>you weren't even in the top half of your team

That's a pretty poisonous attitude, since half the company isn't going to be in the top half of their team. And honestly, in my experience, most people have no idea whether they are at the 50% point or the 15% point.

What's poisonous about it? It's the blunt truth. In stack ranking, you don't have to be the best employee, you just can't be in the bottom 15%. If you get laid off, it means you're in the bottom 15%. There's nothing poisonous about that assertion.

It's like they say about escaping a hungry bear, you don't have the be the fastest runner to survive, you just have to be the second slowest runner.

What did you do there if you don't mind me asking?

See the link in my profile. :)

I liked your spirit...management is one shit where the board's decision or the management's decision is responsible for a company's failure..what these guys were doing when they were hiring or buying companies...is employees responsible for the failures...

In any company's failure, the first one to blame is the management because they failed and that's why a lay off has to be done..I had always felt that layoff is an easy way for a CEO or the management to wash off their hands rather than trying to solve the problem at hand..

A leader is someone who leads his team and makes other perform...

In management, I have found most people just licking the bosses above them...and i hate these bunch...in such a management structure, one actually creates a bunch of followers who are unfortunately called managers..

There are exceptions...and they are very few...and these are actual leaders who have the power to turn things around..

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