A-players cannot learn new skills?
Basically, they want specialists and not A players[1] and then they discard and hire new specialists. Its HR checklistism disguised as elitism.
1) A players can learn new skills and still be A players. If they cannot, then they weren't A players.
> "Laura, our bookkeeper, was bright, hardworking, and
> creative. She’d been very important to our early growth,
> having devised a system for accurately tracking movie
> rentals so that we could pay the correct royalties. But
> now, as a public company, we needed CPAs and other fully
> credentialed, deeply experienced accounting professionals
> —and Laura had only an associate’s degree from a
> community college. Despite her work ethic, her track
> record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her
> skills were no longer adequate. Some of us talked about
> jury-rigging a new role for her, but we decided that
> wouldn’t be right."
A: Put Laura into a job that doesn't add any value to the company, and encourage Laura to retrain as a CPA. It's possible that Laura might be perfectly happy as a bookkeeper, and might not want to retrain. Also since the company needs a CPA immediately, the CPA job isn't guaranteed to be open if Laura finally does retrain, so the company would be asking for a big commitment from Laura with no promised reward at the end.
B: Give Laura a generous severance and a great reference, and help her find a job that is a reasonable "next step" for her in her career.)
Not that they asked. I'm sure Netflix would be more than happy to hire her back after some other company or government program completes her training. Except for cost, the might as well hire consultants because that's what they want. They want to provision employees like they provision servers.
And after all, why would an A player want to learn a new skill, if they can make a very good living using their present skillset (albeit in a different company)?
Netflix is not giving those people a choice. They're firing them with no notice.