"let's fire all the people who will actually do the horrifically boring work our company actually does that makes a lot of money so that young people who would never work here can replace them!". brilliant!!!
Why not simply fire those who they don't want to work with anymore? They're clearly used to do that at IBM and it would be much more controlled and cost effective.
Yep, it's exactly what I'm saying. Managing out people is the kind of thing that ought to be punished by law (and in many sensible countries, is). Just fire people.
I think they don't do that any more. For one thing, it was too easy to game the system by hiring lousy people as targets for the next year's firings. And if a group was all good people... you ended up firing someone anyway.
In countries with functional labor laws, it's straight-up illegal unless you're basically going through bankruptcy. Mass firings should only happen if either 1) there's a very significant economic crisis going on, or 2) the company is doing so poorly its immediate future is uncertain.
The Silicon Valley style mass-hiring followed by mass-firing style of management is indicative of poor management. In a well-run company this should never happen, as the same could be achieved by simply reducing the hiring rate and letting natural attrition take care of the rest.
But that's the whole point of the "Hire to Fire" story. The claims being made here are not that managers are firing people to meet quotas, but that they are deliberately sabotaging some of their hires so they have a sacrificial lamb to fire.
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