> Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs.
This is totally not true. Usually they make jobs redundant not people. If there's a pool of people doing the same job and that headcount is reduced then it will often be the lowest performers that go however some places have done LIFO or cut the most expensive.
However if you're doing layoffs and you reduce your frontend team the it's likely low performers from the backend team get to stick around.
The software engineers are likely going to be some of the highest paid employees, so laying off underperforming engineers is going to help reduce labor costs substantially.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but often businesses lay off the high-performing-but-best-paid people because that drives the biggest savings while reducing the vanity headcount metric less, especially in companies where the effort of the team greatly outweighs any individual. They assume (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) that the team will carry on without the 'superstar' people. There's also an assumption that the best people will leave when there's a layoff (mostly rightly), so getting rid of them means maintaining control of who's gone.
There should never been an assumption that you're safe from layoffs because you're the highest performing person on the team. Sadly.
The issue with layoffs is that it's not just the low performers being fired. Typically managers are given a preference or salary amount that has to be cut. Inevitably the low performers are the first to be out on the list, but often times they'll also cut some of the high projects because they're making too much money. This even assumes that it's the managers making the decisions. If not, what happens is that layoffs are random message by someone outside the department and you can get stuck with low performers
Layoffs don't just layoff lowest performers, they often layoff departments that the company doesn't find necessary anymore. High performers are laid off all the time.
Just a note, but this is a perfect time for companies to lay off low performers without getting a lot of flak. This is usually the case when you see companies lay off people while continuing to hire as well.
It's simply not true and very observable if you've ever been at a company that does layoffs. Plenty of good teams get let go or entire groups in the company from management down are let go, it just doesn't make sense that they would all be "low-performers". Some low-performers will be caught up in layoffs, sure, but plenty will remain at the company too.
Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. It's the one window that companies can mostly let go of employees without being sued. (Though, if they lay off too many people in a protected class, still can get sued). What's interesting about a lot of the division or sector-downturn layoffs, that you end up seeing solid performers, and, when you are dropping a good portion of your division - very good performers let go. Most companies try to make a play for keeping their 10x developers - but, I've been in layoffs (Browser Division, Netscape, 1997sh) - where just absolutely everyone was dropped, regardless of performance.
If you're laying off people, you're going to also get rid of the low performers. Maybe you don't have enough low performers (or just don't know who they are) to make up the quota and you have to remove whole teams or use arbitrary metrics, but there will be an overrepresentation of below-average workers compared to the survivors. Source: wife is a manager at a company that had single-digit percent layoffs.
A lot of people seem to imagine layoffs happening (or that they should happen) according to some well-calibrated stack ranking at the company level. But that's not typical at all.
Sure some employees on PIPs or otherwise considered low performance may be cut regardless of role. But more typically projects get cut/defunded (whether in engineering or elsewhere) and those roles are eliminated or cut back. A good performer may have an opportunity to find a job elsewhere in the company but, in my experience, that's pretty hard given that any open slots were probably also closed as part of the layoff and everyone is pretty distracted anyway.
Just to be slightly contrarian, I've also seen in tech companies that layoffs are often the only way to get rid of "mediocre-ly poor" but not egregiously bad performers.
That is, I've worked with people that didn't completely suck, but to quote Office Space, they always did the absolute bare minimum. Few companies have the Netflix mindset of letting people go with a large severance if they aren't top performers, so these mediocre folks can just be allowed to fester.
TBH, I've been glad as an engineer to see the company (belatedly) handle these sub-par performers, and to these folks benefit they get a fair severance and can usually find other jobs quickly.
Of course not all layoffs are like this, and often times layoffs at a large company are done "unevenly" as others have pointed out, but I have been in a company before where layoffs allowed the company to focus and perform better.
I've found the opposite. I almost never see low performing employees fired outside of a mass layoff. In every layoffs I've seen 10x as many people were fired as quit. So you lose a bunch of low performers involuntarily, and a few top performers both voluntarily and involuntarily and that leads to the average quality improve.
Often these 10% layoffs are an excuse to get rid of people that are overpaid, aren't performing or dont fit very well in the organization. Some companies do it every year.
I believe it. Obviously there are exceptions, when a whole function is dropped for example. And the biggest caveat is that "low performer" in the eyes of a company is does not equate to any kind of objective judgement about a person's intelligence or competency, it's heavily situation dependent.
That aside, it's common sense that the people laid off are skewed towards those that the company doesn't want, so people at the bottom of what the company defines as performance. Companies don't just arbitrarily dump those who are making great contribution to what the company considers important, whatever they may tell you
At my previous job, the company laid off 1000 people, but only 3% of engineering…
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