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He's advocating that the powers-that-be should consider targeting a slightly underdamped hiring system. Where they over-hire, and as they're overshooting the goal then reduce the rate of hiring, allowing the normal low rate of attrition to bring the PV back down to the SP.

e.g. a one-half critically-damped system. something following a standard first-order ODE like:

  \frac{dh}{dt} = K_p (h^\* - h) - K_i \int (h^\* - h) dt - f(h)
where h is the instantaneous number of employees, h* is the desired number of employees, f(h) is your attrition rate as a function of current number of employees, and Kp and Ki are "rate of hiring" coefficients which will be your proportional and integral terms of a PID controller to control your rate of hiring. The point is, the "rate of layoffs" here is zero and doesn't appear as a term.

Is this a proper model for a human organization? Who the fuck knows but it's the model you're advocating for and I'm just re-explaining what the other guy you replied to was suggesting in the first place, but this time using your framing. Yes, he also mentioned they should consider a slightly over damped system but he 100% did advocate for considering an underdamped system.



Right, I was advocating for underdamped. Yes you overshoot, but you generally spend more time near your setpoint (optimal value).


Ehhhh, your argument was more that "severely underdamped" could be the best, even if it requires an additional forcing factor (firing/layoffs) to bring it back down to the setpoint.

The person you replied to was arguing that perhaps something a bit more mildly underdamped could get rid of the requirement for that extra complication (firing / layoffs).


Yeah, and I disagree. Goal should be to get to the setpoint as quickly as possible even if you overshoot as human nature is to keep the status-quo which generally means talented people wasting their time at obsolete companies.




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