>Actually in many cases the people laid off were doing work that didn't need to be done at all. Stuff that has to get done, stuff that's adding value... you keep the people who do that.
Unless the company is getting out of a certain business and laying off an entire department? yeah, you are going to cut off some working hands. The best you can hope for is to mostly hit people in the bottom third or bottom quarter of performance; better resolution than that is largely impossible, even for good management.
If you are 100% useless? you get fired before the layoffs. Layoffs take those perceived to be low performers, but people who aren't so bad that you want to outright fire them.
Everyone exists on a productivity continuum; few people are zeros.
That, and evaluating productivity is hard. Really, really hard, so mistakes will be made, and even good management is occasionally going to accidentally lay off someone who is very productive. And usually you get layoffs because management wasn't good. Bad management is going to make a lot of mistakes and get rid of a lot of good people.
I mean, I'm working from my experience on the ops team; going from 8 folks to 5 folks on the pager rotation is rough. Going from 2 to 1 is terrifying.
Unless the company is getting out of a certain business and laying off an entire department? yeah, you are going to cut off some working hands. The best you can hope for is to mostly hit people in the bottom third or bottom quarter of performance; better resolution than that is largely impossible, even for good management.
If you are 100% useless? you get fired before the layoffs. Layoffs take those perceived to be low performers, but people who aren't so bad that you want to outright fire them.
Everyone exists on a productivity continuum; few people are zeros.
That, and evaluating productivity is hard. Really, really hard, so mistakes will be made, and even good management is occasionally going to accidentally lay off someone who is very productive. And usually you get layoffs because management wasn't good. Bad management is going to make a lot of mistakes and get rid of a lot of good people.
I mean, I'm working from my experience on the ops team; going from 8 folks to 5 folks on the pager rotation is rough. Going from 2 to 1 is terrifying.