I was consulting once for a large company when one of those came down. A manager I was working with really cared about his team, and it bothered him that he had to lay off one person for basically no good reason besides corporate politicking. He pushed against it for a while, but when they wouldn't relent, he laid himself off.

That didn't totally make sense, as they still had to find a manager for his team. But since the whole layoff was arbitrary, it didn't have to make sense. His whole team stayed.

I always thought it was a baller move. And looking at LinkedIn, he's had a solid career since, so it clearly didn't hurt him any.

So its, pick the least social performers, false friends and in-efficient co worker backstabbers.

It's often not underperformers. Just "pick x% of your team"