In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes.
The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be done where they can do better relative to the role.
I'm not saying that's always done, e.g. if the gap between abilities and performance is huge. But in my experience it usually can.
And often, if things like performance improvement plans doesn't work, it costs less to simply freeze pay etc. for such employees until inflation does its magic and they're no longer expensive for their reduced responsibility or they decide to leave (but such employees often hang on and quietly accepts their diminished responsibility because they realize they were lucky not to get fired).
I don't believe in firing outside of extreme cases, and neither have most of the companies I've worked in, but that's not the same as not being prepared to take action to move people out of roles they're unable to perform well. Personally I see it as a sign of an unhealthy corporate culture and poor hiring if a company need to regularly fire more than a very tiny proportion of employees.
I never said it was. My comparison would be on termination for dissatisfactory work.
Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments). I worked at IBM, I saw it plenty. Peer quality and management's tolerating of low quality work are among the many reasons I left.
But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people? Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture? Many companies can't afford waste, and as strange as it sounds, can't often afford low-salary, low-skilled labor. Humans are our biggest expenditure, we can't just keep adding indiscriminately even with modest growth lest we hurt our customers with increased prices. Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).
My comment applies to that too: One fired out of hundreds of people I've worked with.
It costs money to hire and fire people all the time - most of the time chances are good it's cheaper to shift people around than get rid of someone to hire a replacement.
> Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments).
In my case my career has been almost entirely startups. It's worked fine.
> But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people?
That's how it's worked in every small company I've worked in.
> Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture?
Yes. I for one - as someone generally seen as high performing - would leave if I found myself in a company where people got fired all over the place. I don't want to work in that kind of toxic environment. As such you're creating additional risks when you keep firing.
> Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).
I work in software, and as I mention, I'm not seeing it. What I keep seeing are low performing people who often become good at obscuring how poorly they perform because they know if they stick their head out, they'll face the axe rather than a chance to find a better fit.
And many are very good at it. I've had CV's from people with very distinguished careers that couldn't code fizzbuzz if their life depended on it.
A sign of how dangerous that is, is how often I see people call out e.g. performance improvement plans or training plans as a "trick" that will get you managed out. Because some places they are used mostly to get rid of people rather than to improve people.
It sets up an extremely adversarial environment, and I suspect that given a perpetual lack of understanding of the need to actually provide proper training and support for new managers in tech, that peoples capability to obscure low performance far exceeds managers ability to root it out most places.
what I did see on a major scale was manipulation of the performance system to force people into leaving.
When an employee's performance is actually negative, i.e. they make things worse rather than better e.g. due to personality issues, then moving them around isn't going to work well.
A lot of the time people are just not in the position that's right for them.
And a lot of the time the right position for such a person is in a different company.
If I may posit a third for consideration: for-cause termination is such an insurmountable bureaucratic hurdle that supervisors pragmatically opt to pursue inter/intradepartmental transfer, effectively making the employee "someone else's problem".
And, if the top of the organization is dysfunctional, making termination much easier (especially where 'easier' means 'no obligation to cite justification') just gives the psychos and empire builders more unchecked power.
If termination were easier but 80% based upon a majority of coworkers signing a document stating "this person is not doing their job properly" you could raise accountability and euthanize the empire builders at the same time, but somehow I don't think when they say "it's too hard to fire people" that's what they're aiming for.
Fair enough and thanks for the clarification. In that case, I definitely agree with your perspective, both logically and anecdotally.