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.
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).