Yeah, I was going to say, the average BigCorp has probably 30-40% dead weight. So cutting close to half of that is probably not a terribly heavy lift. Most managers already have a stack rank, in their head at least.

Yeah, exactly, and you only actually use 10% of your brain. Probably don’t need two hemispheres to be honest.

Since we know that to be false, I assume you're just being a smartass. If you disagree, there are more polite, constructive ways to say so.

You made up a statistic, what good does it do to spread misinformation?

You are calling it false, yet you haven't provided any citations either.

That's not how burden of proof works. You can't just brain fart random numbers and then demand others disprove it.

He made an estimate of dead weight based on his experience. I think we can all agree it's >1% and <99%. Of course, "dead weight" is a ill-posed, incompletely defined notion, so definitional issues abound, too.

The next step is to discuss the usefulness and your own perspective, not to mock.

Sorry if it seems flippant, but I provided just as much justification for my argument as you did.

No, you made a straight up false claim. He was merely estimating at an unknown.

Exactly. Take a look around and imagine your company with 10-15% less.

Most people don't find that such a terrible idea.

That really depends on the distribution of the layoffs.

The 10-15% percent aren't necessarily all bad performers but might just be people working on teams that are to be disbanded entirely.

Yeah, if it is mandated "all teams cut 10%" it can be disaster.

Team that managed to hire good people and fire bad performers already ? You're basically taking productivity out.

Ops team that every other software team is dependent on and already overloaded ? Now every other team will feel delay in dealing with their stuff.

I found the context interesting, but this line addresses the question nicely without much overthinking.

> 10-15% seems to be the number that reflects “big enough that I can tell myself and my investors or board I am doing it, but not so big that it causes truly uncomfortable conversations for the team”

Because generally their workload goes up concommitantly, because there is no backfill.