Top performers have options and value stability. They also know that they rely on their manager to accurately reflect their work up the chain.

Some percentage of top performers report to deadbeat managers, so in an environment doing mandatory layoffs, they'll know that it doesn't matter how much they knock it out of the park, their manager will screw them. So of course they'll leave.

If you're a top performer stuck under a deadbeat manager, how are you able to signal to new companies that you're a top performer?

I read posts here all the time about how hard it is to hire. How do top performers distinguish themselves as they go out for new jobs? When did this become easy?

> How do top performers distinguish themselves as they go out for new jobs?

During an interview process, and by using your network. Top performers aren't usually slinging applications through LinkedIn in my limited experience

> When did this become easy? It isn't, they're referred to as top performers for a reason. It's easier for folks who excel in their fields, and that holds true across domains.

The secret is that top performers are hired by word of mouth, they don't go through the usual processes.

As others here are saying you know the right people. Which is probably a pretty unsatisfactory answer and seems very unfair for those who don't.

I don't know where I fit on the scale but I'm confident I'm in the top 50%. I got only one job (an early one in my career) through the "normal" way of sending lots of applications for public postings. Every other job has come through my network or a targeted recruiting process.

In most cases, someone you worked with before who liked working with you suggests to their employer or someone in their professional network they hire you. Could be an old classmate, coworker, open source collaborator, even someone you know through a hobby.

I don't know if I'm a top 10% employee, but I'll share how layoffs influenced my decision to leave a job of 5+ years. I started looking for a new role after they announced the layoff of about 200 people in my organization. When I finally got an offer, I kept going back and forth on staying and negotiating or accepting the offer. There were many other reasons why I left, but a huge factor were the layoffs. I just kept thinking, they already had layoffs, what's to stop them from laying me off next? It's also a crappy feeling thinking that you/your team can be on the chopping block at any time.

Because disloyalty breeds disloyalty and distrust breeds distrust.

The top people have the best opportunities elsewhere, so they leave first.

Even if they don't quit outright, they are likely to quiet quit, because why put in the effort when it is rewarded with disloyalty?

Because they have a good chance of hiring a better employer and will either do that or stop being your top ten percent

Because people will often see people who they don't perceive as low performers getting lumped in with 'low performers' and laid off. At that point, you start looking for management that seem to know what they're doing.

But only top 10% start looking?

This all sounds like a hand wavy hypothetical.

Everybody starts looking, but it’s the top performers who get disproportionately more offers and leave.

because they see the company struggles and is not loyal, as top performers have plenty of options they will be more likely to take a better offer when it comes along. Top performers will not leave the same day but bleed out over a bit longer timeframe. The most popular example is woz hesitating so much to leave HP because HP was loyal to employees and woz was loyal to HP. Imagine the same situation when HP had just let go 10% of employees, he would not have thought about it twice.

Top performers are generally pretty sharp. If they recognize the company is struggling and decide they have a better future elsewhere then that’s where they’ll go.

I have only ever quit jobs in response to layoffs. Layoffs demonstrate to me that the company is apparently low on cash if they need to fire people to make ends meet. If they are not low on cash, it means that they will arbitrarily fire anyone in order to pump up their stock.

Though I've never personally been laid off, it's a black mark on the company that I think you can never recover from. It means I will never trust anything said at a quarterly all-hands. The projections they give us employees are spun to be more positive than they really are.

During COVID, my company told us that we were going to be able to save money by breaking the lease on our office building and stop paying for amenities like the snacks in the break room and catered lunches (since nobody could use them anyways). This, they said, should save us enough money that we don't need to lay anyone off!

10% of the company was laid off a week later. The next day, I would later discover, the company applied for a PPP loan: they had laid people off pre-emptively so that they wouldn't be penalized for it next year when they sought to have their PPP loan forgiven.

It illustrated to me that you can't trust leadership, ever. Once a company initiates a layoff, it's a permanent black mark on that company

Anecdotally layoffs leave a bad taste. I worked at a smallish company that laid of 20% going into covid and within 2 years most of the best talent churned out.

It gutted moral, basically.

I think because - if you fire a poor performer, everyone kind of gets it - they weren’t doing a good job, they’re a drain on company resources, they’ve got it coming, basically.

But lying off isn’t firing someone for performance - it’s admitting “we don’t have enough money to pay you”

And that’s something that should be scary to everybody in the company.

When your shitty coworker gets fired, you shrug and say, yeah, saw that coming. When your shitty coworkers get laid off, you look around nervously and think phew, l lucked out.