zlacker

>>kisna7+(OP)
"average" with respect to the company, or the population of programmers as a whole? If normally distributed and sufficiently large, you'd be getting rid of half your company under the former. The latter seems like a tough thing to measure to begin with. I can't imagine either really being the case.

Though it does sound somewhat similar to the concept of "stack ranking", which a few companies (such as MS) are notable for having used as part of their annual review process in the past.

Stack ranking has always sounded to me like an absolutely poisonous thing to implement in an otherwise healthy office. But if the organization knows that it needs to implement a reduction in force regardless, then I guess it might make sense if management does not have a feel for who their best engineers are.

>>thearn+N1
I think you make a good point about how to define average. I am not sure what the npr people meant when they said average. I was assuming industry average. However, the questions then is - if the managers are used to seeing only high performance engineers, how do they gauge whether the engineer is really average performer. It seems like managers subjective views and their biases would matter a lot.