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
Stack ranking is a solution to a larger problem, which is the issue of growth in overall "size of the tribe" and political networks that shade / obscure / fabricate performance views.

By the time you're stack ranking, you're deep into large company territory... dealing with the above issues.

Medical equivalent: People taking cancer drugs have a higher than average likelihood of dying. However, that's probably a function of having cancer vs. the performance of the drug.