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1. rwhitm+(OP)[view] [source] 2015-08-06 16:55:34
The keyword you're looking for here is "topgrading". Basically it's management social darwinism that breaks down a team into "A Players" "B Players" and so on with the end goal being to weed out anything below "A-" by applying extra pressure on them until they either turn into "A players", or quit. Firing is a last resort. Netflix in particular is well known for encouraging people to voluntarily quit if they can't hack it.

The question is of course if all the "A Players" live and breath the company, voluntarily coming into the office on weekends, doing conference calls at 4AM etc - and you are the kind of person who values their family for instance, and wants a little work life separation, what score do you get? What happens if when offered a year long paternity leave, you actually take them up on it? How hostile will the environment be at the company when you return? Or what happens if you have a medical problem that impacts your job performance? And so on...

But, to answer your question... I once got sucked into a management overhaul at a company that used Netflix-style topgrading as justification for a wave of layoffs. The whole self-deportation aspect of it doesn't work very well - people dragging their feet in a job are often reluctantly there because they need things like medical insurance, have bills to pay and families to feed. Being able to just up and voluntarily quit a job because you're "not a good fit" is a luxury. So everyone who was a "B Player" (aka in a role that wasn't well defined) got put through hell for a month then fired, and then the remaining "A Players" lost morale and took up the voluntary quitting aspect. So basically it backfired into brain-drain and a chronic "A Player" retention problem.

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