Item — HN Reader

How can they be maintaining these completely antithetitical interests, like wjy do they want to arbitrarily fire the person at all if they have already evaluated that person to be worthy of retention? Why is this even on the table in the absence of any failure to meet whatever metrics?

Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?

2 comments

I assume there are different competing priorities at play that converge in particularly dumb ways sometimes.

Some stakeholders latched onto the idea of churning some % of staff each year in an effort to, I guess, eventually filter the entire human population for the best possible employees.

Some people want to make it look like their HR team is doing a lot of useful stuff.

Some people want to boost their own department's metrics.

Some people want to work with a team to achieve actual business goals.

> Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?

This has always been my interpretation. The "everybody is replaceable" mindset comes from Amazon retail warehouses, and bled into the rest of the company.

Even Bezos?

"Everybody" meaning "the normie plebs who work for a living".

I think I did read about there having been extensive succession plans and efforts established already