Two months ago there was a news that raised some eye-brows, "Amazon has a quota for the number of employees it would be happy to see leave (businessinsider.com)" [1]. Some of the comments were quite negative, reading it as a dehumanizing practice with no clear upsides. Re-upping my reply [2]:
The article paints a needlessly bleak picture.
The neutral reading of the practice is, "managers are able to take riskier hiring decisions, because they are given an allowed turnover rate".
Which surprisingly enough is a solution to the ever-growing worry of false negatives in hiring - i.e., overlooking good candidates whos resume or interview did not shine strongly enough, or who perhaps are from a shunned, misunderstood culture, or who otherwise did not fit the generic hiring practice prevalent in the society. This solution allows an organization to make riskier hiring decisions at a well understood rate - hopefully catching the false negatives that did slip through competing organizations' hiring process.
The issue is with setting a quota as “must” vs “acceptable”
If you “must” find a way to pick fault with your employees because you can only give out 1 “exceeds expectations” and at least 1 “meets most” then you’re likely creating a toxic environment from that.
Similar to telling managers that they “probably should” thin the herd.
The article paints a needlessly bleak picture.
The neutral reading of the practice is, "managers are able to take riskier hiring decisions, because they are given an allowed turnover rate".
Which surprisingly enough is a solution to the ever-growing worry of false negatives in hiring - i.e., overlooking good candidates whos resume or interview did not shine strongly enough, or who perhaps are from a shunned, misunderstood culture, or who otherwise did not fit the generic hiring practice prevalent in the society. This solution allows an organization to make riskier hiring decisions at a well understood rate - hopefully catching the false negatives that did slip through competing organizations' hiring process.
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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27369910
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370538