Thanks for sharing man. Not a good situation to be in. I used to be close to a libertarian but now I am a social democrat. When you lived longer you realize that everybody can have bad times. Living through them yourself makes it easier to stop judging other people.

It is why I believe in solidarity with each other, rather than some dog-eat-dog world. I never believed in this idea of kicking out the lowest performers. Where are these people supposed to go? Just some musical chairs where they thrown between different companies? Just live off welfare?

If people are not doing their job or are negligent you got to let them go. But as long as they are doing their job it shouldn't matter that they don't are not great at it. Imagine if schools kept kicking out students who get the lowest grades but otherwise passed?

The problem with the whole bell curve approach is that it causes somebody else to suffer when others increase their performance. It is what happened at Microsoft. They kept kicking out the lower performers but that was within teams of people who in the grand scheme of things were all top performs. Doesn't matter how great you are at your job if you are together with people who are even more awesome at their job.

At Microsoft this lead to people starting to sabotage each other. That is unhealthy. People should instead try to lift each other up and helping somebody get better should not put your own job on the line.

I have been at workplaces where there are people who don't necessarily show the most work done to their manager but who contribute so much to helping everybody else succeed that they are a great asset to the company.

I remember having a colleague who was perhaps not the sharpest programmer anymore, but he was such a fun guy that you really enjoyed being at work. It made work better to be at. People can contribute in so many ways that are hard to measure.

If one feels some people are dragging the company down then we should try to help them get better. Sometimes the job doesn't fit them. A company I worked with managers had a talk with a guy about what they thought he was good at and what they thought he wasn't so good at. I cannot remember if they fired him but they basically told him we don't think this job is optimal for you but we think you would do great at X instead.

That actually had a happy ending. He switched jobs to something he was good at and the mangers there reported back that they had very good experience with him.

I think a good part of this story is that they didn't view the guy as merely a problem to get rid of. They also cared about his situation and his future. I think we can all care a bit ore about each other.

The way Google kicked out people was not exactly an exercise in caring about people. I was let go in the early 2000s by Accenture due to the dot Com bubble burst. But they were very good in handling this. I was not forced out. They called me in for a talk where they laid out the challenges they faced. They offered me a severance package. I didn't have to take it but they said that if I didn't I might have to be let go at a later stage. They could not guarantee my future job.

For me it turned out very well. I got a job which was actually nicer and had extra pay for 3 months. I never felt ill will towards Accenture for it. They did everything they could to help me out get a new job. I got to stay in their office for a couple of weeks to use their facilities to find a new job and allow us all to share tips and advice. We didn't like you just get blocked and kicked out without notice.

Then again I live in Norway where that would simply be illegal. I got a good experience in large part because social democracy created rules and regulations to help workers. I know my American colleagues never had the same good experience. Hence it wasn't really about the company as such. It was more about the country they operated in, and the labour laws of that country which encouraged a nicer approach to workers.

An approach I think every worker deserves. I think you would have deserved it too, rather than lightning from the sky.