Comment by OldHand2018
5 years ago
Right, it doesn't even need to be a bad environment. The situation might even be worse in a good environment.
Consider the team that has no dead weight at all. There is a normal talent distribution and everyone is productive.
Layoffs come around and the bottom 25% are let go. All that work needs to be distributed to the remaining developers. The best members of the team now have less time to work on the really hard, interesting problems because they have to pick up some of the boring work that still needs to be done. Some of them may leave because of this.
I've seen this happen.
Nothing like looking at truck numbers for things that you know how to do but hate doing to motivate you to find a new job. I've left twice when we hit 2, because I knew if we hit 1 I'd feel guilty about quitting, and then resentful about staying.
It's like a bad mix of Musical Chairs and Hot Potato where nobody wins.