This assumes that companies view their employees as individuals. At a certain scale, companies inevitably start viewing their employees as "resources" that behave more like robots than human beings.

There is no way for somebody like Nadella to have an understanding of most employees' performance, and the chain of management is so long that he doesn't trust anyone else's ability to ascertain individual performance. This leads to the introduction of "objective measurements" of performance, which further undermines trust, as everyone now starts trying to manipulate the numbers.

I think at some point, it's just inevitable that C-level management takes decisions based on the assumption that people are replaceable and that the difference between a great performer and a poor performer is essentially irrelevant.

> I think at some point, it's just inevitable that C-level management takes decisions based on the assumption that people are replaceable and that the difference between a great performer and a poor performer is essentially irrelevant.

Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that someone who has spent their entire career in the tech industry actually believes this.

The "backdoor layoffs" theory seems suspect to me more generally. It's not like they're particularly averse to doing layoffs the normal way. Especially now where the signal from big tech company doing layoffs is "we're really good at AI".