The truth of the matter I think is that you do not actually need the best.

Most of the time, anyway.

As far as business is concerned, the thing often runs better with mid people with less leverage. They just do their job, don't have any ideas and you can squeeze them.

Because it's not all the best that are leaving. Just the ones not stuck with a mortgage or similar stuff. This cuts the wings of very capable people and completely strips them off their bargaining power. Which is very useful to management.

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siva7 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> The truth of the matter I think is that you do not actually need the best.

Not all employees need to be the "best". But if you are a top tier company in a given field like Microsoft, you need the best minds to stay top tier, otherwise you will descend. But on the other hand you don't need the lower tier performers to stay top tier except for scaling reasons because the supply for top tier performers is a very small pool...

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hypfer 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

You can still keep some of the best minds, but you do not need them on every team and every project.

I might be wrong, but I doubt that these mass buyouts were also offered to those that are strategically relevant. Though I guess that can happen if that specific branch of the management tree is bad at their jobs

	▲	siva7 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's true. Other ways are to offer "secret" bonuses and other perks to the talent you want to keep. If the management / department wants to keep you no matter what, you will clearly notice this despite mass layoffs.

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selicos 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What management thinks is good and what employees, especially engineering type employees, think is good are usually counter.

The execs want to run the most profit to cost they can squeeze out, usually short term. The employees see the value in the senior and knowledge rich staff with higher costs long term.

	▲	hypfer 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Arguably, management might be more often than not more right in their assessment. Which hurts me to say. But engineers tend to make for terrible businessmen. (There are exceptions of course, and the opposite is _even worse_)

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nashashmi an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That is a rule for a good project manager. When work is simple, you don't need bright people. You just need average guys. But when work is cutting edge, you need very talented people.

I think the efforts on cutting edge works has been reduced and redirected to more market-dominating trends like LLM optimizations. This is a bet. Cut off the finger for a stronger arm. And I think this bet will fail. But I thought the same about this new Gemini after Bard, and boy I was wrong.