That so called "old saying" you mention makes no sense in the real world. From my experience top % engineers hate working with bottom % engineers since they massively drag things down for everyone, so firing the bottom % ones actually makes life better for the top % and convinces them to stay, and vice versa, keeping bottom % engineers around for long actually convinces top % engineers to leave since they want to work with equally competent people who can get shit done and not be around incompetent people who coast and watch the clock, or worse, drag everyone down.
Over here in the real world of bottom 10% firing company cultures: those top engineers are leaving the company because they are tired of the culture of infighting and backstabbing, because setting up to others to fail and blaming them is just as effective as doing good work. Also, your super helpful generalist collaborator just got fired because everyone on your small team is highly performing and top down ruling was to fire 1/10 of each team.
I cannot think of a successful tech company that is still applying the GE 10% management style. It has consistently been shown to fail.
Where do you see me promoting the GE style? I was talking about getting rid of the incompetent people that skilled people don't like to work with (if you disagree you were probably never paired with one) since then your own performance suffers and makes you want to leave ASAP. Not about firing the bottom ranked 10% according to some random stack ranking that can be gamed.
It makes perfect sense in context. You're assuming that the bottom % of engineers drag things down because they're bad. That's not what it's about.
Some companies imposed rather brutal policies of "we do an annual review and sack the bottom x% of employees". This is done irrespective of whether they are bad, or simply the lowest strata (by your, possibly flawed, estimation) but still good. Because workers often don't know which group they will fall into, it produces enormous stress throughout. Few people like working under those conditions so those that can, leave. Who will that be? Those most able to leave. Who were they? Your best workers. Goodbye top tier...
Be aware that some people who contribute least to the bottom line are actually still very useful.
This kind of management brutality I believe is mostly died out now, for good reason.
Obviously it excludes all of the connections, institutional knowledge, and other duties as assigned that typically make up the brunt of the magic that keeps things functional but that managers are generally too afraid to acknowledge or ask for resources for, if they're even aware.
