Software engineers are not commanders or generals and it is NOT difficult to fire someone in the United States of America. Everyone in this industry has a at-will contract.
However, high rates of employees getting fired is bad for culture. People are always anxious about their jobs - if they see a few colleagues fired for nonperformance, a number of them will be driven to anxiety. (I am one of these people, and being anxious about job security ironically makes me much worse at my job)
One of the things I've liked about freelancing/contracting is that I know I'm going to get "fired" (we call it "successful completion of the project" but its the same thing, just that they would like to have me work for them again). And since it happens on a regular basis, I also am practiced in finding a new job and I know about how long it will take and what types of prospects to look for. It's really reduced job anxiety for me, although I never had too much.
Although as a counterpoint, it's also easier to get work, because part of the value I'm providing is that you "fire" me whenever you want and no hard feelings. So nobody does "leetcode interviews", because it's not like we're getting married, like an employee. So there's much lower risk to hiring someone, because a bad hire doesn't infect anything, because you expected it to be temporary in the first place.
Right but I also do think that FAANG is over-estimating how many of and how bad these "bad apples" aka. slighly above average developers would be and how terribly difficult all the work they do is.
When you have your pick of the bunch, of course you're going to look at slightly above average as "bad".
I'm not sure how much engineer skill matters though. One slightly above engineer might be fine. But if half your org is made up of slightly above average engineers, I feel like there will be a knock-on effect.
I don't know maybe my view of slightly above average is inflated but I think of that bunch (which I might be a part of) as being easily pulled in by good technical leadership. If only to make their life ultimately easier / less painful. You don't need 60-70% amazing engineers to do that. But I guess they can do whatever they want. They have infinite money and unfortunately a good reputation (in many cases unwarranted). They've become like the Harvard or Yale of tech. Oh you went to Google, great come on in and join us.
