It's interesting to ponder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The knee jerk reaction is this is all very unhealthy but I wonder if it is really. Imagine we were talking about back-up quarterbacks in the NFL. That individual is probably one heck of a quarterback and athlete, and they did excellent in lesser teams which is what got them into the NFL in the first place. But, they are a back-up quarter back in the NFL, not a starter. If they continue to remain a back-up quarterback, should they be PIP'ed or not?
In an NBA reference, the fallen elite athletes from US teams would venture to Europe or Asia and play there. They’re still getting paid, and the European teams are better because of it.
There are 1000’s of accounts where these solutions architects would be better than the existing architects. Instead of sending them down into the minor leagues, we are firing them. Seems short sighted, and a waste of talent.
You only ever have one quarterback playing for a team at once. no matter how successful the team becomes. presumably with a company, you are constantly growing and should need to grow your talent pool constantly. And how do I know that next year's new recruits are going to be as good as this year's pip'ed employees?
I think the trouble is that most teams don’t need this level of performance. They don’t need the top .0001%. Those teams are the edge cases not even worth talking about.
And more importantly, not the ones you want to model your team after.