Why top firms fire good workers

Case 1: You're a high performer, one year into the role. A colleague, who's been around longer but struggled, gets promoted not necessarily on merit, but on their ability to manage up. Your early contributions are quietly absorbed into their promotion case. Once they step into a managerial role, the dynamics shift. Unless you stay quiet and compliant, you’re suddenly less welcome in the team.

Case 2: High Performers: Some managers (even partners) feel threatened when team members build credibility with clients. I’ve seen situations where a client repeatedly requesting a specific consultant backfired on that consultant. At year-end reviews, client recognition turned into a liability, not an asset.

Credit Allocation:In some Big 4 setups, CRM credit allocation is less about contribution and more about visibility and tagging. Accounts are assigned to partners who may not actively engage, yet receive full credit. Technical sales teams, who drive actual deals but don't "own" accounts, often find their impact diluted. In some cases, partners even tag themselves as "owners" of said accounts mid-pursuit to claim credit post-close. At the year end, the actual deal closers are usually running around begging partners for credit. You might end up getting 30% of what you actually closed. This works well for partners as incentives outflow is reduced leaving money on the table.

Event Marketing Shell Game: Large-format partner-led events in places like Goa or Dubai are positioned as knowledge exchange and brainstorming events. Behind the scene Sales teams are pushed hard to invite prospects where the engagement has been going on for months. When those deals close weeks/months later, the event organizers often claim the outcome; regardless of who did the heavy lifting.

> In short, the “up-or-out” path of professional life may not just be a cultural phenomenon among top professional service firms but also an efficient response to how reputation is maintained and information flows. What looks like a ruthless system of constant turnover, the researchers argue, is in reality a finely tuned mechanism that helps the market discover and reward true talent.

For people who are fans of this system, I genuinely want to understand how one overcomes the common sense, humanitarian centric rejection of corpo speak like this. Is it about just drinking the koolaid?

Actually there was a discussion about cults yesterday and now that I think about it, I'm seeing all sorts of parallels here: inventing new words and using that to complete redefine reality and transform your fundamental understanding of how the universe works or should work, supplanting with your made up fantasy world and rules that rewards the best play actor.

The wiki page doesn't do it full justice, as I understood it it is:

* A firm can easily end up in a situation where weak performers stay as long as they can, and strong performers leave because they can operate independently. This can have a very strong effect because the partners or permanent management starts seeking out work to keep the bulk of their remnant people busy, which is not the high end work that builds the firms reputation.

* Instead, make offers every year to the top 3 people from each Ivy League law school, but the offers are for 18 months only.

* If the new people aren't going to make partner ever, don't keep them around. Let them know well before the 18 months are up, and have them pick the corporate clients they like and work with them so they can jump over to working for the client directly, and they will then always come back to the mothership when the giant, interesting, complex case comes along.

* Out of each "class" you make partner offer to only the best, maybe none, each year.

This differs from the article because the firm is keeping the best and sending out the rest.

But maybe most firms aren't like the Cravath, they prefer to over charge clients for a weak performer then charge and pay a strong performer ? Maybe this makes sense if you have a very short term view of the life of your firm and it's reputation ?

You have clearly not worked in any major company in India, Or even other nations (since PIP is a common process worldwide in most companies).

Any employee can escalate to the company Ombudsman if they feel they are being subjected to unfair treatment or inappropriate processes. It is the job of the Ombudsman to be neutral and do an thorough impartial investigation.

PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) is a formal process, it even HR and senior management (skip level 1 manager at the very least) are involved in it. There is specific time duration and set of expectations given formally (under review process with HR, so there is full transparency) to the employee to improve the performance.

A top performer cannot be nixed via PIP, because the onus of performance proofs is on the employee and those evidences are visible to HR and upper management.

PIP is used to nix bad performers, not top performers.

Typically, even if an employee clears PIP, they need to get an "Exceed Expectations" (or equivalent) appraisal rating in the next appraisal cycle in order to continue in the organisation, but if they get lower rating instead, they are in hit list to be nixed during next round of job cuts whenever it happens.

Top performers may quit due to office politics and lack of growth, but PIP is not their way out.

PIP is a permanent black mark on an employee's record (which is maintained historically), so it disallows the company from hiring that person again if that person exited due to PIP.

Top companies in India and elsewhere have very formal processes, including Ombudsman and PIP, which get audited.