True iff there are people to hire who are better, cost of hire is low && latency of hire is low.

In many situations none of those things hold. In some of these situations investing in the failing team is far better than checking them out and then repeating the disaster.

And, remember others are watching. If you have a rep as an axeman a lot of people won't work for you - no ifs, no buts, no amount of comp will make a difference. You can end up with the B team - a B team who won't look you in the eye and produces 70 pages of evidence at every evaluation.

Good luck with your management career!

FYI - The official line for several FAANG’s is that the week/day level of micromanagement done as part of typical performance management for underperformers is referred to as investment. And it kinda is - about 25% of the people I’ve had to do it for did well (4 if I remember correctly). Another 25% needed a clear ‘you need to improve or you’re out’ message that merely saying it to them did not provide. They needed the paperwork. They reset and got their act together right away, and the ‘micromanagement’ consisted of checking in with them for a few weeks or a month until it was clear that their trajectory was changed. Roughly another 25% had mis-fitting roles or expectations (one was a CS major, and despite interviewing for and taking a coding job, realized they hated coding about 2 kmonths in).

The remaining 25% approx. fought the whole way, refused to take any ownership of their issues, and were a huge relief for the team when they were gone - and in the environment I dealt with most of these cases? It was incredibly, incredibly hard to get rid of them. 3+ months of constant work, mandatory weekly check-ins and micromanagement, you name it.

I don’t like firing people, but I hate toxic team environments, and recognize it helps no one for someone to stay in a culture/org/team that clearly doesn’t work. I personally always put the work in, because I knew how important it was. I’ve seen many managers not do that.

I agree with you that it’s better to fire a not fit. I’ve also seen many (50%ish) turn it around after or shortly after other companies would have summarily fired them.

Big Corp, especially big tech Corp, has a giant target on it’s back and is very risk adverse to firing (justifiably so) in many cases, even if it hurts the team or the individual.