>I'm not sure I understand the complaint. In your example you say BigCo honestly...
It's not a complaint as much as it is an observation, but I wouldn't categorize BigCo's behavior as honest, it is deceptive.
I'll assume you're not being obtuse, but let's be real for a moment. BigCo management harbors no specific animosity for the step-children, a few of whom are actually former BigCo employees. BigCo is a big company, and we're talking about a small part of it. BigCo is actually indifferent to the step-children; but BigCo has a stuffy corporate culture in which certain kinds of people thrive and some otherwise excellent people do not. BigCo knows that it can't really allow the step-children to mingle with the rank and file or else the step-childred might infect them with freedom of thought or whatever it was that enabled LittleCo to beat BigCo at "X", or else there will be a TPS report revolt, or something. BigCo also has practical reasons such as not needing so many people doing job-X.
>ergo the project wasn't made just to fire people
"Firing" people is right out, that's a dirty mean-sounding word, and BigCo already agreed not to do that, so they have to offer laterals or something. The project definitely had a purpose, and the purpose wasn't to have two internal groups competing against each other at job-X.
>even though a predictable chain of events might lead to the same result as if it had been
Okay, so if you grok that a chain of events can be set into motion that will achieve the goal of reducing staff with the least amount of pain for management, why don't you grok that management might choose to do so for the purpose of reducing staff? A rose by any other name, so to speak. Management must reduce staff, management never really wanted most of that additional staff to begin with, but took it on because they had to. Management has limited means with which to accomplish the staff reductions, one of which consists of a few bean-counting "PM's" and a micro-managing idiot savant.
>I think we might be saying more or less the same thing.
We seem to have vastly different ideas about why the things happen.
> We seem to have vastly different ideas about why the things happen.
It seems to me that you two agree on the observable parts of the theory and disagree on the motivation, which relies on their state of mind and is therefore not observable as such.
So it seems more like you agree than disagree to me, at least with respect to the things which can be observed.
Yes, and I'll admit that experiences can be quite different in different industries, companies, countries, whatever.
However, if you go back to a question I posed further up: "Imagine that you must reduce payroll. How do you do it without a layoff? What other option is there to purge a portion of your staff without causing lots of other problems?
If you accept the notion that there are some companies which will periodically purge some staff, and then observe that some of those companies rarely or never have layoffs, then don't you have to accept that there are some similar shenanigans playing out at some of these companies from time to time?
It's not a complaint as much as it is an observation, but I wouldn't categorize BigCo's behavior as honest, it is deceptive.
I'll assume you're not being obtuse, but let's be real for a moment. BigCo management harbors no specific animosity for the step-children, a few of whom are actually former BigCo employees. BigCo is a big company, and we're talking about a small part of it. BigCo is actually indifferent to the step-children; but BigCo has a stuffy corporate culture in which certain kinds of people thrive and some otherwise excellent people do not. BigCo knows that it can't really allow the step-children to mingle with the rank and file or else the step-childred might infect them with freedom of thought or whatever it was that enabled LittleCo to beat BigCo at "X", or else there will be a TPS report revolt, or something. BigCo also has practical reasons such as not needing so many people doing job-X.
>ergo the project wasn't made just to fire people
"Firing" people is right out, that's a dirty mean-sounding word, and BigCo already agreed not to do that, so they have to offer laterals or something. The project definitely had a purpose, and the purpose wasn't to have two internal groups competing against each other at job-X.
>even though a predictable chain of events might lead to the same result as if it had been
Okay, so if you grok that a chain of events can be set into motion that will achieve the goal of reducing staff with the least amount of pain for management, why don't you grok that management might choose to do so for the purpose of reducing staff? A rose by any other name, so to speak. Management must reduce staff, management never really wanted most of that additional staff to begin with, but took it on because they had to. Management has limited means with which to accomplish the staff reductions, one of which consists of a few bean-counting "PM's" and a micro-managing idiot savant.
>I think we might be saying more or less the same thing.
We seem to have vastly different ideas about why the things happen.
Side Answer: The usual way.