Would you fight to keep them? If not, why are they still here?
Netflix built a test for managers that skips the annual review entirely — and treats a generous goodbye as the kinder option.
Most companies handle mediocre performance the same way: quietly, slowly, on a schedule. A manager notices someone has stopped growing into the role, says nothing concrete, and waits for the next review cycle to make it official — often eight or ten months after the manager already knew.
Netflix's version, described by co-founder Reed Hastings in No Rules Rules, cuts the waiting out. Managers are asked, continuously, one question about each person on their team: if this person told you they were leaving for a similar role somewhere else, would you fight to keep them? If the honest answer is no — if you'd feel a flicker of relief instead of dread — the instruction isn't to coach them for another quarter. It's to let them go now, with an unusually generous severance package.
The test is blunter than standard performance management, and it's built on an uncomfortable premise: that keeping an adequate employee around out of loyalty or inertia isn't kindness, it's a cost paid by everyone else on the team who's quietly recalibrating their own standard downward to match. The generous exit is what makes the harshness defensible — the person leaves with real support, not a bad review and a shrug.
Most performance systems are built to justify keeping people. This one is built to make the alternative easy to say out loud.