> The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren't high performers.

It's almost impossossible to screen for "high performers" though. When interviewing, you just don't know who you are getting, short of like, they can solve your leetcode questions well, and they had good answers to pretty high-level "work experience" questions.

So I don't think this can be true on the hiring side. Maybe on choosing who they let go when cutting down the workforce, they can look at general performance reviews and such, but I doubt it plays a role in hiring.

I've paid for tools in the past, but I think there's a difference, the value of a lot of our tools isn't that great, but more importantly, there is a huge cost to adoption. Going in blind on a paid tool, putting in the time to learn and train yourself to use it, that's a high cost for something that you need to pay for entry and recurring after, that maybe 50 hours into it you start to realize you don't like it.

When I've paid for tools, it tends to be a tool that was free for me to start using, that is now part of my workflow and I love, and I am worried it won't continue to be maintained or updated so I pay for it.

I understand, but retired people rank highest on the happiness index, same as children, and the thing they have in common is nothing to do but play, relax, and have fun. Social housing probably doesn't allow for any form of play, and it's just scrapping by level of "surviving". I don't think it's a good example, and letting those people instead work 12h days, 7 day a week, at some repetitive, low pay, job, isn't gonna be all that better, and might be even more horrible.