The conventional thinking is that it is easier to add top IT talent to an organization during an economic downturn, as layoffs have forced many good people onto the market, and others are eager to jump ship to any company that is actually growing or doing interesting things in IT.
There are alternative theories out there, including Auren Hoffman’s suggestion that it is actually harder to get top talent now, because more C-players are being let go, thus skewing the talent ratio and creating more “noise” in your hiring process:
In troubled economic times, anyone can get laid off, but a disproportionate number of layoffs tend to fall on C-players. This is because they are the lowest performing people in a company and there generally are more C-players at a company than any other caliber.
I believe Auren’s theory may hold true for smaller organizations, where a leadership team can closely manage the RIF process with little HR/Legal involvement or complications, hopefully raising the bar for their entire team during the process.
Within larger enterprises, the intricacies of a large RIF process, the likelihood that it will be driven in part by HR and Legal protocols, the need to manage legal and PR risk, and real inconsistencies in the review/grading process across large teams may push more A/B players out into the market than one would imagine. Add to this the fact that A/B talent is always more likely to be looking whenever a company is under financial pressure or cutting back on interesting IT work.