The best way for a company to avoid being stuck with dead wood is by way of voluntary, NOT involuntary reduction (other than firing for things like incompetence). Layoffs that fail to take all critical factors into account wind up getting rid of the bad with the good.

That's stupid.

In my first professional job, after 7 years I got caught in the last of several rounds of layoffs. A new supervisor who felt threatened by my team leadership promoted me just before the layoff decisions. Turns out being at the bottom of any given job class was enough to qualify an employee for being cut. I had just turned in an innovative process improvement estimated to save the company $250,000 per year.

In a later job I got a major promotion after several years hard work. I was running our local PDM operations in Dallas. During a regular meeting my boss informed me that he was puzzled by our new director's remark that he felt I was paid too much for a "clerk" (I was an administrator and had 2 clerks reporting to me). I informed my boss that what it meant was I would be in the next round of layoffs. My boss laughed and said no way: he needed me badly and had secured my salary for at least 2 more years. Three days later I was laid off, and my boss was stunned. They had never even asked him. Want to know what I found out about the criteria? The CFO organized the layoffs; the top 1 or 2 wage earners in every department were to be cut regardless of history, role, whatever. I had just submitted a new invention for patent consideration (part of my prior role) and had saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in innovative process improvements.

About Nokia I will only say I was told the criteria was being American and having moved from factory operations to timezone (and then global). Supposedly our services were only needed temporarily, and most of the global roles were meant to actually be local eventually. Well, that made sense for most of the roles-- but some of us really did have actual global roles. I performed mine from the Dallas office, my house, Starbucks, the side of any random road, Helsinki, Mexico and Paris. My boss still calls me periodically to express how hard it is for him without my innovative help.

The prior examples are of course anecdotal but I have asked a LOT of people for their experiences, and it turns out I'm not alone. Companies aren't getting rid of employees who make them "fat and vulnerable to takeover"-- they KEEP those people because they're invisible. Somehow those of us who actually give a crap wind up getting the axe. The ones who WANT to keep our employers lean and agile.

To bring this back to topic, I hope OPK isn't pushed out so casually. I disagreed with him on some strategies (like his opposition to lean platforming) but I respected him as a leader. I'd work under him again any day.