You seriously don't understand that sometimes people are promoted for being good at their job, and sometimes people are fired for being bad at their job?

I think the more likely scenario is that:

a) the company is growing by leaps and bounds and would rather promote internally X% of existing employees. --or- b) the company is facing a downturn and would like to get rid of X% of existing employees.

In neither case does it have much to do with the actual people falling into or out of that X% (unless a perfectly just system is in place [and it isn't]).

Most firings I've seen have much more to do with the people involved (harrasment, incompetence, interpersonal problems) than with wild changes in the company's trajectory, though I will admit that at early-stage companies this could be reversed since things are much more uncertain.

You misread.

You're being asked to imagine yourself as the executive - you're the person with firing authority.

A manager who works for you asks you to fire someone on their team. There are a hundred people on various teams in your group, you don't have first-hand knowledge of all of their performance. You want to have a system in place for making sure this is a fair request, vs "we argued a few times the last week" or, in the really bad sorts of cases, something like "we had an affair and it ended badly and I'm trying to clean up the mess by firing them."

Thank you, I think I see what you mean: a manager recommends an employee for promotion OR a manager recommends an employee for firing. My reading of the question might sound ridiculous, but I have been in situations like that in the past.

I once had a contract-to-hire job in which the contract supposedly stipulated that I was guaranteed a full-time permanent position if I passed the six-month performance review, otherwise I would be terminated. They told new hires this to convince them that it wasn't really a temp job. They kept me a temp for ten months, and then laid off all 120 of us.

I would love to believe that management is categorically reasonable, comprehensible, and truthful, but that’s not my experience.

There is no "management". There's just people, in positions or more or less power over others.

At some companies, these people are well selected, trained, and caring individuals who understand who to build and nurture teams.

At others, these people are dicks who have got into their position via Peter Principle. being frat buddies with CEO etc. who view workers as resources to be squeezed and discarded.

And everywhere in between.

Sounds like you got unlucky at that place.

I honestly think you're misreading. My reading (consistent with the one you replied to) is:

a higher-level manager somewhat arbitrarily comes out of the blue and wants to fire one of your team. You have no paperwork to back the idea that the request is misplaced/misguided.

Let's look at the original line again:

"If you're a VP and suddenly someone asks, "Hey, can you promote or fire Person X?" What are you to go off of? Just a manager's recommendation? And you think perf reviews are biased?"

So 'someone' isn't defined, but from context, my assumption is that 'someone' is their direct manager (who works for you), since it's mentioned that 'manager's recommendation' is all that's known.

A situation where, say, the CTO is asking a VP to fire someone three or four levels below would be much stranger than a lower-level manager asking a VP to fire one of their reports, so between these two things I think it makes much more sense to resolve the ambiguity in that way.

This reading also has the benefit of suddenly making perfect sense and fitting the rest of the context of the original comment, which was about >100 employee organizations needing a paper trail.

I agree that your interpretation has a lot of weight. However, you're forgetting a couple of things:

-. could be a request from the VP's peer; i.e., another VP. Or from someone in a lateral org (such as HR).

-. the manager himself in your interpretation of events should have the power at least to fire (if not to promote).

The fact is: it was a very confusingly worded post and we've probably wasted more time on it than it warrants. :)

You're totally misunderstanding the situation.There are three hypothetical people involved here. An employee, who works below a manager, who works below a VP.

The manager wants to promote the employee, but she needs permission from the VP. So the manager asks the VP to promote the employee.

I think the down votes are from your response appearing fairly uninformed.

Growth and attrition are a regular part of a person's life cycle at a company. You ask if someone should be promoted both because companies need adept managers and because most employees look for growth trajectory. You ask if someone should be fired because companies need to continue refining their workforce for skill and cultural fit, or because it is financially necessary.