Reading the headline and about what this was I recognized that I was once forced to do that for my team.

I refused following that order on the grounds that the logic behind it was flawed. There isn’t such a thing as a guaranteed universally bad worker in a team. And you wouldn’t want to promote a culture that works with that.

My boss thought about it, also forced to do that with me and agreed.

We later learned his boss randomly assigned people to the bell curve to mitigate this. We were not let go but some of my team quit.

Now I know they picked this method up and here I am years later going „oh shit!“.

I am no longer with that company. They let everyone go there. Jumped the bandwagon later but before that happened.