It's the end of the 'everybody has potential' era

• Bad news, coasters: Being average isn't cutting it.
• Tech giants have been revamping policies to prioritize high performers, leaving solid workers vulnerable.
• AI poses a risk to mid-tier employees, but mastery can ensure job security.

It's a tough time to be just average.

Workers who are decent at their jobs — but not superstars — are facing a tougher slog in industries like tech, where employers have the upper hand, and AI threatens to automate their roles.

What used to be a spectrum of employee performance is hardening into something more binary. Companies are focusing more on two camps: hotshots and underachievers.

This corporate sorting risks leaving the solid performers who make up the bulk of healthy companies feeling overlooked — and potentially vulnerable, workplace observers told Business Insider.

"Good-enough, B player is the most dangerous place to be," said Jeff Hyman, who has been a recruiter for about 30 years. In part, that's because poor workers don't last long, and midlevel workers might have a false sense of security.

"They're sleepwalking," Hyman said. "They're spending time polishing their LinkedIn while AI is just starting to, task by task, nibble at their job description."

'They can't all be Zuckerberg'

The split-screen is particularly apparent in tech: Dell is revamping its sales compensation program to boost rewards for its highest performers and trim what goes to those who don't meet their full quota, Business Insider reported this month. In January, Business Insider reported that Meta plans to reward its strongest performers with larger payouts, while Amazon has said it's looking closely at each worker's impact.

It's an idea long used in marketing — like segmenting a customer base — to reimagine how they manage their workforce, said Richard Smith, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. The thinking goes that leaders should focus on the MVPs who hold "strategic importance" for a company in the long term.

Last year, for example, Microsoft gave managers what it described as new and enhanced tools to help them accelerate high performance and "swiftly address low performance," Business Insider reported.

Rewarding the stars has "always been the case, and now it's just more unapologetically so," said Alan Stein, a career coach who worked at Facebook, Google, and Salesforce. In part, that's because of a crush of available workers.

With US companies hiring at one of the lowest rates in over a decade, employers have more leverage and potentially less incentive to invest heavily in developing middle-tier employees, said Smith, who runs the Human Capital Development Lab at Johns Hopkins.

The tech industry's latest approach, Stein said, marks a departure from what he saw as an "everybody has potential" ethos that emerged during the pandemic-era hiring boom.

"It was a lot of talk," said Stein, CEO of Kadima Careers, which offers job seekers coaching on how to get six-figure roles.

It was little surprise, he said, that Big Tech would ultimately direct a bigger share of payouts to those who get it done — just as pro sports teams reward their standouts.

At many large organizations, Stein said, about 10% to 20% of employees fall into the "walks on water camp," with a similar share marked as underperformers. The majority sit in the middle — the solid, reliable "worker bees," he said.

"They can't all be Zuckerberg," Stein said, referring to Meta's CEO. "They need people that get the work done."

The risk of middle-child syndrome

One risk for employers that focus heavily on their upper crust is that it can damage morale on the B team and signal to people at other firms — including the rock stars — that a company isn't a great place to work.

Beyond recruiting headaches, a workplace where fear dominates tends to undercut what CEOs often say they want: innovation, creativity, and collaboration.

Smith frames it as a math problem: Is it more valuable to improve the top 5% of your workforce by 20%, or 80% of your workforce by 5%?

Finding ways to create that broad-based improvement creates "a lot more impact," Smith said.

That risk of middle-child syndrome extends beyond tech to professional services such as law, auditing, engineering, and consulting — all of which are experiencing major shifts, thanks in part to AI, he said.

Not all companies are stepping up efforts to trim their lowest-rated people. After online speculation that it would make a round of performance-based layoffs, Meta told Business Insider this month that it's not planning to cut the bottom 5% of workers this year, as it did in 2025.

The news isn't necessarily all bad for mid-tier workers either, Stein said. Even in tech, good-enough performers often still receive raises and enviable perks.

"You still have the free lunch. You still have the equity, and you're still a free agent. You can go somewhere else," he said.

B players still have options

Hyman, who's CEO of Recruit Rockstars, a recruiting and career management firm, said he advises B players to "make yourself irreplaceable" by honing skills AI can't yet do well. That includes showing superior judgment, building relationships with customers, and navigating ambiguity.

It might also mean learning AI to the point where you can go to your manager and announce that you've created an agent to automate work.

"That at least buys you time," Hyman said.

Yet, as soon as AI reaches a tipping point where it can handle a sufficient number of tasks that an average or above-average worker can do, Hyman said, "that B player is in trouble."

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com