It would be interesting to see the stats on how many older, more tenured employees were pushed out the last couple years. Looking back 2014-2015 I know at least 7 that were pressured, harassed and finally put on PIPs. These were good, hardworking people too.
I have seen some absolute trash get hired because they used to work for ATT / Verizon. Whoever thought this was a good idea is an idiot. Just because some kid could sell cell phones does not mean they should be made a SM of a store. I had one genius assigned to my store after they railroaded a longtime SM. This kid had no management experience, and no real retail experience.
When I tried to "coach" him on how the systems worked and how to treat people he said he wasn't brought in to do all that, just to increase mobile sales, that's it. When he was not calling out he was late. When he was in the building he was in the office, on the workstation "making plans" and emailing them to the DM. When I went to the DM about him not taking the SM role seriously all she did was say phone sales were up 20%, give him more room. 20% of nothing is still nothing.
Time went buy and the kid still would not do anything but sit in the office and occasionally canvass the store to talk to people about cell phones. Went to the DM again, and she said to talk to him and give a note to file. Had the come to Jesus talk with him and he basically replied that if he did all the things I expected (basically the SM job description) he wouldn't have time to sell phones. I could not stop the laugh that escaped by mouth.
The DM transferred him and within a week I had an earful from the GM that got him. Same crap, calling out, late, outside for cig breaks when he was the only MoD on, etc. LP finally got him for taking a trade in iPhone, while the DM still sung his praises for the (small) increase in phone sales.
Long story short - the people they are replacing the older, more experienced people with are (mostly) lazy young punks.