alt Hacker News> I often find, aside from exceptional cases, most of them actually have some part of the job they prefer & are good at, so modifying the task allocation can go a long way.
While this works in the short/naive scenario, I feel like in most cases these low performers prefer the "gravy" work if you will. The type of work that almost everyone prefers and is good at. So you risk setting a bad precedent for perverse incentives by rewarding poor performance with easier work.
Really depends actually!
In a sufficient sized team you may have boring/rote tasks that your high performers hate & neglect, but sometimes a comparatively lower performer will take on.
In many cases it's the (sometimes perceived but not in practice) higher performers that want the harder exciting high profile tasks, but maybe don't want to do the less fun parts of those tasks. Basic data munging, documentation, testing, monitoring, configuration management, etc... no fun!
A lot of perceived high performing devs I've worked with want to be like surgeons who walk into the OR, put their hands into the gloves, pick up the tools prepared for them on a tray, do the surgery, and leave.