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I strongly disagree with this advice. If it gets to the point of a PIP, you're in very hot water at most places. But that does not necessarily mean you are goi

I strongly disagree with this advice. If it gets to the point of a PIP, you're in very hot water at most places. But that does not necessarily mean you are going out the door. If you care about keeping your job, step one is to ascertain whether your management is truly willing to invest in working it out, or simply going through the motions. It's time to level with them and have some very probing conversations on what's going on to get all the cards on the table. Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed. And to be honest, even managers that want to make the PIP work often don't really know how to. So, yes, it's hard for both sides, but it's not hopeless. If you decide management is being sincere about their desire to keep you, here's my advice: - Stop whatever it is you think you need to do to do your job, listen to what they're asking of you, change your behavior, and ask for feedback when you think you've done well. A PIP is a sign that implicit expectations and communication have failed, so you need to fall back on being unnaturally explicit. - Prepare for a rift in your personal relationship with your manager that is going to take some time to repair. It's likely a very awkward situation for both of you, and you are going to feel attacked. No easy way around that. Even if you succeed at getting out of the doghouse, the rift will persist until you start to rebuild the 2-way trust. It's a bad spot to be in, and it's only going to work out if both parties believe it can work and are truly committed to doing some hard reflection and behavioral change.

sseveran 9y ago
This largely depends on the company. Once you have been PIPed often transfer options are limited. Personally by the time I get to the point where I am going to PIP someone I have already invested significant time and energy trying to help them through 1 on 1s, getting input from my boss, and trying to work with all tools at my disposal. If I need to get HR involved I have already made up my mind that they will no longer work for me. Once HR is involved in many ways what happens next is out of a managers hands. I view the creation of the PIP as the train leaving the station. The tracks lead to a specific outcome. All that said I suppose if things really did change I would approach what happened next with an open mind. In at least one company I worked at having PIP in your file meant that it would be impossible to switch teams ever again. What manager wants the potential liability. Also if there are is stack ranking with a curve people are going to have to be PIPed just to make the numbers work (not justifying it, just saying it happens). Having watched people be hired on to teams for the sole purpose of being let go it is really important to know what is actually going on.
BeetleB 9y ago
>Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed. As someone said, it varies from company to company. Many managers treat it as a step to firing. And if you listen to employees who've been through it, many will have stories about how unfair it was - unfair in that others who had worse "infractions" were given a pass. To them, it was clear the boss just wanted them out of the team and was using some pretext (not the real reason) to get rid of them. Very often, that pretext is not maintaining appropriate work hours. From Netlfix's former HR manager: >One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria’s job was to find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn’t like automation and wasn’t particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her. >I replied, “Why bother? We know how this will play out. You’ll write up objectives and deliverables for her to achieve, which she can’t, because she lacks the skills. Every Wednesday you’ll take time away from your real work to discuss (and document) her shortcomings. You won’t sleep on Tuesday nights, because you’ll know it will be an awful meeting, and the same will be true for her. After a few weeks there will be tears. This will go on for three months. The entire team will know. And at the end you’ll fire her. None of this will make any sense to her, because for five years she’s been consistently rewarded for being great at her job—a job that basically doesn’t exist anymore. Tell me again how Netflix benefits? https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  Well yeah, but that's a sign of both parties not actually being committed. There's a lot of assuming in that scenario. A lot of that uncertainty would disappear with some candid communication. "Maria, what you're doing today is X, Y, Z. We wanted that before, but going forward, we need A, B, C. My impression is that you like doing X, Y, Z. So, we've got two choices, and both of them are difficult, but we need to be upfront about this. We can part ways, and I can try to help you get to a place where you can do X, Y, Z. Or we can commit to work together to transition you to A, B, C. I believe you can do it. The question is what do you want. It's tough, but you have to choose." And my advice to Maria would be: - Make sure you know what your bosses actually want. - Decide whether that's something you're into. - Be sure of their commitment to actually develop you. If she could answer all three of these things affirmatively, it could be worth a try. My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.

sseveran 9y ago

This largely depends on the company. Once you have been PIPed often transfer options are limited. Personally by the time I get to the point where I am going to PIP someone I have already invested significant time and energy trying to help them through 1 on 1s, getting input from my boss, and trying to work with all tools at my disposal. If I need to get HR involved I have already made up my mind that they will no longer work for me. Once HR is involved in many ways what happens next is out of a managers hands. I view the creation of the PIP as the train leaving the station. The tracks lead to a specific outcome. All that said I suppose if things really did change I would approach what happened next with an open mind. In at least one company I worked at having PIP in your file meant that it would be impossible to switch teams ever again. What manager wants the potential liability. Also if there are is stack ranking with a curve people are going to have to be PIPed just to make the numbers work (not justifying it, just saying it happens). Having watched people be hired on to teams for the sole purpose of being let go it is really important to know what is actually going on.

BeetleB 9y ago

>Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed. As someone said, it varies from company to company. Many managers treat it as a step to firing. And if you listen to employees who've been through it, many will have stories about how unfair it was - unfair in that others who had worse "infractions" were given a pass. To them, it was clear the boss just wanted them out of the team and was using some pretext (not the real reason) to get rid of them. Very often, that pretext is not maintaining appropriate work hours. From Netlfix's former HR manager: >One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria’s job was to find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn’t like automation and wasn’t particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her. >I replied, “Why bother? We know how this will play out. You’ll write up objectives and deliverables for her to achieve, which she can’t, because she lacks the skills. Every Wednesday you’ll take time away from your real work to discuss (and document) her shortcomings. You won’t sleep on Tuesday nights, because you’ll know it will be an awful meeting, and the same will be true for her. After a few weeks there will be tears. This will go on for three months. The entire team will know. And at the end you’ll fire her. None of this will make any sense to her, because for five years she’s been consistently rewarded for being great at her job—a job that basically doesn’t exist anymore. Tell me again how Netflix benefits? https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

acjohnson55 9y ago
Well yeah, but that's a sign of both parties not actually being committed. There's a lot of assuming in that scenario. A lot of that uncertainty would disappear with some candid communication. "Maria, what you're doing today is X, Y, Z. We wanted that before, but going forward, we need A, B, C. My impression is that you like doing X, Y, Z. So, we've got two choices, and both of them are difficult, but we need to be upfront about this. We can part ways, and I can try to help you get to a place where you can do X, Y, Z. Or we can commit to work together to transition you to A, B, C. I believe you can do it. The question is what do you want. It's tough, but you have to choose." And my advice to Maria would be: - Make sure you know what your bosses actually want. - Decide whether that's something you're into. - Be sure of their commitment to actually develop you. If she could answer all three of these things affirmatively, it could be worth a try. My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.