8 ms·

It's a sad story; but PIP is really the pink slip; you take it as an advance notice that you're going to be fired, and start looking for jobs. I've heard storie

It's a sad story; but PIP is really the pink slip; you take it as an advance notice that you're going to be fired, and start looking for jobs. I've heard stories of people completing PIP programs successfully, but quite honestly, I don't get it. Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Makes no sense to stay. I could understand staying with the company & switching teams/departments, but staying in the same place makes no sense to me.

wastedhours 7y ago
One of the benefits of completing a PIP might also be signing off an internal transfer to a team with better fit. There could be times where it's worth going through it to get something better - as long as you're quite far detached from the previous team.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Almost nobody wants to receive via transfer someone with a PIP.
  - mcv 7y ago
    That depends entirely on why they're in a PIP. My team might have completely different needs than the other team.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      That unfortunately depends on people being rational. There are those stupid enough to not want to hire the unemployed because of their own prejudices.
      - mcv 7y ago
        There are plenty of idiots involved in hiring, that's certainly true. But I was recently (for the first time in my life) had to hire a lot of new people for my team, and I noticed I hire people on probably very different traits than some recruiters and managers do. I don't like candidates who just give socially acceptable answers, I do like candidates who give creative answers, who are vocal, opinionated, weird, outside the box and against the current. And I'm well aware people sometimes get fired for really stupid reasons. I doubt I'm the only one.
        AdrianB1 7y ago
        With that criteria, I would never be able to get my team complete. Most of the time I get existing employees transferred to me, I have to accept what I get or do the work myself (which is not possible). With new hires it's not easier, I interviewed candidates for 6 months without finding anyone (we don't pay so well, even if we are in top 50 in Fortune 500) and some director simply transferred me someone to fill in the role. I am just a senior manager, I said no but I was overranked and overruled.
shrikant 7y ago
I'd disagree that a PIP is a blanket pink slip. At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!). People who've responded positively to this have seen reasonably good upward trajectory, and those who've responded negatively have been managed out. > Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Or you haven't yet figured out the parameters by which you're being evaluated. Once you figure this out, the next step is deciding whether you want to subscribe to those parameters or not, and acting accordingly.
- mcv 7y ago
  > "At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!)." I think the mentoring is also a really important part.
- itronitron 7y ago
  so, what are some of those parameters set by the organization?
  - privateSFacct 7y ago
    At one job I was working late in office and no one could see it. I wasn’t good about my weekly activity report. No pip, but I fixed those issues and wow - I worked less and org was happier
AdrianB1 7y ago
PIP is usually the pink slip with 2 exceptions: 1. forced ranking. Even if you have the best team in the world, someone will be the last in that team. It can be avoided by rotations if the manager is smart enough. 2. Edge cases. I personally got via transfer a direct report already on a PIP from the previous manager. The short story: the previous manager is a moron (still working in the company, promoted since, failing upwards), that person is fine, working in the company 8 years later, mid-rated.
padraic7a 7y ago
Well it could be that you've reached a certain age and aren't confident that you'll be an attractive hire to anyone else. It's just an anecdote but I remember chatting to someone who worked for Microsoft in Ireland and was going through a performance review / PIP like process. He was in his early fifties and said that it inevitably seemed to happen to people once they reached a certain age / salary point.
- geekbird 7y ago
  Age discrimination in hiring and retention is a real thing. This seems like a systematic way to cover over it to make it look like something else. Smarmy, at best.
linza 7y ago
Circumstances sometimes are not that clear. Being put on a PIP where I'm employed is at the discretion of the manager, and sometimes it's just the combination of the report and the manager. One of my colleagues was put on a PIP, switched teams, and is now doing much better. However, some companies limit mobility during a PIP so it's not always possible to achieve this outcome.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Good for him. Usual SOP for a pip is to nail their feet to the ground.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
As a manager, can confirm. By the time you get to this point you are being "managed out". There is a basic expectation that you will either leave (preferable) or be fired at the end of the PIP process. I've heard of people coming back from it, but it's rare. And I think it would need to be the trigger for some kind of personal epiphany that completely changed behaviour for that kind of effect.
- lojack 7y ago
  I only have a data point of 1 on this so it may be different than other companies, but by the time I'm implementing a PIP, I've already made up my mind that I want the employee out. I've already worked on coaching them and identified that it isn't a temporary issue or something personal they're going through outside of work. HR is my last resort and a PIP is merely a formality I'm forced to deal with. There is a world in which they kick things into high gear and turn things around, but I've usually given up hope and the onus is on them to prove that they are capable.
RealityNow 7y ago
PIP isn't a pink slip at all companies. I once got a PIP when working at a mid-sized corporation. Fortunately my performance wasn't an issue, they just didn't like that I was frequently late to the daily morning standup (which upper management refused to allow us to reschedule to later in the day despite my insistence), didn't appear attentive in meetings, and was working from home too much. I started coming in to work on time and stopped coding during meetings and they took me off the PIP a couple weeks later. Of course I took this as a sign to gtfo of the company, so I started applying, left for a massive promotion and 40% raise, and now I work remotely at a company where we only have standup once every couple days and it's not first thing in the morning. Nobody's micromanaging my work schedule or nagging me for not clocking in at a certain time, and I'm making way more money especially since I don't have to live in SF/NYC anymore and pay nearly half my compensation in taxes and cut a third of my paycheck to a landlord. Funny thing is that I'm actually more responsive/available now because I value my job more, enough to enable Slack notifications on my phone and respond asap (within reason). Couldn't be happier.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Companies want to look 'Agile' so they will treat it as though it is a religion. The daily stand-up bullshit gets taken to such an extreme that it becomes counter productive. If you work at such a place, simply get out. There is nothing that spells long term disaster more than rigid adherence to voodoo process.
  - mcv 7y ago
    The daily stand-up is entirely reasonable and productive if you do it right. The problem is people who insist on doing it wrong. Upper management has no business deciding when a team has their stand-up. Agile means "people over process", after all.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Sure. But the real reason management loves the 'morning standup meeting' is because it enforces morning attendance of all employees. So much for those flexible work hours. Oh, you do get to go home late to finish your work of course.
mcv 7y ago
An honest performance improvement program should come with some guidance on how to actually improve your performance, what the are, if any, and whether the expectations are realistic at all. Simply telling people "work harder or you get fired" has never worked.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
A lot of companies put everyone who screws up (in a big enough way) on a PIP so they can fire them at the drop of a hat if they screw up again. Not that you shouldn't also look for other jobs but it's very much a box checking exercise in that case. Just don't screw up for 30/60/90 days or whatever and you're fine. Often times your manager will re-arrange your job duties to help you out with this (assuming they want to retain you).
Nasrudith 7y ago
This points to another problem with toxic management : pathological duplicity which makes it impossible to take them at face value because everything is done under pretenses and leaves not only them but the whole market crying wolf when they ask for something that they are actually saying. Human Resources to help with disputes? Everyone knows they are all about ass covering. Team player means they want unpaid overtime, etc. It may be harsh but fair to attribute to being infested with sociopaths or their culture.
jcadam 7y ago
I was given a ridiculous PIP once (two weeks after a receiving an outstanding annual review -- politics, eh), and actually completed it successfully (driven by rage, I knew I was going to be let go regardless). Boss acknowledged I completed the PIP and then fired me for my "bad attitude during the process." Well, he wasn't wrong about the attitude, I suppose.
Humdeee 7y ago
I've never been on one, but I imagine if I was my performance would drop to the absolute minimum. I love my job, but I come first. Hell, I'd even be applying elsewhere and taking interview calls from inside my cubicle. I was fortunate enough to be part of a couple startups when I was younger that went belly up. I've lived through the fear. I don't have any now. Happiness and work/life balance above all else, even pay; not some manager's unrealistic deadlines.
kevstev 7y ago
I generally agree- its a clear shot across the bow that the company no longer wants you there. A funny story though from about 10 years ago (IE financial crisis): A sales person my wife worked with was put on a PIP. It had very clear revenue goals, modified his commission plan to be more performance based, but he could make more if he exceeded those goals, etc. To everyone's astonishment, he started selling like crazy. There was only one problem- his boss forgot to "unfire" him with HR. Right after the PIP period expired, he gets a big deposit that isn't his commission check in his bank account- it was supposed to be a severance payment. The guy immediately withdrew it from his bank account, and kept as little in there as possible so they couldn't get it back without confronting him, and later claimed he thought it was a commission and claimed to have spent it. They made him pay it back on a payment plan in the end, but only after forcing them to admit it was a severance and all that. He left as soon as he could find a better job.
CodeMage 7y ago
Treating PIP as a pink slip is toxic. It might have become acceptable, but it's still toxic. I've only been placed on a PIP once and it's my go-to story for explaining what a PIP should really be. I had just moved to United States with my wife and my 7-year old son. Since this was the second time I had moved from one country to another, I expected to be able to handle it reasonably well. Instead, I got seriously depressed by the absence of my friends and the cultural paradigm shift (i.e. the Seattle Freeze). I also had to deal with my family's emotional fallout -- both my wife and my kid got depressed and I was trying to help them as much as I could. On top of it all, I got an abscess and had to go to ER. As a result, my productivity dropped to zero. The problem wasn't the productivity itself, but that I had mismanaged the situation. Instead of trying to talk these things over with my manager, I kept pushing myself, promising to deliver and failing to do so. It came to a point where my manager scheduled a 1-on-1 with me and told me he had no option but to put me on a PIP. He said he was extremely perplexed, because he had formed a completely different image of me during interviews and thought I would perform much better. During the 1-on-1, he kept prodding me to explain what was going on, until I broke down and explained the situation. He asked me why I hadn't told him any of that before. I explained that I had thought the American corporate culture was that you're expected to leave your baggage at the door and that nobody else should pick up your slack -- you're here to work, not to be babysat. He was appalled by the idea and explained that I should've talked to him and we could've organized things better. He reiterated that, because my lack of performance had percolated up the food chain, he had no option but to place me on a PIP; it wasn't merely up to him anymore. He explained that a PIP was a chance to prove that I really was capable of fitting my role and that if I met the PIP goals I would be in the clear, not just with his team and at that moment, but in the future too - managers aren't allowed to hold your PIP against you. We then sat down and worked out a PIP. During the following 6 (or was it 8?) weeks, I met all the goals and that was that. After 2 years of working on that team, a much more exciting opportunity for internal transfer opened up, I applied for it and it worked out great. Nobody even mentioned my PIP. In my opinion, that's how a PIP is supposed to work. For anyone interested, the company in question was Amazon. There are lots of things one might criticize about Amazon, but this is one thing they did absolutely right.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

wastedhours 7y ago

One of the benefits of completing a PIP might also be signing off an internal transfer to a team with better fit. There could be times where it's worth going through it to get something better - as long as you're quite far detached from the previous team.

AdrianB1 7y ago
Almost nobody wants to receive via transfer someone with a PIP.
- mcv 7y ago
  That depends entirely on why they're in a PIP. My team might have completely different needs than the other team.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    That unfortunately depends on people being rational. There are those stupid enough to not want to hire the unemployed because of their own prejudices.
    - mcv 7y ago
      There are plenty of idiots involved in hiring, that's certainly true. But I was recently (for the first time in my life) had to hire a lot of new people for my team, and I noticed I hire people on probably very different traits than some recruiters and managers do. I don't like candidates who just give socially acceptable answers, I do like candidates who give creative answers, who are vocal, opinionated, weird, outside the box and against the current. And I'm well aware people sometimes get fired for really stupid reasons. I doubt I'm the only one.
      - AdrianB1 7y ago
        With that criteria, I would never be able to get my team complete. Most of the time I get existing employees transferred to me, I have to accept what I get or do the work myself (which is not possible). With new hires it's not easier, I interviewed candidates for 6 months without finding anyone (we don't pay so well, even if we are in top 50 in Fortune 500) and some director simply transferred me someone to fill in the role. I am just a senior manager, I said no but I was overranked and overruled.

shrikant 7y ago

I'd disagree that a PIP is a blanket pink slip. At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!). People who've responded positively to this have seen reasonably good upward trajectory, and those who've responded negatively have been managed out. > Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Or you haven't yet figured out the parameters by which you're being evaluated. Once you figure this out, the next step is deciding whether you want to subscribe to those parameters or not, and acting accordingly.

mcv 7y ago
> "At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!)." I think the mentoring is also a really important part.
itronitron 7y ago
so, what are some of those parameters set by the organization?
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  At one job I was working late in office and no one could see it. I wasn’t good about my weekly activity report. No pip, but I fixed those issues and wow - I worked less and org was happier

AdrianB1 7y ago

PIP is usually the pink slip with 2 exceptions: 1. forced ranking. Even if you have the best team in the world, someone will be the last in that team. It can be avoided by rotations if the manager is smart enough. 2. Edge cases. I personally got via transfer a direct report already on a PIP from the previous manager. The short story: the previous manager is a moron (still working in the company, promoted since, failing upwards), that person is fine, working in the company 8 years later, mid-rated.

padraic7a 7y ago

Well it could be that you've reached a certain age and aren't confident that you'll be an attractive hire to anyone else. It's just an anecdote but I remember chatting to someone who worked for Microsoft in Ireland and was going through a performance review / PIP like process. He was in his early fifties and said that it inevitably seemed to happen to people once they reached a certain age / salary point.

geekbird 7y ago
Age discrimination in hiring and retention is a real thing. This seems like a systematic way to cover over it to make it look like something else. Smarmy, at best.

linza 7y ago

Circumstances sometimes are not that clear. Being put on a PIP where I'm employed is at the discretion of the manager, and sometimes it's just the combination of the report and the manager. One of my colleagues was put on a PIP, switched teams, and is now doing much better. However, some companies limit mobility during a PIP so it's not always possible to achieve this outcome.

dev_dull 7y ago
Good for him. Usual SOP for a pip is to nail their feet to the ground.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

As a manager, can confirm. By the time you get to this point you are being "managed out". There is a basic expectation that you will either leave (preferable) or be fired at the end of the PIP process. I've heard of people coming back from it, but it's rare. And I think it would need to be the trigger for some kind of personal epiphany that completely changed behaviour for that kind of effect.

lojack 7y ago
I only have a data point of 1 on this so it may be different than other companies, but by the time I'm implementing a PIP, I've already made up my mind that I want the employee out. I've already worked on coaching them and identified that it isn't a temporary issue or something personal they're going through outside of work. HR is my last resort and a PIP is merely a formality I'm forced to deal with. There is a world in which they kick things into high gear and turn things around, but I've usually given up hope and the onus is on them to prove that they are capable.

RealityNow 7y ago

PIP isn't a pink slip at all companies. I once got a PIP when working at a mid-sized corporation. Fortunately my performance wasn't an issue, they just didn't like that I was frequently late to the daily morning standup (which upper management refused to allow us to reschedule to later in the day despite my insistence), didn't appear attentive in meetings, and was working from home too much. I started coming in to work on time and stopped coding during meetings and they took me off the PIP a couple weeks later. Of course I took this as a sign to gtfo of the company, so I started applying, left for a massive promotion and 40% raise, and now I work remotely at a company where we only have standup once every couple days and it's not first thing in the morning. Nobody's micromanaging my work schedule or nagging me for not clocking in at a certain time, and I'm making way more money especially since I don't have to live in SF/NYC anymore and pay nearly half my compensation in taxes and cut a third of my paycheck to a landlord. Funny thing is that I'm actually more responsive/available now because I value my job more, enough to enable Slack notifications on my phone and respond asap (within reason). Couldn't be happier.

jacquesm 7y ago
Companies want to look 'Agile' so they will treat it as though it is a religion. The daily stand-up bullshit gets taken to such an extreme that it becomes counter productive. If you work at such a place, simply get out. There is nothing that spells long term disaster more than rigid adherence to voodoo process.
- mcv 7y ago
  The daily stand-up is entirely reasonable and productive if you do it right. The problem is people who insist on doing it wrong. Upper management has no business deciding when a team has their stand-up. Agile means "people over process", after all.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Sure. But the real reason management loves the 'morning standup meeting' is because it enforces morning attendance of all employees. So much for those flexible work hours. Oh, you do get to go home late to finish your work of course.

mcv 7y ago

An honest performance improvement program should come with some guidance on how to actually improve your performance, what the are, if any, and whether the expectations are realistic at all. Simply telling people "work harder or you get fired" has never worked.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

A lot of companies put everyone who screws up (in a big enough way) on a PIP so they can fire them at the drop of a hat if they screw up again. Not that you shouldn't also look for other jobs but it's very much a box checking exercise in that case. Just don't screw up for 30/60/90 days or whatever and you're fine. Often times your manager will re-arrange your job duties to help you out with this (assuming they want to retain you).

Nasrudith 7y ago

This points to another problem with toxic management : pathological duplicity which makes it impossible to take them at face value because everything is done under pretenses and leaves not only them but the whole market crying wolf when they ask for something that they are actually saying. Human Resources to help with disputes? Everyone knows they are all about ass covering. Team player means they want unpaid overtime, etc. It may be harsh but fair to attribute to being infested with sociopaths or their culture.

jcadam 7y ago

I was given a ridiculous PIP once (two weeks after a receiving an outstanding annual review -- politics, eh), and actually completed it successfully (driven by rage, I knew I was going to be let go regardless). Boss acknowledged I completed the PIP and then fired me for my "bad attitude during the process." Well, he wasn't wrong about the attitude, I suppose.

Humdeee 7y ago

I've never been on one, but I imagine if I was my performance would drop to the absolute minimum. I love my job, but I come first. Hell, I'd even be applying elsewhere and taking interview calls from inside my cubicle. I was fortunate enough to be part of a couple startups when I was younger that went belly up. I've lived through the fear. I don't have any now. Happiness and work/life balance above all else, even pay; not some manager's unrealistic deadlines.

kevstev 7y ago

I generally agree- its a clear shot across the bow that the company no longer wants you there. A funny story though from about 10 years ago (IE financial crisis): A sales person my wife worked with was put on a PIP. It had very clear revenue goals, modified his commission plan to be more performance based, but he could make more if he exceeded those goals, etc. To everyone's astonishment, he started selling like crazy. There was only one problem- his boss forgot to "unfire" him with HR. Right after the PIP period expired, he gets a big deposit that isn't his commission check in his bank account- it was supposed to be a severance payment. The guy immediately withdrew it from his bank account, and kept as little in there as possible so they couldn't get it back without confronting him, and later claimed he thought it was a commission and claimed to have spent it. They made him pay it back on a payment plan in the end, but only after forcing them to admit it was a severance and all that. He left as soon as he could find a better job.

CodeMage 7y ago

Treating PIP as a pink slip is toxic. It might have become acceptable, but it's still toxic. I've only been placed on a PIP once and it's my go-to story for explaining what a PIP should really be. I had just moved to United States with my wife and my 7-year old son. Since this was the second time I had moved from one country to another, I expected to be able to handle it reasonably well. Instead, I got seriously depressed by the absence of my friends and the cultural paradigm shift (i.e. the Seattle Freeze). I also had to deal with my family's emotional fallout -- both my wife and my kid got depressed and I was trying to help them as much as I could. On top of it all, I got an abscess and had to go to ER. As a result, my productivity dropped to zero. The problem wasn't the productivity itself, but that I had mismanaged the situation. Instead of trying to talk these things over with my manager, I kept pushing myself, promising to deliver and failing to do so. It came to a point where my manager scheduled a 1-on-1 with me and told me he had no option but to put me on a PIP. He said he was extremely perplexed, because he had formed a completely different image of me during interviews and thought I would perform much better. During the 1-on-1, he kept prodding me to explain what was going on, until I broke down and explained the situation. He asked me why I hadn't told him any of that before. I explained that I had thought the American corporate culture was that you're expected to leave your baggage at the door and that nobody else should pick up your slack -- you're here to work, not to be babysat. He was appalled by the idea and explained that I should've talked to him and we could've organized things better. He reiterated that, because my lack of performance had percolated up the food chain, he had no option but to place me on a PIP; it wasn't merely up to him anymore. He explained that a PIP was a chance to prove that I really was capable of fitting my role and that if I met the PIP goals I would be in the clear, not just with his team and at that moment, but in the future too - managers aren't allowed to hold your PIP against you. We then sat down and worked out a PIP. During the following 6 (or was it 8?) weeks, I met all the goals and that was that. After 2 years of working on that team, a much more exciting opportunity for internal transfer opened up, I applied for it and it worked out great. Nobody even mentioned my PIP. In my opinion, that's how a PIP is supposed to work. For anyone interested, the company in question was Amazon. There are lots of things one might criticize about Amazon, but this is one thing they did absolutely right.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]