[HN Gopher] Performance improvement plans are on the rise
___________________________________________________________________
Performance improvement plans are on the rise
Author : impish9208
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-11-29 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| batch12 wrote:
| https://archive.is/MBxwv
| kareiva wrote:
| There is nothing to hate here. I have given numerous PIP's as a
| manager and only actually fired once. The purpose of a PIP is to
| improve, not to fire a person.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not in management so I can't argue with you on that. But it
| seems like at the time the PIP is summoned, the person has
| somehow made to fireable-grounds.
| avereveard wrote:
| There might be a selection bias at hand only people that fail
| a pip and are fired are eventually free from nda.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I think the PIP is hated because it ruins the illusion of
| camaraderie, like an ultimatum in marriage. But really,
| unlike a marriage you shouldn't have that illusion in the
| first place, you were always a replaceable cog whose only
| value is what service you can do for your boss. If you always
| had that perspective then the PIP can be seen as a helpful
| encouragement to improve rather than a precursor to an actual
| firing.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| One should realize life is temporary. You probably will
| leave very little legacy. You should aspire to have a large
| attendance at a remembrance. My father's funeral filled the
| church. An in-law's had less than 10 people. Best you can
| do is have and rear good children. If hard work helps that,
| it will be a net benefit.
| Cpoll wrote:
| A manager should be communicating expectations regularly. PIP
| conventionally means "we're firing you in a few months," so
| you're just threatening to fire people euphemistically.
| deskr wrote:
| How on earth can you be a good manager and not realize that
| saying "your performance is shit, we're going to fire you
| unless you take this course and we deem you've passed" is
| totally and utterly soul destroying to a person?
| stavros wrote:
| A PIP should be the last chance to improve. You should have
| had many chances before that, with lots of clear feedback. Of
| course it's soul-destroying, but laying them off is worse.
| sunshowers wrote:
| People have things going on in their lives! What if it's
| not the employee's performance but the manager's that's
| concerning -- it's the manager who should get the PIP? What
| if it's the CEO's fault for creating an environment where
| many employees are demotivated -- what if the CEO should be
| the one getting the PIP?
|
| Tech still, to this day, has a problem retaining women and
| URMs. Conceptions of individual performance are often
| shaped by unintentional (or intentional) sexism and racism.
| Speaking personally, at my last role at FB there was a
| quite marked change in how I was treated after I
| transitioned to ~female.
|
| The PIP process does not interrogate all this nearly as
| much as it should. I'm quite convinced it's absolutely the
| wrong way to go about things -- too much falls on the IC
| and not enough on management.
| stavros wrote:
| I feel like this conversation is "bad PIPs are bad!" "but
| good PIPs are good" "no, bad!".
|
| Sometimes, you can tell someone "listen, nothing else
| worked, and we tried for a while, so this is the last
| resort". Do you think it's better to fire people outright
| than to give them one last chance?
| sunshowers wrote:
| I think most of the time, so-called underperformance is
| caused by the environment, not the individual. If a
| company cares about bringing the best out of individuals
| it would fix the environment.
|
| (There are certainly some individuals that end up being a
| negative to the team, disrupting more than contributing,
| and a small minority of PIPs are justified in that sense.
| But most PIPs I've seen are handed out to hardworking
| individuals who are very clearly doing their best and are
| enhancing the team, just because they maybe aren't as
| good as playing politics, or are game theoretic doves in
| an environment full of hawks.)
| stavros wrote:
| What if everyone else is performing well in that
| environment?
| sunshowers wrote:
| I'd ask, is everyone else really performing well? What if
| everyone's focusing on short term self-promotion while
| incurring far too much technical debt? The one person
| focusing on rigor then gets PIPed, even though losing
| them would make the team far worse. (Actual case I've
| seen.)
|
| edit: while I was not put on a PIP, at FB I got a "meets
| most" rating in the cycle where I first built cargo-
| nextest. In the end nextest had a far greater impact on
| the world than anything else management was doing, and
| the same people who gave me that rating now have it as a
| critical dependency. It's still wild to me how little
| focus there was on seriously thinking about long-term
| project health.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I have had periods in my career when I performed poorly,
| and in virtually all cases the cause had nothing
| whatsoever to do with the job environment or management.
| (The real causes included depression and poor coping
| mechanisms for it, a toxic relationship, and the birth of
| a child.)
| sunshowers wrote:
| If an employee who has a good track record is going
| through a period of personal or family-related issues,
| the employer should support them through that (and _not
| just via FMLA_ ). Not just morally, but also for long-
| term organizational health. This too is part of the work
| environment.
|
| Are we building something for the next 6-12 months, or
| are we aiming to build a monument that will outlast our
| careers? Sometimes the answer really is the former, but
| it has very serious costs that are often unaccounted for.
| jghn wrote:
| As someone who has been in that situation, it's better than
| "your performance is shit, you're fired". In my case a large
| part of the problem was that I was not picking up on what
| should have been obvious cues. This provided a needed wake up
| call, and prompted me to improve.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| So poor management. A manager's job is to provide their
| reports the tools they need to do their job, and key to
| that is not 'obvious cues' but explicitly stated
| expectations. Basically the manager didn't manage and
| substituted a PIP for what they should have been doing all
| along.
| ambicapter wrote:
| You're really absolving the employee from any possible
| blame here. Sometimes people ignore blinking warning
| lights until they get a wake-up call.
| jghn wrote:
| I get what you're saying. But as the person directly
| involved, and as someone who has managed people over the
| years since, believe me when I say that the fault was my
| own.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > that I was not picking up on what should have been
| obvious cues.
|
| Performance feedback should not come in the form of cues.
| If it does, it is poor management.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| "To stay off the P-I-P you must answer me these riddles
| three."
| grahamj wrote:
| What is your favourite colour?
| devjab wrote:
| I think it's just corporate culture in some places. I've done
| a stint in management and I've had the "fun" of dealing with
| all these performance measurements. I personally think they
| are rather useless in any sort of office work where your
| employees have a high degree of independence and complex
| tasks. I also think they come with a huge risk of creating a
| working culture where employees game the system. If you clock
| time on the hour then you can be sure nobody is going to help
| each other, because how do you clock that half hour? If you
| sell software by ridiculously short estimates and reward your
| employees for meeting them, then how happy are your clients
| with all the post-release support they'll have to pay for? If
| you have one employee who's build internal tools that empower
| everyone else, but haven't delivered on X, Y, Z and you're
| personally getting judged on those metrics then how do you
| keep up over all productivity when you're forced to let them
| go.
|
| There are a million examples of why they are bad, and I can't
| really think of any in which they are useful on their own.
| Which becomes the issue when decision makers advance in ranks
| and "I don't dare make decisions without covering my ass"
| managers slip in. Or when HR gets too much political power
| and push their tools as the law. Often organisations simply
| grow into poor cultures because the systemic value of
| measurements is shit compared to individual management. This
| is of course helped along by bad managers, who when given too
| much freedom create an organisational culture which is far
| worse than the meritocracy of data driven management.
|
| I think it's a little rough to judge someone who may have
| grown up in these cultures as a bad manager from a couple of
| lines of text.
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| Maybe they like the power, and this makes them feel powerful.
| Signs of a good manager, of course. /s
| mrbungie wrote:
| Putting people in PIP or firing them, are not good
| experiences, period. Only socio/psychopaths would feel
| powerful and good about having peoples future in their
| hands, and not all managers are socio/psycopaths.
| Volundr wrote:
| More soul destroying than "your performance is shit, so shit
| I see no hope your worthwhile, get out?"
|
| I think the GP is overly optimistic about a PIP. In general
| I'll say when I've put someone on a PIP, it's been with the
| expectation of firing at the end. "We have discussed this
| problem and I've made it clear you need to improve, this is
| your last chance, I need to see x, y, and z (where X Y and Z
| are as concrete and measurable as possible) or mm/dd will be
| your last day". It's making clear that whatever issues are
| involved have come to a head, and this is the final chance to
| fix them. My general assumption is that if spelling out the
| issues and providing coaching hasn't resolved the issue the
| PIP probably won't either, but I do see value in a clear
| process vs the cut just being whenever I decide to do it,
| with no warning that day is coming.
|
| I have also actually seen this work in practice. I've had
| people who multiple conversations and coaching seemed to make
| no inroads, but putting that clear "if this isn't resolved by
| X day, we're done" expectation out there seemed to make it
| "real" and they've completely turned things around. I have
| promoted people I've previously put on a PIP.
|
| That said my advice remains, if your put on a PIP it's time
| to start looking. I think many (most?) managers d use them
| cynically where a PIP is more paper trail than final warning,
| and the employee may be getting fired regardless. Even if
| that's not the case you've just been told very clearly it's
| not working. _Something_ isn 't working and it's better to
| hedge your bets and look for another job that fits better
| while trying to improve.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| What's the alternative? Give them a rainbow sticker? It's
| business among adults, performance matters. If you can't meet
| expectations then it's not a good fit. That's part of life.
| sunshowers wrote:
| The alternative is to very seriously ask if the primary
| reason for underperformance lies with management rather
| than the individual. We are a social species and a large
| part of our behavior is are determined by our social
| environment. The PIP process does not incorporate this very
| basic fact about us.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Any serious organization will take that into account for
| the managers own performance. Their job is people
| management, and so losing an employee is potentially a
| strike against them and they need to be able to justify
| the firing was not their own failure but the employees
| inability to perform, which is part of the process. You
| can also get some signal about this on how other
| employees are performing, if every employee's under
| performing then obviously it's a cultural management
| organization issue, but no organization can be all things
| to all people often there will just be bad fits and
| people need to be able to move on.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Ah, well, I guess in that case most organizations are
| quite unserious.
| jopsen wrote:
| An informal pip.
|
| You can tell someone they need to improve their
| performance. You can help them make a plan. And you can
| help evaluate the result.
|
| Making a plan can certainly help.
|
| You don't need to involve HR inorder to make a plan.
|
| (Not saying that pip isn't a good concept, just that a
| formal pip is a last resort kind of tool)
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I've always assumed that's a prerequisite for a pip.
| Obviously managers need to give reports good feedback
| regularly.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > is totally and utterly soul destroying to a person?
|
| To some, it is, and to others, it isn't.
|
| I wonder: Is your question a byproduct of some type of
| educational system which had a lot of grade inflation and
| people get passed on to the next year no matter how poor
| their progress?
|
| In my school/high school, if you got an F in _one_ subject,
| you 'd be held back for the whole year. In my university,
| they didn't grade on a curve, and had clearly delineated
| thresholds for A, B, C, etc. The engineering department
| worked hard to ensure only competent people could get an A or
| B (you didn't need to be brilliant - merely competent).
|
| By the time you get a job, you should be able to handle
| feedback along the lines of "You're performance is not good
| enough for this job". With good management, this isn't a
| shock, and you should have gotten messaging about performance
| for quite a while prior to being handed a PIP. Not all
| management is good, though.
|
| It should not be an identity crisis. No one is good enough
| for any job, and for any team. You should not go on in life
| thinking you'll not fail. You won't grow much that way.
|
| I've seen management at times give the employee a _ton_ of
| leeway. A friend of mine was in a SW team, and he decided he
| didn 't like coding. The manager worked with him to give him
| an alternate role that was mostly related to customer
| support. When they'd come with a bug report or query, he'd
| study the (large) code base and help them if they were doing
| something wrong, or file a proper bug report with the team.
|
| He still sucked (and knew it). He started working reduced
| hours (with the manager's approval) to handle the stress.
|
| I kept telling him to go find another job if this one doesn't
| suit him. He had other skills - he'd done HW work
| professionally at the same company prior to switching to SW.
|
| This went on for _two_ years before they finally put him on a
| PIP and fired him. He had a grace period of two years to find
| another job, but didn 't.
|
| The real problem is the unfair PIP - where they want to fire
| you for reasons _other_ than your performance. It begins with
| escalating demands that you cannot fulfill, and they use that
| as a pretext to put you on a PIP.
|
| Anti-disclaimer: I've been on a (very unfair) PIP and was
| practically fired. Everyone I know at the company who's been
| on a PIP was fired. So when I say all of the above, trust me,
| I know the dark side of PIPs. I think they are primarily a
| tool to get rid of person and the manager is usually not
| honestly trying to redeem the person.
|
| But even in those cases, it shouldn't be even close to "soul
| destroying". It's simply the equivalent of getting dumped by
| a boy/girl friend. Sucks, but it's expected. You move on.
| chenmike wrote:
| I've never heard anyone brag about giving working PIPs. PIPs
| are pretty demoralizing even if they "work".
|
| Maybe you should consider giving people feedback in non-PIP
| form!
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Sometimes people are in lala land and don't realize the
| stakes until the heat gets turned up so far.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I've never been put under a PIP, but if I were, I'd be looking
| for a way out. The company has told me I suck and, even if I
| recovered, I'd be concerned that just having had it there would
| hurt any future progression I had in the company.
| dangus wrote:
| The company you worked for that allowed you to operate this way
| is in the minority. For 99% of companies the PIP is a
| documentation and CYA step to ensure that the employee goes
| away quietly, without things like filing for unemployment or
| suing the company.
|
| For most companies the purpose of a PIP is to fire a person.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| What evidence do you have for this statistic?
| dangus wrote:
| None, sorry to disappoint your request for "source????."
| It's just common sense, finding someone who exits a PIP
| successfully is like finding a needle in a haystack.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| There's multiple people in the comments of this post
| alone who have self exited a pip. And I know at least one
| in person myself. What's common sense is that Common
| sense doesn't mean much, people often draw false
| conclusions from narrow sample sizes among other
| fallacious beliefs and reasonings. Asking for a source
| should always be acceptable by anyone who has an
| allegiance to truth. Let's be honest with each other.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Nothing really bad about a PIP. You get to coast for months while
| you do interviews prior to being fired.
|
| Never been PIP'd myself, but I would prefer it than being fired
| without warning.
| autobodie wrote:
| I would drastically prefer a lack of warning over a lack of
| reason, and I cannot help but interpret any other position as
| disingenuous.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| A lack of warning can leave you in the lurch financially and
| career-wise. Getting the heads+up that it's time to find a
| new job let's you keep banking paychecks while you make a
| seamless transition to a new opportunity.
| autobodie wrote:
| Duh, but you have to choose one or the other. You're being
| disingenuous.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I suppose it depends if you value your own ego over your
| financial well being?
|
| I don't hold any expectations from my employer other than
| being an employer. Being hired is as much part of a job as
| quitting or being fired.
|
| All that said, I don't care what reason an employer has to
| wanting me out. It really does not matter to me. All I need
| is time to plan ahead so I come out unscathed. Who knows? I
| may even find a better job on my way out.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >a lack of warning over a lack of reason
|
| The choice is one or both...
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| I have known serial PIPites.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I saw this happen at Apple to an engineer on my team -- maybe 8
| to 10 years ago.
|
| Yeah, it did look like the die was already cast, they just wanted
| perhaps a lawsuit-proof way of showing them the door.
| ralfd wrote:
| Was it justified or was your colleague wronged?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| He was probably the smartest guy on the team. And when push
| came to shove, productive as hell. I think management didn't
| appreciate how much time he spent reading web comics though
| (you know, when _push_ was not around).
|
| I imagine he'd have flourished if work-from-home had been a
| thing then.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Lol. Wonder how often toxic teams end up PIPing the
| _actually highest performing_ people on the team, leading
| to a salt lake effect and slowly dieing corporation.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| With at-will employment is a pip necessary? What happens if you
| fire someone who is performing?
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| People can take you to court for anything; pip is good way to
| protect against claims of wrongful termination. I agree in
| principle that at-will should make this unnecessary, but the
| reality of a litigious society makes pips a good move.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| The issue is unemployment payments. In many states, if you fire
| someone without cause then you have to make the unemployment
| payments. If you fire with cause then you don't.
| lvgifirnejsjs wrote:
| Most states in the United States will still provide
| unemployment payments for an employee terminated for
| performance.
|
| The company needs to prove a gross negligence level of
| employee conduct to deny unemployment. Things like not
| showing up to work or workplace sabotage.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| Yes. Some at will states support lawsuits
| pkaye wrote:
| I've seen a few workers take the employer to court and the
| company usually settles as it doesn't want the reputational
| damage and court costs so they just pay up. People just assume
| the worst of the employers when these court cases become public
| if even it is later dismissed.
| lvgifirnejsjs wrote:
| Specifically regarding at-will employment and the United
| States, you can still be sued for discrimination based on race,
| gender, and all other protected classes. PIPs and other similar
| processes are primarily created, from a legal/HR perspective,
| to protect against those lawsuits.
|
| So, somewhat counterintuitively, at-will employment in the
| United States(especially in states like California) is not
| actually at-will in a practical sense do to the threat of
| discrimination lawsuits.
| asdff wrote:
| Funny how they are used as a cover to those lawsuits but at
| the same time anyone with half a brain can see how a racist
| could saddle someone with bogus pips. Someone must have
| brought this shaky pip defence in front of the right
| corporate favoring judge if everyone is using it as this
| ironclad defense now.
| tekla wrote:
| No clue why PIP is so hated. I suspect that its from people who
| think they are so good that they should be immune from being
| fired.
| kittikitti wrote:
| No clue? Did you read the article? I think you should be put on
| PIP and promptly fired.
| tekla wrote:
| I've done both. I rather the PIP.
|
| Bunch of people who took the ZIRP startup decade and assumed
| it was a permanent thing to not actually have to do work to
| keep your job.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I don't understand why you would PIP a person and keep them
| waffling around for months on end collecting paychecks when you
| can just severance them out and pay less in time and money?
| carlgreene wrote:
| It is to cover some of their bases in a potential wrongful
| termination case
| stavros wrote:
| We do it because we legitimately want them to improve, and the
| last resort is "if we can't work it out by X, we can no longer
| employ you". I don't think we've done it more than once or
| twice, though, because increasing the directness of the
| feedback that the employee is not doing well has generally
| worked.
| icedchai wrote:
| I've never seen anyone put on a PIP where the intention was
| anything other than eventual firing. In all these cases, the
| person was doing an awful job for over a year, or in some
| cases, since they were hired.
| stavros wrote:
| Sure, but in our company, it's different. We ended up
| keeping the person in one or two of those cases (I forget
| the numbers because there were so few).
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Why would the company hire them then? That just sounds like
| emotional abuse.
| icedchai wrote:
| You are probably right... in most cases. Companies have lawyers
| and those lawyers are very risk adverse. The PIP is basically a
| period of employment where the company collects evidence on
| your (lack off) performance. This evidence can be shown as
| justification for firing, in the unlikely even it is needed.
|
| PIP = "Paid Interview Period"
|
| I've never seen anyone recover from a PIP.
| benreesman wrote:
| I've run several PIPs and haven't lost anyone. This was in
| collaboration with a really good HRBP though.
| asdff wrote:
| Management has its own incentives to limit turnover and
| maintain their department headcounts.
| devmor wrote:
| I believe that often times the PIP is an attempt to get more
| value out of an employee that you would otherwise replace with
| offshore resources.
|
| i.e. "Maybe if we spook them, we can get the work of two people
| out of them for a while."
| thelastparadise wrote:
| If they did that to me I would take it as a sign of
| disrespect and resign immediately.
|
| Oops now you gotta hire a new one.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| > "A lot of the time, they're done," Gadea said of
| underperformers. "They're burned out, they need a break. And now
| you're asking them to work harder."
|
| I've seen that once, most recently.
|
| Before that, it was somebody who was trying to get let go on
| performance grounds, thinking that it would lead to severance
| (didn't work out).
|
| Before that, it was somebody who got put on PIP, but I'm not sure
| why, and they were personally devastated and then quit.
|
| Telling somebody that they're fucking up and that they need to
| improve is one thing, that's just feedback. Creating a structure
| that's officially "if you don't do X, Y, Z, then you're fired"...
| just fire them.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| My experience with the system was it mostly being abused by
| incompetent managers who had no clue how to evaluate engineer
| performance.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Why just fire them? As you showed they can "just quit" if they
| don't want to play ball, and some people want to have the
| opportunity to play ball.
| jopsen wrote:
| Also by forcing managers to drag employees through a pip
| process, you: (a) reduce risk of wrongful termination suits.
| (b) increase likelihood that an abusive manager is
| discovered.
|
| I'm sure lots bad managers get away with bad stuff, even when
| a pip process is in place.
|
| But every bit of documentation produced by a pip could
| certainly backfire on a bad manager.
|
| Again obviously, not all bad managers will be stopped, not
| will all bad employees :)
| ghettoCoder wrote:
| Going through the motions of a PIP is a pain if you're
| management. If someone gets PIP'ed then a decent manager already
| exhausted all other avenues to get a team member to start
| contributing at the expected level and the PIP is just to provide
| cover.
|
| You don't PIP a lower performing staff unless they're completely
| useless or toxic to the environment, you just find tasks that
| suit them better. At least in my experience managing staff.
| zug_zug wrote:
| > You don't PIP a lower performing staff unless they're
| completely useless or toxic
|
| Maybe this is part of the problem -- that it's called one thing
| (a plan to improve performance) but is used as another
| (legalese once you've already given up hope).
|
| But I've never quite understood why. I imagine if I was a
| manager people would know if they are doing 20% as much as the
| best team member and would either be off the team or have
| shaped up within 6 months. That period where you genuinely are
| making sure that somebody understands you think they aren't
| doing well and clarify expectations seems valuable and ideally
| would happen long before it's too late.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > but is used as another (legalese once you've already given
| up hope).
|
| because "completely useless or toxic"(from prev comment) is
| manager's subjective assessment, and company wants to have
| stronger metric for firing people.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| Most of life is subjective. Objectivity is very difficult.
| You are dealing with people who are mostly wacky. I suppose
| a weighted decision calculation could be used. How do you
| measure grumpy gus, chatty cathy, or mean marvin? How do
| handle the unsober?
| riku_iki wrote:
| You can set robust PIP structure:
|
| * clear deliveries which are evaluated by not manager
|
| * collect peers feedback/ratings not visible to manager
|
| This structure can give much stronger metric compared to
| personal manager feedback.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The problem is what pip percentages say about management.
| Either HR hires and management approves 20 % duds - or your
| company is a rockstar shredder machine. Neither is a pleasant
| truth.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| I think .20 is an underestimate. Under performers are
| likely in the .25 to .35 percent range. It is hard to find
| the right people and so there is an acceptance of good
| enough. The PIPs start with the most egregious or if cash
| flow is tight. An owner I worked for called it trimming the
| dead wood. From the business side it is best to get rid of
| some people. Its best for the remaining people too.
| scruple wrote:
| > Its best for the remaining people too.
|
| It sure doesn't feel that way to me, as someone who has
| seen lower-performing (I'd hesitate to label them under-
| performing, these people simply never should've been
| hired into the role they were put into in the first
| place, but those are anecdotes for another time) be PIPed
| and ultimately let go, because all it means is my own
| workload is going to go from fucked to even-more-fucked.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| That's a bad management issue. Your workloads shouldn't
| be drastically impacted by how many coworkers you have.
| If you lose a coworkers it's your managers job to
| rebalance the roadmap or negotiate with other other
| managers and their manager to get a up to speed backfill.
| icedchai wrote:
| I agree. The low performers drag down the rest of the
| team. Generally, they're not only slow, but the quality
| of work is poor, requiring constant attention from other
| team members. Often, the individuals are totally
| unreliable. They don't respond to messages, won't do PR
| reviews in a timely manner, resulting in cascading
| frustrations. You can't give them anything critical or it
| becomes a blocker...
| stvltvs wrote:
| > You don't PIP a lower performing staff unless they're
| completely useless or toxic to the environment, you just find
| tasks that suit them better.
|
| This assumes management is competent and well intentioned.
|
| PIPs can be used for more nefarious reasons, like firing a good
| employee you don't get along with if you need to convince upper
| management. Set unrealistic goals then fire them for not
| meeting them.
| asdff wrote:
| Amazing how we get managers in this thread on both sides of
| "we'd never PIP to fire" and "yup we always PIP to fire" and
| both sides confidently say the other side doesn't exist e.g.
| "you don't do that/i've never heard of that."
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Employment is at-will. It's better to just fire without the PIP
| drama. As it is, a PIP does not provide legal cover if the
| employee writes back, effectively rejecting it.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| IANAL, but I don't think this is correct
| Aloha wrote:
| Employment in most of the US is at will by default - with the
| exception of Montana basically.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| What's special about Montana anyway?
| dangus wrote:
| Having different state laws.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Employment is at-will but you can't fire someone for non-work
| reasons. The PIP is there to collect the data that they are
| firing someone for work reasons.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Who said anything about firing for non-work reasons. One can
| be fired immediately for work reasons without a PIP.
|
| Note that the PIP alone does not suffice as valid supporting
| data if the employee contests it. It helps for there to be
| more data than it.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Maybe I need my understanding corrected. I thought the point
| of at-will was that you very much could fire someone for
| nearly reason (you support the Cubs, pack up your desk!). You
| cannot fire someone for protected classes (gender, race,
| etc), but basically everything else is fair game.
| fbriggs wrote:
| paywall
| delecti wrote:
| I got put on a PIP at Amazon, and even at the time I thought it
| was a reasonable criticism. I then worked hard, graduated out of
| the PIP, and stayed there a few more years. (I also opted-in to a
| second PIP (with my manager's knowledge and assistance) when I
| was leaving so I could get severance, but I don't really count
| that)
|
| One of my current mentees got put on a PIP a couple years ago,
| and she likewise has significantly improved. (She also survived a
| round of layoffs a year later, which should speak to that)
|
| So while PIPs might be started with the expectation that most
| employees won't improve, I think they're also started with the
| hope that they will.
| jghn wrote:
| I too was put on a PIP early in my career, and worked my way
| out of it. It was fine.
|
| That said, I agree with the general sentiment that much more
| often than not the employer is not acting in good faith. Over
| the decades I've seen way too many colleagues get put on a PIP,
| I tell them to work hard because it can get better, and then
| they get let go anyways.
|
| Not sure what I'd do today if it happened to me. Probably a bit
| of both. Take it for the feedback that it is & try to improve
| my flaws. And also start looking around for a new employer,
| knowing the reality of the situation.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Worked as a PM at a well known tech company, great
| relationship with my director. He leaves, new director comes
| in and within three months I'm on a PIP. I'm given a list of
| work products to create for a new offering that has been
| discussed, which on the face of it are entirely reasonable,
| and the standard 30 days.
|
| 100% ghosted by my Director. Weekly 1:1s? He no-shows 2 of
| them. Near zero input. In "fairness", I knew what was
| happening, but had some tiny semblance of good faith. Hah.
|
| Final meeting, he shows up with HR. "So we've been talking
| about (when?) and I have just completed my final review of
| the documents you created (bear in mind these have had
| significant input from multiple stakeholders who, not for
| nothing, generally approved), and I am still left believing
| that your output is not up to the quality or depth that we
| expect from our PMs, so..."
|
| I pulled up the receipts, because why not? I think he may not
| even have known that GDocs provides good metrics on
| documents, including who has viewed, and when, and how many
| times. I did this with the HR person sitting awkwardly there.
| "You reviewed this document? GDocs says you've never accessed
| it. And this one? Never accessed. What about this deck? Never
| accessed."
|
| At that point he turned his cam off and clumsily handed it
| over to the HR person. They asked if I'd like to follow up,
| but that the company would support the Director's decision.
| Fine, didn't expect any different. They did acknowledge that
| they could see too that he hadn't done anything to even
| present a token perspective that the PIP was anything other
| than firing with 30 days notice.
|
| Lives and learns, we do.
| bn-l wrote:
| Can you sue or something in that situation?
| asdff wrote:
| For what? You can be fired whenever in most jobs. Most
| you can do is tell the story on linkedin and make the
| manager look like an ass. No point in maintaining bridges
| that go straight to the dump.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| May depends on if the company tries to stop unemployment
| insurance kicking in
| charlie0 wrote:
| Were you able to collect unemployment?
|
| My understanding is the PIPs are to provide proof of "low
| performance" and that "low performance" can be used as an
| excuse for the company to not pay out unemployment
| insurance.
| mh- wrote:
| You should probably know that individuals can disable[1]
| showing up in documents' view histories. I've had this
| option set for as long as I can remember.
|
| 1: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/7378739 _(ctrl-f
| "limit")_
| kimixa wrote:
| PIP and similar things also get "misused" with other anti-
| management techniques like stack ranking.
|
| Someone I know got put on a PIP _solely_ because the dictates
| from Upper Management said that annual review scores must
| have a certain distribution and average per team - and that
| naturally means someone it at the bottom. And the dictated
| numbers means that people with lower scores _must_ be put on
| a PIP. It happened to be the newest, least experienced member
| of our team, and the PIP "plan" itself (as written by the
| team lead) was effectively "Continue what you're doing", but
| they were still forced by HR to do it.
|
| They left themselves a year later, and I don't blame them.
| They just re-introduced all the worst parts of "stack
| ranking" and firing the "worst" person in the team with more
| bureaucracy.
| mrandish wrote:
| > So while PIPs might be started with the expectation that most
| employees won't improve, I think they're also started with the
| hope that they will.
|
| I've seen it both ways and I think it comes down to the quality
| of the company and the manager - which, of course, varies
| widely. A good manager doesn't need PIPs because they're always
| communicating clearly and consistently to their reports about
| how they're doing. Ultimately, PIPs exist due to concerns about
| legal claims for wrongful dismissal which can be hard to defend
| if there's no clear paper trail of documentation.
|
| As expected, a management process mandated by HR and legal
| concerns instead of just modeling on what great natural
| managers do is going to be hit or miss and sometimes go
| horribly awry.
| Volundr wrote:
| > A good manager doesn't need PIPs because they're always
| communicating clearly and consistently to their reports about
| how they're doing.
|
| I'm not sure this is true. I'm definitely open to the idea
| that I was a bad manager or there were things I wasn't doing
| well, but not communicating my expectations clearly is not
| something I've ever been accused of. Or at least not once I
| had some experience. Management comes with a learning curve.
|
| I have had an employee where I and their direct manager were
| very much communicating they weren't meeting expectations,
| including coaching and providing warning that their job was
| now at risk, that only did a 180 when put on a PIP. I think
| for some people there is power in putting a concrete date on
| things vs something that needs fixed "soon".
|
| The employee in question continued to improve post-PIP and
| got promoted. I don't know what happened after I left the
| company, but I have no reason to doubt they continued to do
| well.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >A good manager doesn't need PIPs because they're always
| communicating clearly and consistently to their reports about
| how they're doing.
|
| More generally, a good manager is someone who shields their
| people from surprises. A PIP should never come as a surprise
| to someone. Unfortunately, there are bad managers out there
| who fail at that. It's not the manager's fault if someone
| gets put on a PIP, but it's absolutely 100% their failing if
| it comes out of the blue.
| itake wrote:
| PIPs are a double edged blade. If the worker passes the pip,
| but regresses immediately, then we can't just keep yo-yoing
| with multiple pips per year.
|
| So unfortunately, this means when an EM creates a PIP, to
| prevent Yo-Yoing, they need you to leave.
| asdff wrote:
| How do you know its the workers fault and not the nature of
| this role in the company?
| itake wrote:
| I can't speak for EM roles, but ICs have many peers in
| similar roles to compare them to.
|
| Also, there is an unofficial "pre-pip" phase, where the EM
| tries to correct these issues. Pips are the nuclear option
| that cost the EM a lot of time with almost no career
| benefits.
| jayd16 wrote:
| As a manager it's your job to discern that, right?
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| In reality it doesn't matter. Most of the time I'd wager it
| is not the worker's fault. But that doesn't materially
| change the situation.
|
| From the perspective of the company, the company is almost
| never at fault.
| dangus wrote:
| This type of PIP is so far in the minority that any suggestion
| to expend energy to try and graduate out of it is misguided.
|
| Essentially, you statistically won the lottery.
|
| The probabilistic advice to anyone who gets a PIP is to do the
| absolute bare minimum at your job and focus all your time and
| effort on acquiring your next one.
| tyingq wrote:
| >PIPs are intended to bring consistency and fairness to the way
| employees are judged and managed.
|
| That's mostly bullshit. The real purpose of a PIP is just to
| bolster documentation on the employer side to fend off any
| wrongful termination lawsuits. It probably has a side effect of
| looking more consistent, but that isn't the purpose.
|
| One thing that does favor the employee is that legal and HR
| sometimes get carried away with how much documentation is needed.
| So it ends up taking longer than the employer really wants. But
| if the employee understands the true purpose of the PIP it gives
| them plenty of time to job search.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| It also help quell fears from other employees about their own
| job.
|
| "There was a process, EmployeeA didn't improve." rather than
| "EmployeeA was suddenly terminated yesterday"
| autobodie wrote:
| https://archive.ph/5Zn6F
| firesteelrain wrote:
| From reading the comments, people must work at places who use a
| lot of PIPs. It is an actual documented process at my large
| employer but I know if anyone got put on one then they would
| freak out. Probably go nuclear rather than improve. Managers are
| afraid to put people on them.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Sounds like a very emotionally-stable place to work lol.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I don't think it's good for mental health for a manager or
| employee to be vascillating between PIPs and not PIP. We
| still measure performance and do coaching. We just don't put
| people under threat of firing which is what these PIPs aim to
| do.
| makk wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with how PIPs work.
|
| The first and last time I was put on a PIP I _went into early
| retirement_ the next day. In doing so, I caught the VP Eng who
| did the PIP completely flat footed. It turns out they did the PIP
| against the advice of their boss, the CTO. Egg all over the VP 's
| face. The VP got canned 6 months after that and had to scramble
| to find another job while I was at the beach.
| throwawygg wrote:
| Throwaway manager here. I tried to keep a personality hire out of
| a PIP.
|
| It was a huge mistake.
|
| Turns out when all other options are exhausted, a PIP can be a
| form of respect. In the hands of the right manager, an
| underperformer gets one last clear chance to show they can do the
| job. If they succeed, some the ugly baggage gets put behind them.
| And if they can't succeed, then the PIP sends a message that they
| are unsuited for the job at the company, and maybe even at the
| industry at large.
|
| The alternative to PIP'ing an incompetent (not just an
| underperformer) is micromanagement. That comes with pretense,
| hostility, and disrespect to their person for an indefinite
| period of time.
| makk wrote:
| An even better token of respect is to just can the person and
| give them a respectable severance package, so they have months
| (plural) to find their next thing.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Don't see how that's strictly better since the person loses
| out on potential feedback from the PIP vs straight firing.
|
| PIP also doesn't prevent someone from getting severance,
| firing is firing.
| makk wrote:
| I see your point. My points are that if one really wants to
| show respect then (a) don't waste people's time and (b)
| give them a respectable severance. If you can do (a) and
| (b) via a PIP process, then that's cool.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Honest question, if someone is performing horribly, why do
| they deserve a severance package? Isn't that was unemployment
| insurance is for?
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| 1. They might be a good worker, but a bad fit for their
| role. That's as much on the hiring manager as the employee.
|
| 2. People, even lousy workers, talk. Treating people with
| respect on their way out may decrease the person's
| negativity/bitterness. Consider it a marketing expense.
|
| 3. Severance packages come with legal releases attached, at
| least in the US. Less risk of lawsuits, frivolous or
| otherwise.
| devmor wrote:
| I have received one PIP in my entire career - it was at an
| employer which was recently purchased by another company, shortly
| after the majority of my team was replaced with offshore
| contractors.
|
| I was not at all surprised at receiving it, despite my
| performance being roughly on par with my entire tenure in that
| position up to that point. If anything, I was happy to receive it
| as it prompted me to start interviewing elsewhere earlier.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Several cases like this on here. These would be valid wrongful
| termination lawsuits.
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| I see a lot of pro/con discussion about PIPs in the comments, and
| wonder how much is a US/Other places thing.
|
| I think that the "believe in the PIP process" is a very typical
| US thing, driven in part by their labor laws, that is culturally
| very different in other places, I'll say EU because it's what I
| know best and that is culturally much more adverse to firing
| cheema33 wrote:
| I am going through this with a contractor dev. Their performance
| dipped enough that we considered letting them go. But, eventually
| decided to put them on PIP. They did a 180 in a couple of days.
|
| PIP doesn't always work, but it works wonders with some
| personalities.
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