I work in a prestigious group within my company. The solutions architects across the company aspire to this group. As such, the cream rises to the top, and I work with amazing engineers. Unfortunately the 6% yearly PIP quota must be met, even within this group. So, you end up with the best of the best in the company fighting to stay off the PIP list. Recently my company started forcing this 6% PIP quota to be met within each band. So now, at the principal solutions architect level, you have the best solutions architects in the company, at the highest level, working on the most prestigious accounts, who must be PIPed at 6%. On my account alone, with roughly 3 SAs, over 5 years, 3 have been PIPed. Each one would have been the top SA on a lower tier account. The management has their favorites, and bring in new SAs as backfill. Those SAs are now PIP fodder. Each time we get a new SA on the team, I have a one on one with them, and explain the history of our team. The wise ones understand the situation and jump elsewhere in the org. It’s become this revolving door of exceptional talent, who our customers adore, who keep getting PIPed. It’s not good for the customer, and not good for the company. The engineers who survive have taken an offense approach to the situation, setting other SAs up for failure. Ultimately the roles are filled with a collection of scheming back stabbers who are more skilled at politics than delivering results.
In my own role, I’ve realized that getting promoted is more likely to put me in competition with a more elite set of engineers, so I continue to decline the promotion offer. I happily perform at top of band in my current role, and avoid the PIP stress. I’m likely sacrificing $100k/year for this peace of mind, but also expect to work another 7 years in this role at this level, as opposed to maybe 3 years at the higher level before getting PIPed.
It's interesting to ponder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The knee jerk reaction is this is all very unhealthy but I wonder if it is really. Imagine we were talking about back-up quarterbacks in the NFL. That individual is probably one heck of a quarterback and athlete, and they did excellent in lesser teams which is what got them into the NFL in the first place. But, they are a back-up quarter back in the NFL, not a starter. If they continue to remain a back-up quarterback, should they be PIP'ed or not?
In an NBA reference, the fallen elite athletes from US teams would venture to Europe or Asia and play there. They’re still getting paid, and the European teams are better because of it.
There are 1000’s of accounts where these solutions architects would be better than the existing architects. Instead of sending them down into the minor leagues, we are firing them. Seems short sighted, and a waste of talent.
You only ever have one quarterback playing for a team at once. no matter how successful the team becomes. presumably with a company, you are constantly growing and should need to grow your talent pool constantly. And how do I know that next year's new recruits are going to be as good as this year's pip'ed employees?
I think the trouble is that most teams don’t need this level of performance. They don’t need the top .0001%. Those teams are the edge cases not even worth talking about.
And more importantly, not the ones you want to model your team after.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They need to leave after the second PIP, having passed 2 PIPs the manager bears a lot of scrutiny "are you sure they won't regress again? It has been a year and you can't make a decision"
That said I've seen in sales a person only deliver above average when on PIP, passed the PIP and immediately mentally check out then PIP again and deliver. It was pretty maddening for his boss, the person was obviously skilled/capable but just needed PIP to be motivated to actually work
> “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.
> Telling somebody that they're fucking up and that they need to improve is one thing,
In my experience it's management telling the employee they're fucking up when in reality it was management fucking up the whole time. Unrealistic schedules, untenable goals, poor/no feedback or guidance, or just actively burning the employee out. Management then uses the PIP to fire the employee without a lawsuit.
There's never a good faith position of management with PIPs. They're for their benefit and never the employee's benefit.
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 :)
If you find yourself in PIP, the only plan you need to have, is to leave ASAP. It's practically impossible to "improve" anything. And their plan is to wear you out. From what I've seen, it's most commonly deployed as a retaliatory measure. From their perspective, it's rather cheap to deploy. From yours, however, it'll prove to be very expensive, on all counts.
Oh, and if you're hoping to "get justice", or fight, somehow, don't even think about it. The "justice system", by design, is in accessible. And nobody else is bothered to see justice delivered. See also: Pyrrhic Victory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the problem is that you can't really know if the PIP is being done in good faith or not.
In good faith, the process makes sense, right? "You are not performing, you have been told if you do not change it will be a problem, you have not changed, this is formal notice you must change or you will be fired."
In bad faith, as others have described around this thread, it's just a performance around legal departments being risk-averse when most places in the US are at-will and you could fire them with 0 notice, so they're making a paper trail out of whole cloth with the outcome predetermined, so attempting to "work harder" to get out of it is just you giving a lot of effort when you're about to need to work really hard to find another job no matter what.
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In my own role, I’ve realized that getting promoted is more likely to put me in competition with a more elite set of engineers, so I continue to decline the promotion offer. I happily perform at top of band in my current role, and avoid the PIP stress. I’m likely sacrificing $100k/year for this peace of mind, but also expect to work another 7 years in this role at this level, as opposed to maybe 3 years at the higher level before getting PIPed.
There are 1000’s of accounts where these solutions architects would be better than the existing architects. Instead of sending them down into the minor leagues, we are firing them. Seems short sighted, and a waste of talent.
And more importantly, not the ones you want to model your team after.
Yet twice I received none. But was put on harder expectations for bonuses.
Hope to be never promoted again!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So unfortunately, this means when an EM creates a PIP, to prevent Yo-Yoing, they need you to leave.
That said I've seen in sales a person only deliver above average when on PIP, passed the PIP and immediately mentally check out then PIP again and deliver. It was pretty maddening for his boss, the person was obviously skilled/capable but just needed PIP to be motivated to actually work
Deleted Comment
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.
In my experience it's management telling the employee they're fucking up when in reality it was management fucking up the whole time. Unrealistic schedules, untenable goals, poor/no feedback or guidance, or just actively burning the employee out. Management then uses the PIP to fire the employee without a lawsuit.
There's never a good faith position of management with PIPs. They're for their benefit and never the employee's benefit.
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 :)
Legal ass covering--especially if the employee is a minority.
Oh, and if you're hoping to "get justice", or fight, somehow, don't even think about it. The "justice system", by design, is in accessible. And nobody else is bothered to see justice delivered. See also: Pyrrhic Victory.
Dead Comment
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.
But congrats on your early retirement and incidental revenge, I guess?
Deleted Comment
Never been PIP'd myself, but I would prefer it than being fired without warning.
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.
The choice is one or both...
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.
PIP also doesn't prevent someone from getting severance, firing is firing.
In good faith, the process makes sense, right? "You are not performing, you have been told if you do not change it will be a problem, you have not changed, this is formal notice you must change or you will be fired."
In bad faith, as others have described around this thread, it's just a performance around legal departments being risk-averse when most places in the US are at-will and you could fire them with 0 notice, so they're making a paper trail out of whole cloth with the outcome predetermined, so attempting to "work harder" to get out of it is just you giving a lot of effort when you're about to need to work really hard to find another job no matter what.