The pip quota is a HUGE perverse incentive here. Choosing someone to put on pip is hard because it is in manager's best interest to protect their core team from pip. So if someone is too good for your team, you put them on pip. They are going to leave anyway, so putting them on pip does the least damage to your team. The other pathological result is hiring dummies just to put them on pip, again protecting the core te…
This sounds like a lie people tell themselves after being PIP’d.
Engineers have an average tenure of 1.8 years. You can’t guarantee you’ll hold together anything. No manager PIPs someone for just being TOO good. It’s already difficult enough to find competent people.
Contrary to some other comments, the folks I’ve seen PIP’d did have performance issues. And I doubt they were hired to be fired. Teams are consistently understaffed and fighting for head count is a blood sport.
During review, PIP candidates come from all managers under a section of an org. There could be 3 from one team and 0 from another. The incentive is then to hire people who are actually good and defend your team’s performance.
Engineers lack visibility into cross team performance and this leads to thinking this system works differently.