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Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

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Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#51

Post by mgarfias »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #45
ugh123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping low performers on a team (or ones that yield "failed projects" consistently) isn't good for the rest of the team and/or your own personal stress and productivity (as a manager).

It depends. Sometimes people just need a kick in the ass. Sometimes they have a blind spot that needs to be pointed out. People should be given a chance to improve. In terms of action required, there’s often very little difference between helping an under-achiever hit the mark, and helping an adequate performer grow. It’s just a question of expectations. I argue that a failure to ever do the former makes one a bad ma…

Sometimes the employee comes down with a chronic medical problem that affects performance.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#52

Post by clipsy »

Maxatar wrote: post #44
GauntletWizard wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some places the pip is an alternative to unemployment - if they can "show cause", which is what the PIP is, then your unemployment benefits are reduced or cancelled.

It's often far cheaper to fire someone immediately and pay out full benefits than it is to keep someone on payroll on a PIP. The cost of keeping someone on PIP isn't just salary, it's also the management and maintenance associated with it and the opportunity cost of having someone working on a project that could otherwise go to someone more productive.

PIPs aren't about unemployment insurance; they're about reducing the risk of a wrongful firing lawsuit.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#53

Post by travisb »

xnx wrote: post #35
mvdtnz wrote: post #18

I work with two people who survived PIPs and are now productive members of my teams. I wasn't the manager involved, but I think she made a good choice, both when she PIP'ed them and by passing them when they picked up their game. This is going to vary company to company, but from my perspective there's absolutely no reason a capable person can't get themselves out of a PIP and remain at a company.

> from my perspective there's absolutely no reason a capable person can't get themselves out of a PIP and remain at a company. Many (possibly most) companies use PIPs as a pretense for a firing decision that has already been made. In those companies it is a fool's errand to try and improve your performance (because performance may have nothing to do with it). You cannot win. You should feel lucky that you only seem t…

In most cases the firing decision has already been made because all the sustainable levels of informal support have already been exhausted.

After the team lead has endlessly explained, reassigned, and simplified a person's tasks, and just generally tried their best to make the person a productive member of the team _and failed_, then they've given up and put them on a PIP so they can be let go.

AFAICT PIPs are must CYA's.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#54

Post by adumbthrowaway »

Dumb throwaway here as stupidly my real name is attached to my primary account.

I just got PIP'd, and then fired. The objectives of the PIP were impossible to complete, dependent on externalities that I couldn't control. A box checking process indeed. Although, I dont think my boss entered it in bad faith, I'm pretty sure his boss made the decision.

WHat sucks is that I've been fighting some medical issues for the past 1.5 years thats made it difficult to focus and think. Things are starting to resolve, but I've had to completely change care teams. And, I was shitcanned despite letting management/HR know about the issues, having letters from two different docs.

I did my best to complete the objectives, even knowing I wouldn't. I did use the time to look for work, but unfortunately, didnt get anything nailed down before the termination.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#55

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

samaltmanfried wrote: post #42

I got put on a PIP once. It happened because a project I was leading suffered from a huge scope blowout in the 11th hour, and I missed the deadline. To be honest, it actually really hurt my self-esteem. I had a pretty hard time dealing with it at the time. I now look back and realize that the project couldn't possibly have succeeded even if they had two of me working overtime. I ended up moving on from that position…

I had a somewhat similar experience. I was working at my long-time dream employer. They say never meet your heroes and all that.

I had been working on two related projects and was really struggling because the company wanted "something different" than the industry norm. I could please one stakeholder but not another, and it went on like that for awhile. To this day I can't fathom why the various managers involved couldn't meet with _one another_ to sort out their creative differences, but they didn't. I was stuck trying to implement for competing aims that seemed more and more incompatible.

I couldn't see the forest for the trees because all of that was additional to my core work.

So, I didn't see a PIP coming. Got called into an unscheduled meeting one Friday. My boss says "hey didn't we have a meeting this afternoon? Let's hop on Zoom." It was like 4:30 PM and we absolutely didn't have a meeting scheduled. I got told I was being put on a PIP because my project wasn't delivering.

Created a game plan and was told we'd do check-ins in writing (via email) and a Zoom each week until "things were back on track." I busted my ass afresh and I sent a start-of-week email with my agenda for the week, an end-of-week check-in to compare my agenda to work completed, and to schedule a call.

What I absolutely should have seen coming was that I was going to be terminated. I should have seen that coming because I got not a single reply to the check-in emails I sent. I thought the Zoom calls sufficed. Each week I was told "hey, yeah, I saw that, great work! No notes!" But any time I tried to record the call I was admonished; it was clear I could either record the call or we could have the status meeting.

And then they laid a bunch of my team off, and reposted what I'd been doing as a new role. I didn't see it coming at all. Maybe I should have. My boss even said "some people see this coming," and told me it wasn't about performance. I was left hurt and confused. I had just gotten acknowledged for delivering very well on my core KPIs at an all-hands meeting the month prior.

Never meet your heroes, they say.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#56

Post by [deleted] »

JohnMakin wrote: post #36

Better to be put on a PIP than this other weird thing that can happen sometimes, where you’re “unassigned” from a team, maybe due to layoffs or restructuring or performance, but report to essentially no one and have no real work to do. Eventually they expect you to get frustrated and quit, but it can be very difficult when you are in that situation to figure out where you stand.

[deleted]

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#57

Post by Maxatar »

clipsy wrote: post #52
Maxatar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often far cheaper to fire someone immediately and pay out full benefits than it is to keep someone on payroll on a PIP. The cost of keeping someone on PIP isn't just salary, it's also the management and maintenance associated with it and the opportunity cost of having someone working on a project that could otherwise go to someone more productive.

PIPs aren't about unemployment insurance; they're about reducing the risk of a wrongful firing lawsuit.

I think people have a huge misunderstanding about what a wrongful termination is. Unless you're part of a union or work in the state of Montana, which most software developers do not, then you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all as long as it doesn't violate your civil rights or some kind of public policy exemption.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#58

Post by xnx »

travisb wrote: post #53
xnx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from my perspective there's absolutely no reason a capable person can't get themselves out of a PIP and remain at a company. Many (possibly most) companies use PIPs as a pretense for a firing decision that has already been made. In those companies it is a fool's errand to try and improve your performance (because performance may have nothing to do with it). You cannot win. You should feel lucky that you only seem t…

In most cases the firing decision has already been made because all the sustainable levels of informal support have already been exhausted. After the team lead has endlessly explained, reassigned, and simplified a person's tasks, and just generally tried their best to make the person a productive member of the team _and failed_, then they've given up and put them on a PIP so they can be let go. AFAICT PIPs are must C…

I don't doubt there are genuine performance reasons for some PIPs, but there are countless political reasons too. A direct report may make a manager look bad by knowing more than them, question their decisions, have favor in other parts of the organization, etc. Many managers can only succeed by extinguishing any dissent and hiring beholden loyalists.

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#59

Post by upon_drumhead »

vhodges wrote: post #14

I have been on both sides 1) got a talking too about performance - it wasn't called a pip (my mom was dying and I was taking too much time out for medical appointments for her. Note the discussion was shortly after she had passed) 2) As a fairly new manager (at the time) I had to put my first hire as a manager onto a pip. It was painfully obvious to everyone they were not capable and struggled with the most basic thi…

> 1) got a talking too about performance - it wasn't called a pip (my mom was dying and I was taking too much time out for medical appointments for her. Note the discussion was shortly after she had passed)

If you are in the United States, FMLA[1] provides job-protected leave for these sort of situations and ensures you have a job to come back to when it's over. Most smaller companies I've been at really hate to do the paperwork for it, but they're federally mandated to provide the benefit.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla

Re: Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible

#60

Post by nine_zeros »

lazide wrote: post #40
nine_zeros wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're the sort of person that cannot decode what a "Performance Improvement Plan" means then you're going to be eaten by the industry alive. It's insane to me that we even need qualified people to reassure anyone about that. Business and employment works with good faith. A lot of people work with good faith. If your manager suddenly pulls a PIP, the good faith is broken but the managers continue to lie that PIP…

I’ve had to put about a dozen people on PIPs over the years. Of that, roughly 8 of them passed. 2 of them were promoted almost immediately afterwards (merit based), 4 of the rest within a year or two. Because they grew. Of the other group, some were close. Some were not. All were having consistent performance issues for significant periods of time, and were not responding to any of the normal feedback mechanisms. One…

> The difference between the two groups? The first group took ownership of their actual performance, understood what the concerns were, and addressed them.

The second group, either refused to take any ownership of what was going on, was unable to for whatever reason, or like in the last really troublesome case, decided to blame and attempt to manipulate everyone else rather than face their actual issues.

My suggestion to anyone reading above post - listen to them. Take ownership of your performance. But by switching jobs - not by dancing to arbitrary deadlines/characteristics imposed by managers who don't understand externalities - like this poster.

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