However, the reason why I wrote the lengthy post you're replying to is that this is by no means universal. This means that if every employee starts with the assumption that it's just a firing tool, the chance to succeed drops dramatically. That's because instead of heeding the warning and pulling oneself together, one might disengage, become cynical, and give up.
So please, before anyone checks out in that situation, pay close attention to what's been happening in the department, and be careful about simply throwing away the career one might have had in that company just because of someone else's claims.
Or put differently: that situation is one best served WITHOUT cynicism, but indeed rational caution.
The issue is that much of this is an opaque process (for both good and bad reasons). People are forced to make an assumption one way or the other, because they have no access to the data. At that point, the prisoner's dilemma dominates.
I don't doubt companies like yours exist, but are they the norm? I've not met one person in real life who has been on a PIP and it was not a case of the manager trying to find an excuse to get rid of him. Netflix's HR got rid of them because they were being used by managers to get rid of employees.
That being said, likening this to a prisoner's dilemma is a tiny bit misleading: the costs and benefits between the options are less symmetric then in the idealized proposition. There is really no benefit to going cynical about the process besides some cheap satisfaction in a bar after work and avoiding introspection. That doesn't mean it's not pragmatic to make a plan B, however!
