Pips are disingenuous. If you get put on one, find a new job as fast as possible (opens in new tab)

> If you get put on a PIP, you know what game you're playing, and you absolutely should not quit. Make them fire you, and collect unemployment. Then move on to the next host.

What game is that? It's common for employers to use PIPs to create a paper trail prior to terminating somebody who doesn't get the memo that they are not making the grade. That's because performance reviews tend to under-document problems, which leaves the employer open to problems if the matter ends up in court. (Which is not particularly surprising--most people including managers are uncomfortable giving unvarnished feedback.)

This! Ive worked for these places- I remember after a really stellar year (By all meaningful metrics I was our strongest performer), one poor interaction with this really whiny waste of space led to me being talked to by my "manager", someone younger and less experienced by all counts- I straight up started the conversation with "Am I on a pip", "No", and then proceeded to derail their entire attempt to justify someones personal complaints about me. Ended the call, started applying- peaced out 2 weeks later. Your comment is spot on for that work environment... You being on PIP or not, run.

Isn't it better to leave on the best terms possible? In my career I've sometimes needed to get references from my last few positions to get offered my next one. Wearing out everyone's good will while you run out the clock doesn't sound like a good strategy.

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.

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).

But was that really a pip? A "pip" in corporate culture is typically also combined with a chat with HR and official documentation written by, for, and with HR.

> 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

> I gave them every opportunity to prove to me they could do the job (or learn at least to) they were hired to do, instead they cheated their way through the pip, passing others peoples work off as their own.

I feel like this is the problem with PIPs. From the managerial side, there is this good-faith expectation that a poorly-performing employee will snap back into shape once put on-notice. For people that are chronically incapable of certain tasks, this is a deliberately bad-faith expectation. And while it's not particularly common, it also stands to reason that a well-performing employee could be judged by unfair metrics or assigned an impossible task. So now everyone feels wronged. It's like a minimally-viable abstraction for making a firing appear natural and documented.

> struggled with the most basic things.

Like what?

Could you have taken FMLA to go part time — I’m not sure but it may give some coverage from the PIP process (while on FMLA can they PIP you?) and then with a full recovery maybe you would have a chance?

This is a common practice at many large companies, though it isn't explicit, and it's rarely transparent. Managers try to find roles on other teams for their worst performers in order to get them out of their organization, because that's frequently easier than using a PIP to fire someone. Unfortunately, the way you get another manager to accept your poorly-performing employee is to talk up their skills and talk about how they have career development dreams that would be perfect for this other role.

Oh wow, this is a thing? It happened to me.

- unassigned from a team

- report to no one

- no real work to do

- got frustrated and quit

I didn’t stick around till appraisals. I shudder to think what might have happened if I did. No one was looking at my performance.

that doesn't sound that bad as an swe. Work on some of those frustrations, do some refactoring, bug fixing and documenting. Maybe have some extra time for job hunting. At least you're being paid.

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.

> 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 to have encountered legitimate pips where both sides are hoping for improved performance.

> If you're the sort of person that cannot decode what a "Performance Improvement Plan" is then you're going to be eaten by the industry alive.

On the one hand, yes, this is true. On the other hand, it shouldn't take decoding doublespeak to know that a "performance improvement plan" has nothing to do with improving performance, and is just a box-checking CYA exercise to make a paper trail for firing someone.

And the way in which people learn this obnoxious bit of doublespeak is by having plenty of readily findable sources telling them "this is a box-checking exercise for firing you, do not believe any HR information claiming otherwise".

Many people take their relationships with their employer in good faith. To discard these people as obviously unfit would be a massive loss to any industry.

> 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 PIPs can be surpassed. It is the lies that detract people - especially the ones that are clinging to the job for valid reasons like family, mortgage, visas etc.

American companies have abandoned good faith. Gen Z is learning it from millennials and abandoning corporate America. Articles such as this one are just highlighting to people how to recognize bad faith.

From the way you write, I have a feeling you overestimate your savviness on "the industry". It's insane to me that you act this shocked and hysterical or someone not knowing all the bullshit "play" formalities that corporations have developed over time.

This seems like a good article for folks who don't know (which is still a lot - people think that getting into tech is a sure way to get rich and not be routinely abused by a neocolonial industry)!

Not everyone is born with the innate ability to decode corporate doublespeak.

I’m glad you know what a PIP is – how about a little less judgement for today’s 10000? https://xkcd.com/1053/