[xtracto]

Right, that has also been my experience (granted, in another country where a company can fire you with no reason if they pay you 3 months severance).

For me as a manager, the PIP allowed me to set up an environment where the developer would be able to perform their job in isolation with specific, measurable and concrete tasks that do not depend on any third party.

I've successfully applied this for some devs that were doing really bad for more than 6 months, and it allowed me to find that the person was in the middle of a lot of shit. Once the developer was isolated and given specific tasks, they showed why we have hired them in the first place.

I also have let go a developer for whom the performance plan was more on the people skills side: This person was just not a team player, and was dragging the team along with him. A PIP allowed us to show him exactly why he ended up not being a match for the company.

And then there was another one who was just lazy... didn't do stuff, and after the 2nd month of the PIP he acknowledged that he was just being lazy, and waited for the PIP time to expire so that we fired him (with 3 months severance).