[czhu12]

As a counter point to this, I’ve witnessed the practice of designing these processes to terminate someone creates a ton of burnout for the manager. Expect to spend at least 20% of your time managing the PIP. Documentation, one on ones, babying tickets being assigned, etc.

On top of that I’ve never seen anyone get through a PIP successfully (n=6).

Furthermore, it can also create a culture of just dismissing any candidates who don’t come from the right pedigree because the risk of a mishire is way too high.

Its worth asking if it’s worth your time to do this for the sake of following process. Larger companies that need to standardize management for hundreds of managers have a greater need than startups do.

[taneq]

> I’ve never seen anyone get through a PIP successfully (n=6).

I don’t think they’re meant to succeed. If you want to keep an employee, you give them feedback and coach them. A PIP is used to document evidence that an employee is incompetent and is incapable of improving despite your best efforts, as a precursor to firing them.

[ewoodh2o]

It’s definitely not zero effort. But every time I’ve seen it draw out the timeline, it’s been because the expectations weren’t clear at hire time, nor in the PIP. You’re looking for a specific number of “significant PRs/week”, or story points, or something with subjectivity where you the manager still get to decide.

It’s a warning shot, and sometimes it only lasts a week.

BigCo HR can definitely make it take months, but the practice in general doesn’t have to be that way. We did this at startup size as small as 20 people, and I never regretted it.