[nine_zeros]

> 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.

[lazide]

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 of them, decided to dig in and make it miserable for everyone.

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.

The second group all eventually got fired.

I can tell which group you’d be in just from this post. But then, I doubt you’re surprised by that either.

[nine_zeros]

> 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.

[lazide]

Oh, ‘externalities’? Please do tell.

[nine_zeros]

> Oh, ‘externalities’? Please do tell.

Tell of a manager that doesn't understand engineering, collaboration, and tradeoffs.

[lazide]

Those are included directly in the PIP if deficient. And are always key parts of the job.

While there are plenty of incompetent (or just plain dickish) managers, no one who ever reported to me got a PIP for anything but being consistently ineffective or so abrasive they were causing more trouble than they were worth.

Ineffective could mean anything from couldn’t code effectively (compared to peers) to couldn’t design/figure out what to do to a decent enough quality, or wasn’t independent enough for the level they were working at, or unable to get peers to help them due to being a problem, etc.

Abrasive being picking fights with co-workers over things that didn’t matter, pointlessly antagonizing or scaring people, bullying co-workers, etc.

In all cases it needed to be a pattern of behavior (not a one off), they already had significant feedback/chance to improve and had not, and I have concrete guidance on what to do instead, why it mattered, and I would check in regularly and independently to see if there was improvement and give regular feedback.

And I made sure that the managers who reported to me (later) did the same. Which is why we had such good turn around rates. But ultimately, it wasn’t up to us - the most we could do is show a path. They had to walk it.

Anyone who didn’t think it was fair (but couldn’t articulate why in a way we could reconcile), or refused to understand and take ownership of the situation didn’t do well. Which was unfortunate. And did happen.

If they left without completing it, I would have understood and hey - better for everyone. No point trying to fit a square peg into a round hole forever.

But in all the time I was managing (over a decade, 200+ different folks, peak of a little over 60 at one time) no one ever did. Even though in some cases we offered them significant money to do so.

The case that tried to hit every button and blame/manipulate everyone else was particularly terrible, because I had to go into CYA/document everything mode while he tried to sabotage the team and anyone else he could get ahold of. Including false accusations against me, the HR rep, and several nearby managers who had nothing to do with it.

All because he got hired in to code, but near as I could tell literally couldn’t. He kept trying to make all his co-workers do it for him, which got old very fast. 3 months in, all his co-workers hated him, and that was quite a feat on that team.

He turned down a six figure ‘please stop already’ offer just to try to complete the PIP - which he didn’t, and everyone who wasn’t completely delusional knew he wouldn’t. And got fired.

So what are you talking about, specifically?

[nine_zeros]

At this point, it is clear that your approaching is bad-faith. Let me tell you why - it is because you are relying on your managers to tell you how someone is performing.

This leads to a weird situation - one wherein as soon as a manager, reporting to you,faces pressure, they use the PIP to find an escape hatch. They start creating narratives about how some failure is because of an engineer individual - and not because of poor structures, poor communication by the manager, or generally management losing track of what makes a project succeed. An example of this is merely managers who PIP people for something sliding by 2 days but reality is that those 2 days don't matter to the business - it is a mediocre system that is penalizing an individual for those 2 days - just because.

The fact that you've had to PIP over 20 people - say at a rate of 1 person per year - it is a massive signal that your structures are dysfunctional. Either you are hiring absolute dumbasses or there is something wrong about your system that causes Pippable behaviors.

Look inwards. You'll go further in life.