> A good manager doesn't need PIPs because they're always communicating clearly and consistently to their reports about how they're doing.

I'm not sure this is true. I'm definitely open to the idea that I was a bad manager or there were things I wasn't doing well, but not communicating my expectations clearly is not something I've ever been accused of. Or at least not once I had some experience. Management comes with a learning curve.

I have had an employee where I and their direct manager were very much communicating they weren't meeting expectations, including coaching and providing warning that their job was now at risk, that only did a 180 when put on a PIP. I think for some people there is power in putting a concrete date on things vs something that needs fixed "soon".

The employee in question continued to improve post-PIP and got promoted. I don't know what happened after I left the company, but I have no reason to doubt they continued to do well.

>A good manager doesn't need PIPs because they're always communicating clearly and consistently to their reports about how they're doing.

More generally, a good manager is someone who shields their people from surprises. A PIP should never come as a surprise to someone. Unfortunately, there are bad managers out there who fail at that. It's not the manager's fault if someone gets put on a PIP, but it's absolutely 100% their failing if it comes out of the blue.

PIP and similar things also get "misused" with other anti-management techniques like stack ranking.

Someone I know got put on a PIP solely because the dictates from Upper Management said that annual review scores must have a certain distribution and average per team - and that naturally means someone it at the bottom. And the dictated numbers means that people with lower scores must be put on a PIP. It happened to be the newest, least experienced member of our team, and the PIP "plan" itself (as written by the team lead) was effectively "Continue what you're doing", but they were still forced by HR to do it.

They left themselves a year later, and I don't blame them. They just re-introduced all the worst parts of "stack ranking" and firing the "worst" person in the team with more bureaucracy.

Worked as a PM at a well known tech company, great relationship with my director. He leaves, new director comes in and within three months I'm on a PIP. I'm given a list of work products to create for a new offering that has been discussed, which on the face of it are entirely reasonable, and the standard 30 days.

100% ghosted by my Director. Weekly 1:1s? He no-shows 2 of them. Near zero input. In "fairness", I knew what was happening, but had some tiny semblance of good faith. Hah.

Final meeting, he shows up with HR. "So we've been talking about (when?) and I have just completed my final review of the documents you created (bear in mind these have had significant input from multiple stakeholders who, not for nothing, generally approved), and I am still left believing that your output is not up to the quality or depth that we expect from our PMs, so..."

I pulled up the receipts, because why not? I think he may not even have known that GDocs provides good metrics on documents, including who has viewed, and when, and how many times. I did this with the HR person sitting awkwardly there. "You reviewed this document? GDocs says you've never accessed it. And this one? Never accessed. What about this deck? Never accessed."

At that point he turned his cam off and clumsily handed it over to the HR person. They asked if I'd like to follow up, but that the company would support the Director's decision. Fine, didn't expect any different. They did acknowledge that they could see too that he hadn't done anything to even present a token perspective that the PIP was anything other than firing with 30 days notice.

Lives and learns, we do.

How do you know its the workers fault and not the nature of this role in the company?

Also by forcing managers to drag employees through a pip process, you: (a) reduce risk of wrongful termination suits. (b) increase likelihood that an abusive manager is discovered.

I'm sure lots bad managers get away with bad stuff, even when a pip process is in place.

But every bit of documentation produced by a pip could certainly backfire on a bad manager.

Again obviously, not all bad managers will be stopped, not will all bad employees :)

I suppose it depends if you value your own ego over your financial well being?

I don't hold any expectations from my employer other than being an employer. Being hired is as much part of a job as quitting or being fired.

All that said, I don't care what reason an employer has to wanting me out. It really does not matter to me. All I need is time to plan ahead so I come out unscathed. Who knows? I may even find a better job on my way out.

A lack of warning can leave you in the lurch financially and career-wise. Getting the heads+up that it's time to find a new job let's you keep banking paychecks while you make a seamless transition to a new opportunity.

>a lack of warning over a lack of reason

The choice is one or both...

Don't see how that's strictly better since the person loses out on potential feedback from the PIP vs straight firing.

PIP also doesn't prevent someone from getting severance, firing is firing.

Honest question, if someone is performing horribly, why do they deserve a severance package? Isn't that was unemployment insurance is for?

What’s the alternative? Give them a rainbow sticker? It’s business among adults, performance matters. If you can’t meet expectations then it’s not a good fit. That’s part of life.

As someone who has been in that situation, it's better than "your performance is shit, you're fired". In my case a large part of the problem was that I was not picking up on what should have been obvious cues. This provided a needed wake up call, and prompted me to improve.

A PIP should be the last chance to improve. You should have had many chances before that, with lots of clear feedback. Of course it's soul-destroying, but laying them off is worse.

More soul destroying than "your performance is shit, so shit I see no hope your worthwhile, get out?"

I think the GP is overly optimistic about a PIP. In general I'll say when I've put someone on a PIP, it's been with the expectation of firing at the end. "We have discussed this problem and I've made it clear you need to improve, this is your last chance, I need to see x, y, and z (where X Y and Z are as concrete and measurable as possible) or mm/dd will be your last day". It's making clear that whatever issues are involved have come to a head, and this is the final chance to fix them. My general assumption is that if spelling out the issues and providing coaching hasn't resolved the issue the PIP probably won't either, but I do see value in a clear process vs the cut just being whenever I decide to do it, with no warning that day is coming.

I have also actually seen this work in practice. I've had people who multiple conversations and coaching seemed to make no inroads, but putting that clear "if this isn't resolved by X day, we're done" expectation out there seemed to make it "real" and they've completely turned things around. I have promoted people I've previously put on a PIP.

That said my advice remains, if your put on a PIP it's time to start looking. I think many (most?) managers d use them cynically where a PIP is more paper trail than final warning, and the employee may be getting fired regardless. Even if that's not the case you've just been told very clearly it's not working. Something isn't working and it's better to hedge your bets and look for another job that fits better while trying to improve.

> is totally and utterly soul destroying to a person?

To some, it is, and to others, it isn't.

I wonder: Is your question a byproduct of some type of educational system which had a lot of grade inflation and people get passed on to the next year no matter how poor their progress?

In my school/high school, if you got an F in one subject, you'd be held back for the whole year. In my university, they didn't grade on a curve, and had clearly delineated thresholds for A, B, C, etc. The engineering department worked hard to ensure only competent people could get an A or B (you didn't need to be brilliant - merely competent).

By the time you get a job, you should be able to handle feedback along the lines of "You're performance is not good enough for this job". With good management, this isn't a shock, and you should have gotten messaging about performance for quite a while prior to being handed a PIP. Not all management is good, though.

It should not be an identity crisis. No one is good enough for any job, and for any team. You should not go on in life thinking you'll not fail. You won't grow much that way.

I've seen management at times give the employee a ton of leeway. A friend of mine was in a SW team, and he decided he didn't like coding. The manager worked with him to give him an alternate role that was mostly related to customer support. When they'd come with a bug report or query, he'd study the (large) code base and help them if they were doing something wrong, or file a proper bug report with the team.

He still sucked (and knew it). He started working reduced hours (with the manager's approval) to handle the stress.

I kept telling him to go find another job if this one doesn't suit him. He had other skills - he'd done HW work professionally at the same company prior to switching to SW.

This went on for two years before they finally put him on a PIP and fired him. He had a grace period of two years to find another job, but didn't.

The real problem is the unfair PIP - where they want to fire you for reasons other than your performance. It begins with escalating demands that you cannot fulfill, and they use that as a pretext to put you on a PIP.

Anti-disclaimer: I've been on a (very unfair) PIP and was practically fired. Everyone I know at the company who's been on a PIP was fired. So when I say all of the above, trust me, I know the dark side of PIPs. I think they are primarily a tool to get rid of person and the manager is usually not honestly trying to redeem the person.

But even in those cases, it shouldn't be even close to "soul destroying". It's simply the equivalent of getting dumped by a boy/girl friend. Sucks, but it's expected. You move on.

I think it’s just corporate culture in some places. I’ve done a stint in management and I’ve had the “fun” of dealing with all these performance measurements. I personally think they are rather useless in any sort of office work where your employees have a high degree of independence and complex tasks. I also think they come with a huge risk of creating a working culture where employees game the system. If you clock time on the hour then you can be sure nobody is going to help each other, because how do you clock that half hour? If you sell software by ridiculously short estimates and reward your employees for meeting them, then how happy are your clients with all the post-release support they’ll have to pay for? If you have one employee who’s build internal tools that empower everyone else, but haven’t delivered on X, Y, Z and you’re personally getting judged on those metrics then how do you keep up over all productivity when you’re forced to let them go.

There are a million examples of why they are bad, and I can’t really think of any in which they are useful on their own. Which becomes the issue when decision makers advance in ranks and “I don’t dare make decisions without covering my ass” managers slip in. Or when HR gets too much political power and push their tools as the law. Often organisations simply grow into poor cultures because the systemic value of measurements is shit compared to individual management. This is of course helped along by bad managers, who when given too much freedom create an organisational culture which is far worse than the meritocracy of data driven management.

I think it’s a little rough to judge someone who may have grown up in these cultures as a bad manager from a couple of lines of text.

Maybe they like the power, and this makes them feel powerful. Signs of a good manager, of course. /s

Sometimes people are in lala land and don’t realize the stakes until the heat gets turned up so far.

I think the PIP is hated because it ruins the illusion of camaraderie, like an ultimatum in marriage. But really, unlike a marriage you shouldn't have that illusion in the first place, you were always a replaceable cog whose only value is what service you can do for your boss. If you always had that perspective then the PIP can be seen as a helpful encouragement to improve rather than a precursor to an actual firing.

There might be a selection bias at hand only people that fail a pip and are fired are eventually free from nda.

What evidence do you have for this statistic?

Most states in the United States will still provide unemployment payments for an employee terminated for performance.

The company needs to prove a gross negligence level of employee conduct to deny unemployment. Things like not showing up to work or workplace sabotage.

Funny how they are used as a cover to those lawsuits but at the same time anyone with half a brain can see how a racist could saddle someone with bogus pips. Someone must have brought this shaky pip defence in front of the right corporate favoring judge if everyone is using it as this ironclad defense now.

I don’t think it’s good for mental health for a manager or employee to be vascillating between PIPs and not PIP. We still measure performance and do coaching. We just don’t put people under threat of firing which is what these PIPs aim to do.

The problem is what pip percentages say about management. Either HR hires and management approves 20 % duds - or your company is a rockstar shredder machine. Neither is a pleasant truth.

> but is used as another (legalese once you've already given up hope).

because "completely useless or toxic"(from prev comment) is manager's subjective assessment, and company wants to have stronger metric for firing people.

He was probably the smartest guy on the team. And when push came to shove, productive as hell. I think management didn't appreciate how much time he spent reading web comics though (you know, when push was not around).

I imagine he'd have flourished if work-from-home had been a thing then.

I’ve run several PIPs and haven’t lost anyone. This was in collaboration with a really good HRBP though.

I've never seen anyone put on a PIP where the intention was anything other than eventual firing. In all these cases, the person was doing an awful job for over a year, or in some cases, since they were hired.

If they did that to me I would take it as a sign of disrespect and resign immediately.

Oops now you gotta hire a new one.

I've done both. I rather the PIP.

Bunch of people who took the ZIRP startup decade and assumed it was a permanent thing to not actually have to do work to keep your job.

Employment in most of the US is at will by default - with the exception of Montana basically.

Maybe I need my understanding corrected. I thought the point of at-will was that you very much could fire someone for nearly reason (you support the Cubs, pack up your desk!). You cannot fire someone for protected classes (gender, race, etc), but basically everything else is fair game.

Who said anything about firing for non-work reasons. One can be fired immediately for work reasons without a PIP.

Note that the PIP alone does not suffice as valid supporting data if the employee contests it. It helps for there to be more data than it.