> “A lot of the time, they’re done,” Gadea said of underperformers. “They’re burned out, they need a break. And now you’re asking them to work harder.”

I've seen that once, most recently.

Before that, it was somebody who was trying to get let go on performance grounds, thinking that it would lead to severance (didn't work out).

Before that, it was somebody who got put on PIP, but I'm not sure why, and they were personally devastated and then quit.

Telling somebody that they're fucking up and that they need to improve is one thing, that's just feedback. Creating a structure that's officially "if you don't do X, Y, Z, then you're fired"... just fire them.

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giantrobot 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

> Telling somebody that they're fucking up and that they need to improve is one thing,

In my experience it's management telling the employee they're fucking up when in reality it was management fucking up the whole time. Unrealistic schedules, untenable goals, poor/no feedback or guidance, or just actively burning the employee out. Management then uses the PIP to fire the employee without a lawsuit.

There's never a good faith position of management with PIPs. They're for their benefit and never the employee's benefit.

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DragonStrength 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My experience with the system was it mostly being abused by incompetent managers who had no clue how to evaluate engineer performance.

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therealdrag0 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Why just fire them? As you showed they can “just quit” if they don’t want to play ball, and some people want to have the opportunity to play ball.

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jopsen 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

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 :)

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bsder 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> Why just fire them?

Legal ass covering--especially if the employee is a minority.

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therealdrag0 7 months ago | parent [-]

Isn’t that why you shouldn’t just fire them?

	▲	bsder 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		No, you can be on the receiving end of a lawsuit alleging discriminatory behavior without documentation to the contrary. I'd like to be snide about this, but the problem is that there really are an amazing amount of shitty companies out there and forcing at least some documentation is likely a good thing, in general.