Any serious organization will take that into account for the managers own performance. Their job is people management, and so losing an employee is potentially a strike against them and they need to be able to justify the firing was not their own failure but the employees inability to perform, which is part of the process. You can also get some signal about this on how other employees are performing, if every employee’s under performing then obviously it’s a cultural management organization issue, but no organization can be all things to all people often there will just be bad fits and people need to be able to move on.

I have seen both sides of this, but most often its legitimately performance related. As in, IC pushes no code, calls in all the time, is generally unreliable, etc etc. But the manager side is almost worse, because the bad manager multiplier effect extends to each of their reports. And if reports aren't sure about expectations, or communication is subpar, its easy to feel lost.

The ugly part of this is there are bad managers and bad employees so we don't know what each situation is. Or sometimes both parties are decent people but their personalities each have one too many spikes that sometimes mesh super well with people, sometimes mesh poorly.

I agree the ideal manager who is a good communicator with a genuinely incompetent employee ought to make a soft touch. If they're really bad, ideally let them know they can look for a job if they wish, offer a neutral recommendation, etc. Let them know a PIP might be coming etc since legal basis must be covered.

Problem with a poor manager, even with a soft touch, is maybe their expectations actually are bad (especially a pointy haired boss who doesn't have a conception of the labor needed). Maybe they have OCD and see all work as bad, in the same way someone might consider Scarlett Johansen extremely ugly because of that one single freckle ruining the whole thing. I've seen this too. That's all to say if a manager comes in with the sweetest gentlest informal approach and complains to Scarlett Johansen about how awful the freckle is, well, even the soft touch won't help much there.

I would imagine in most real world cases we can see both, and we can see mixes, where it's a so-so employee who might be great under a strong manager, but is weaker under a OCD manager who puts the magnifying glass on the weaknesses. And of course sometimes managers will put the magnifying glass on the weaknesses because they want to eliminate this employee for various external reasons.

I’ve always assumed that’s a prerequisite for a pip. Obviously managers need to give reports good feedback regularly.