@AaronHall Don't think so.

@AaronHall me?

@Lilienthal thanks :)

@Lilienthal I do like how he starts off, I want to leave this incredibly toxic enironment. And then complains he is getting fired, kudos to you, sir.

@Magisch These comments on your question though, someone put up a 3 part comment xD

not like I could delete them

true

but you got Attention :P

> This question has an open bounty worth +100 reputation from enderland♦ ending in 7 days.

@Lilienthal it's definitely real

^^^ I already did, and everyone seems to be aware of that. People seem to keep using "your friend" because this doesn't seem to matter much really

Just out of curiousity, does anyone know of anyone who survived a PIP? I've never seen them used as anything other than a tool to build a file as justification for termination.

PIPs aren't a thing in germany so Idk

@RichardU Like you, I haven't seen anyone turn things around due to a PIP. As a manger, I've unfortunately had to use a PIP a few times. I felt they were a waste of time, but HR insisted.

@RichardU an older college of mine has survived one. He got lucky the ceo got his back, but generaly its a "death" sentence.

@JoeStrazzere That's what I thought. A previous employer of mine was using them to get out of having to pay unemployment claims. Instead of laying people off, they'd suddenly give bad reviews and come up with PIPs that had standards that were impossible to meet as they were vague and not quantifiable.

I suspect most good managers (who would likely allow you to recover from a PIP) are also very likely to have worked with you extensively prior to formalizing it

@enderland the company that hit me with one got a nasty surprise. I ended up having a stroke from the stress. They didn't want to pay unemployment, so they got to pay disability instead. Jerks.

@RichardU I guess that's sort of like karma?

though crappy for you, too, I guess

@enderland Good manager should speak up long before a pip is even on the table. Good companies won't use pips either: they manage employee with clear goals and expectations and fire them if poor performance becomes a pattern with no hope of improvement. Pips are often needlessly necessary red tape. :)

@Lilienthal that's my point, a good manager does the work a PIP does prior to formalizing it, so at that point it's a "we need to document this" thing instead of an actual performance improvement program :)

@Lilienthal PIPs are not needless, they are necessary to make HR feel they are doing something important. ;)

@DavidK I searched for that dup for the calling during work hours one :( hah

how did that show up with you you VtC'ing though?

@enderland That job made me understand the sources of workplace violence. I'm not the only one they did that too either. Not a happy place.

I've been lucky so far that my employers have all been pretty great places to work overall

@Lilienthal "they manage employee with clear goals and expectations and fire them if poor performance becomes a pattern with no hope of improvement." I've worked for two companies that were reasonably "good". They both forced me to go through a PIP before getting rid of a problem employee. Seemed like a waste of time to me, but HR owned the rules. I guess that they felt they were protecting the company. Perhaps people on the other side of PIPs feel like they were dealt with more fairly.

@JoeStrazzere Yeah, once HR gets too involved it seems they want to document everything in the interest of fairness and transparency. For good managers that really shouldn't be necessary and management should be free to skip the entire process for clear deal-breakers (lying, criminal actions, ...).

From what I can tell from this site and others, PIPs are usually sprung on people who had no idea they were cocking it up so badly that their job was at risk.

Because management never gave proper, direct feedback.

And at that point the PIP is merely a formality before the firing.

Though that said I've heard of some success stories so it can work.

Wow.

It takes balls to make a stupid decision so publicly, I'll give him that.

@Lilienthal For me, I gave what I believed to be plenty of direct feedback. I coached as hard as I could. I moved projects around, etc, etc. Nothing seemed to help. I felt terrible, since I had hired this person thinking she could do well. For me, it felt like failure, but I couldn't let her drag the team down. Yet, she still acted surprised. It might have been an act, but I think she was fooling herself.

@JoeStrazzere Not much you can do there.

All you can do is have a clear talk about what you saw that was wrong, what needed to change and what would happen if she didn't do at least [goals] by [deadline].

Finally caved in and linked my Puzzling account because this response is just silly.

It's one thing to say "this isn't a priority for us and you're stuck with the logo you get". It's something else to abuse a bunch of graphic design lingo to pretend there isn't a problem.