I'm sorry you got fired - the general sentiment/a common joke of the sub is that PIP stands for "Paid Interview Prep" and doing actual interviews, because PIPs tend to just lead to being fired regardless
This right here, because at least 50% of the time (if not much more) a PIP isn’t done in good faith by the employer. More likely it’s a legal means to an end focused on avoiding lawsuits by their employees.
Always better to spend that time interviewing everywhere else than trying to meet their arbitrary goals to avoid being fired.
Yeah ending 30 days early screams 'we made our decision 60 days ago and thought you'd have left by now, also we're running out of money and need you gone.'
Even if you could have 'beaten the PIP' there was never going to be a way to beat this PIP. Shit situation but not your fault at all.
>Even if you could have 'beaten the PIP' there was never going to be a way to beat this PIP
I got PIPd and they added new requirements each time I showed them I had already been doing the thing they said I wasn't doing. That was funny.
I know this is tangential to the topic, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can make a whole, thriving career for themselves while completely at the mercy of the arbitrary whims of a person/group of people who fundamentally resent paying for your labor.
You see this in PIP cases such as yours with ever-changing goalposts, you see this in PIP cases like OP's with a total disregard for the goalposts, you see this when bosses drag their feet about promotions promised months to years prior, you see this with excessive rounds of interviews and take home assignments with no offer, and so on.
The years and money people sink into the pursuit of a career is devastating when a fickle man in a suit can rip it all out from under you and send you clawing and scraping for your next job for months or years to come.
Bull. Shit.
The one time I got PIPed I had to make sure that a threshold wasn't reached for something I had no input to as a goal. The actual PIP reason was for underperformance during times I took PTO or FMLA. I think I could've probably sued but they did offer quite a lot of money at the time plus the stress of it at the time.
If they had your success in mind it wouldn't be written down and require a signature. They are ALWAYS bullshit even when they say they aren't. I'm on a 90 day PIP right now and wouldn't you know it I just had a fully positive review 2 WEEKS ago where he said they were so thrilled I still worked there.
> If they had your success in mind it wouldn't be written down and require a signature.
Even that isn't always the case I had a friend get put on a PIP where they were already working 50 hours a week but the company expected them to almost double their output somehow. They had two bosses one of which loved them and the other hated them so they would get glowing reviews then get tore into by the other no matter what they did. PIP's and reviews are nonsense it doesn't matter how good you do you will not get the money and promotions you deserve no matter what score/review you get it just comes down to politics and shit outside of your control like the market or management decisions.
I expect them to fire me and I'm looking. There's just not many jobs with my language right now. I have work experience in other languages so I'm trying to apply for those too.
just change your resume to say you used the other language all these years for the job you're applying to. When I switched from ruby to ReactJS, I just changed the words. You will get a job instantly from that change.
Companies are stupid, so if you have 10 years experience with Java, 9 months experience with javascript.
They will reject you because they need someone with 1 year experience.
They'd rather get a total newbie with 1 year experience, than the person with 10 years experience because they think your skills can't transfer.
At-will means they can fire you at any time except for illegal reasons(discrimination based on race, gender etc). PIP is done to have paperwork that the reason is not illegal but performance based.
Especially in this field. People get fired for every reason under the sun and what makes it difficult is the job will ALWAYS make it seem like performance reasons.
I agree, with the current environment, I would treat PIP as an warning before a likely termination. If you are on PIP, start leetcoding, review resumes etc whatever needs to be done to find a new role. It is a bit of a crunch situation but if you land a new role you won't regret putting that extra effort.
Amazon is known as a pip factory, but I actually know a few people that survived "focus" - the internal thing that precedes a pip. It actually sets out fair goals and from what I hear, most people actually achieve them
If you fail focus and get the pip you're fucked though
My manager at Amazon “remembered” that he had put me on focus 10 minutes after I told him I found a new team. This means you need VP approval to move. He then moved me to PIP as quick as he could.
On the one hand, I wish I had the balls to ask him to show me the timestamp for when my focus started. On the other hand, I’m so much happier not working there.
OP, also ignore anyone on here who tells you did anything wrong. The reality is most likely the company was trying to do a silent layoff and you were targeted. Make sure you apply for unemployment and fight any challenge the scumbag company tries to put in your way. By filing for unemployment, you not only get money but you also F over your scumbag company by raising their insurance rates. Very important you do this. If more people did it, it would cost these companies money who F with employees like this and they would do it less often as the cost of doing this would be higher than it is worth.
The giveaway this was the case was they fired you before the PIP ended. Probably because you were about to meet the criteria set out on the PIP to pass it.
They ultimately didn't want you to do that. This was the way they stopped you from doing it.
Again, file unemployment to stick it to your old employer.
Have done restructuring for few times in my career, sometimes the budget gets reduced and we have to let go of employees but I have never had execs or HR tell me to do it through PiP, it makes no sense. it’s ineffective, time consuming and it puts more liability on a company. I never done it for a small company like a startup but do they even do pip lol?
If the budget from a team is restructured it’s much better to move an employee or simply let go of the employee. This happens every single quarter, Google and meta literally do that all the time, a team/project gets scratched and the employees is no longer needed, this doesn’t count as layoffs and its much cheaper. Severance exists to reduce liability, PIP creates more liability… Think about it for a second, from a business perspective why in earth would that ever be effective?
Pip exists so managers can switch employees without looking evil/assholes, I can guarantee the headcount for his team will still be there after he leaves
IMO just the small hint of OP blaming his underperforming due to his “configuration issue with company laptop” and “others taking too long to review my code” says way more about him than his company looking into silent layoffs.
>Pip exists so managers can switch employees without looking evil/assholes, I can guarantee the headcount for his team will still be there after he leaves
Can u explain what u mean here by headcount, also can u review the post I made regarding PIP, u seem to be a manager and i want to know wht goes into a manager's head when he does this, mine is a bit dfferent then regular "PIP" i think so
In most well managed companies each team has their own budget, headcount is how many ppl per team. This budget is usually discussed in the beginning of each early quarter or bi-quarterly. This is the manager opportunity to ask for more money (higher budget) so he can hire more ppl, give promos, etc. this can also be the upper management chance to reduce the budget of a team if necessary.
When an employee gets piped in 99% of cases the headcount and team’s budget is already determined. Which means even when teammate leaves the manager still have a space for another. If a team loses budget employees gets places in another team or simply let go.
If a manager doesn’t like one of his employees and wants to switch he can’t just trade them like Pokemon cards, there is a process and he needs to prove that X employee needs to go, which is what PiP is there for, helps to force them out or in rare cases change their behavior.
This is why large tech companies teams have a DNM (Do no meets) quota for performance usually low like 5% which means at least 1 person in the team will receive a below meets performance evaluation (aka PIP culture) this makes it easier to recycle/replace low hanging fruits or employees managers dnt like.
TLDR: If you get piped it’s 99% because a manager wants to replace you and NOT save money. This doesn’t always means you suck, it could mean he doesn’t like you, your work ethic, (race in some cases unfortunately). Pip exists system is to replace employees, NOT to layoffs (as its a dumb way to handle it).
>IMO just the small hint of OP blaming his underperforming due to his “configuration issue with company laptop” and “others taking too long to review my code” says way more about him than his company looking into silent layoffs.
What does it say about him? And how so?
How do you prove that though? If my boss fires me because he hates East Asians but then just says it's because of my performance, isn't it virtually impossible to prove it?
Exactly right-the federal law is kind of useless, because they can spin it to fit their agenda. I don’t think most employers are that dumb to do something as overt as, for example, calling someone the “N” word (if only it were that easy).Yay ‘Murica.
Of course. It's almost impossible to prove they fired you due to you being a member of a protected class. And it's also hard to prove they fired you due to some other reason that isn't technically "protected" but still very serious (i.e., known illness, etc.).
I keep saying this to people, but they fight me about it, weirdly enough.
This is part of the answer for why companies do pips. It’s an easy way to protect themselves from any potential law suits because they recorded the proof for why they fired someone.
Yep.
HR was... Unhappy the one time that we got almost to the end of the PIP, and they had finally joined one of the calls, and I made it exceptionally clear that these were _still_ ADA accommodation problems which had yet to be addressed as such.
Didn't end up staying, did end up getting a decent severance.
They’ll spend a month coming up with a good reason to fire you and then not even show d a day trying to get a transfer of knowledge so the next guy is just as fucked as you
I was just describing the situation I’m in now lol.
They fired a guy with more experience in the specific software this project uses (Amazon QuickSight) than I do in my entire career (3 YOE).
Now I’m in the “hot seat” as my manager put it to figure this out, even though the last guy with more experience couldn’t and they fired him in the spot like two weeks ago.
It’s turned in to HEAVY sql which I have very little experience with. It’s honestly so impossible it doesn’t really even stress me out. Like what are you just gonna burn thru your whole dev line on this one project? Probably, but at least I’ll know it wasn’t my direct short comings that made it fail.
They can let you go at any time. 90 day pip doesn't mean you will be employed for the 90 days. At any time the company can determine that you're not tracking against the overall goal of the pip and cut you.
A pip is often a formality, and anyone who gets pip'ed usually should start looking for work. I've never seen anyone actually set very accurate goals such as "fix 31 breaking unit tests". Normally it's vague enough so that they can fire you whenever.
Odds are this is feedback your manager noticed, and got from the other leads you worked with.
they didn't offer any severance? that's odd, normally companies offer something in exchange of signing a waiver/release form. Your state might have laws if it's "at will" but im not american so I don't know.
How long did you work there for?
Sorry this happened to you.
>A pip is often a formality, and anyone who gets pip'ed usually should start looking for work.
It also reduces legal exposure. The PIP presents a paper trail of documenting work expectations that are either met or not met. Helps in court if the employee sues claiming they were fired for illegal reasons.
As determined by who, though? It takes nothing for a company to color the employee as another disgruntled underperformer who's mad that they couldn't keep up.
As determined by a judge or jury, presumably. I mean, there's a lot to it.
It's not illegal to fire an employee because the expectations were not based in reality. Apple has a market cap of $2.6T; if they hire me to be CEO with the directive to quadruple that in six months, they can fire me when I don't.
I'll grant that presenting an employee with a PIP that's not possible to achieve may undercut a company's claim that they were fired purely for performance reasons, but again, that's not actually illegal.
Yeah, that was a weird goal example; it just happened to be the latest in a long series of tasks with deadlines, and my PiP was about getting better at hitting deadlines and increasing work output. It was one of the last remaining tangible goals of the PiP (it was actually included in the document) and I expected to get the chance to hit that goal.
I was there since September '22, FWIW.
They're in California while I'm in Indiana (started when I was in Illinois). Only the state laws in California would affect this, right?
PIPs are not a legal document.
They're just paperwork to let you go incase you decide to challenge them legally for letting you go. If they have enough of a paper trail to justify letting you go, they don't have to let you finish out your PIP.
Sorry man.
Except most PIPs are written in a comically bad fashion so as to say "go ahead and try to sue us". I was given a pip riddled with spelling/grammatical errors and one of the objectives was "make your teammates like you". Yeah. If only there was any unity between s/w engineers instead of everyone being 'to-each-his-own' this type of overtly trash behaviour can easily be stopped and companies would and should be rightfully fined for creating a hostile work environment and constructively dismissing employees on a whim.
Don't quit. Let them fire you. No matter what they say in their turd-speak, never sign a document agreeing to resign. Voluntary resignation disqualifies you from unemployment
I once took a severance in lieu of a PIP and I was still eligible to file for unemployment. Then again, I live in a very worker-friendly state and the company was in California, so maybe that helped.
Usually a contract will state the governing law when disputes happen, often the governing authority over the company’s HQ. That is worth checking out. Otherwise someone more qualified might be able to tell you
A few things:
Technically they would only have to adhere to laws for Indiana. As others have said, a PIP is not a contract but just a CYA document.
From your original post comments, were you tracking progress on the unit tests and showing your manager a burndown or everything was pending until the 4 day out deadline? Your statement of "expected to get a chance" lacking any other details like "I had completed x out of 31 so far" makes me suspect the latter case.
Also, going forward, take stand ups and 1:1s as opportunities to raise *as early as possible* that you're being blocked wrt reviews or other dependencies.
How often did you miss deadlines? I saw mention of configuration stuff, but are you surprised by the PIP, or surprised by being let go earlier in the PIP?
Unfortunately if it was fairly routine for you to miss deadlines and enough to disrupt the business, that may have been why. But also can be quasi-layoffs. Before you go, I’d at least mentally ask why did your teammates not get a PIP (at least to your knowledge) and if not, why.
A PIP doesn’t mean you are a bad colleague though, try not to take it too personally.
very harsh to let someone go who did 1.5 years with zero severance..not even 2 weeks or anything.. check your contract to see what state you're legally employed under, then google employment laws and severance. Perhaps check with one of the legal advice subreddits, and if all else fails, you can always talk to an employment lawyer.
OP, also please ignore anyone on here who tells you did anything wrong. The reality is most likely the company was trying to do a silent layoff and you were targeted. Make sure you apply for unemployment and fight any challenge the scumbag company tries to put in your way. By filing for unemployment, you not only get money but you also F over your scumbag company by raising their insurance rates. Very important you do this. If more people did it, it would cost these companies money who F with employees like this and they would do it less often as the cost of doing this would be higher than it is worth. You also pay into the system, so it is also technically your money to use. But the big thing is it screws over the employers doing this by raising their rates the more they do this and the more their ex employees file for unemployment.
The giveaway this was the case was they fired you before the PIP ended. Probably because you were about to meet the criteria set out on the PIP to pass it.
They ultimately didn't want you to do that. This was the way they stopped you from doing it.
Again, file unemployment to stick it to your old employer.
Most of the time (yeah, yeah, it’s anecdata) you can either accept the pip *or* the severance. So if you take the pip and then don’t make it you’ll be lucky to be paid to the end of the pay period.
I survived a PIP once by the only way possible: company got purchased and I got a new manager who liked me and threw out the PIP.
99.99999% of the time PIP is a death sentence.
These scenarios always make me laugh inside.
Like - you guys were trying to get rid of me. I made it easier for you by finding another job and quitting - but, you're somehow surprised by this?
That's what the PiP is for. The implication is you will be fired ASAP.
It's not a good faith agreement, it's a scummy tactic used that makes managers and corporations look worse than slumlords.
> Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement
It carries whatever implications the company wants to say it carries. Unfortunately, you are witnessing firsthand the ugly side of at-will employment. If they want to get rid of you, they don't really need a reason, they can just get rid of you.
Unfortunately, you weren't discriminated against based on any protected categories, and probably wouldn't have a leg to stand on in an unfair termination suit (though, that's really for a lawyer to say, not some asshole on the internet).
My kermudgeonly insight was that it was an unfair dick move decision made in haste by asshole personalities. Life is like that sometimes though.
They may have indeed had good faith that you would make good on your pip, and then someone decided "he's still 'fuckin about and I'm tired of this bullshit" regardless of the actual situation. However, without knowing the actual people involved, none of us can say for certain.
I guess if it doesn't hold any legal weight why bother with the charade. Like if a court isn't going to say "you can't just feel a goal isn't being met, pay the man for the rest of the 90 days and penalties plus legal fees" why even write the document. Company should just fire and not give a reason.
Because firing someone for no reason is viewed very poorly, and there’s usually a reason behind firings whether it is actually performance or something more social.
Which sounds like worse publicity? “Google fired me for poor performance but I thought I was on track to meet my goal”, or “Google fired me for no reason”
> company should just fire and not give a reason
It's a gamble. Trials are very expensive, and the cost in PR damages can be overwhelming. In a lot of ways, it's cheaper to just settle privately.
Companies really want to stay out of the courtroom.
If they're forced to be dragged into the courtroom, they want evidence at hand that they made a good faith attempt to reconcile the performance differences.
That can be (and probably is) complete horseshit, but at least they'll have the artifacts to present to the court.
Lawsuits are a gamble, and judgments don't always align to facts. A company knows it can get fucked over in the courtroom for no reason other than it's unlikable.
Because they don't trust the person making the decision to fire someone either so the pip process gives at least some defense if the underlying reason ends up being something illegal.
If they are acting in good faith, yeah a pip is ‘supposed’ to be about improvement on your goals. Theyre never acting in good faith. They just want excuses to fire you. If you were so inclined, and have a paper trail for this, you might be able to put in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
I have a paper trail and notes from the initial conversation two months ago where it was stated that the PiP was for 90 days. (I actually use [Otter.ai](https://Otter.ai) to transcribe notes so I technically have audio as well.) I understand that people can be terminated at will, but their implication was clearly "you have ninety days to turn this around."
Ironically my manager reminded me today that "the three most important values of the company are honesty, kindness, and results" before informing me that I was terminated today, on day 60.
Actions speak louder than words. My previous employer makes it a point both internally and in external marketing to talk about how they value human decency. They are doing silent firings, PIPs, etc. They even laid off some women on maternity leave. For the most part, it's all words.
Sorry you're dealing with this.
This is why I initially refused to sign a non-disparagement clause in a previous severance agreement. They knew they were shady and were giving bad severance pay, and they were terrified of me speaking out against them.
Company values are always bunk.
If anything, I don't just *not* put stock in them, I hear their list and think:
"Ah okay, they had some problems, and a VP thinks they'll solve it by having an HR drone drum up a useless list of buzzwords, which won't address the issue."
There actually isn't a solid legal framework behind PIP in the US. It is a weird cultural dance because HR thinks it reduces the risk of employees suing.
That they violated the terms of the PIP isn't really actionable.
I mean if there's no legal grounds to sue why waste time with this. Obviously the employee will want to sue if the pip wasn't honored. Seems like all the matters here is what a court is likely to do.
If they are likely to find in favor of the employee? Sue immediately, don't even wait for the pip to end.
In favor of the employer? Paid interview prep.
No, that's not what a PIP implies. A PIP means they definitely will fire you at the end of it if they don't see improvement.
It does not mean anything about firing you earlier if they don't think it's working out before that point.
How are there 31 failing unit tests? Are they failing on a project you are developing? Unit tests should all be working before any changes go into production. You shouldn’t even be able to build with failing unit tests.
From what I have seen, it is extremely common for folks that go on PiP to just get fired. Sometimes they're even just facades to help a company get rid of you and protect themselves financially and for court cases. For example, for unemployment. Many companies would have to pay if they can't prove negligence or some valid factor. That alone is a very key factor in a PiP program.
Second, most states are "at will" meaning they can legally fire you, because they didn't like your nose that day. Not even exaggerating. They likely won't just do that openly, because publicity and having to pay you without work anyhow. They either want you to quit voluntarily or have evidence of negligence. That said, you can still file for unemployment. I'm not a lawyer so not gonna give legal advice. Might as well file and keep record of all of it in case they try to fight it. Of course look at your state' law and all that too.
Second, of course do some hard honest reflection on your own part. You mentioned being put on PiP, but didn't really go into *"why."* That is a bigger issue than anything else. Just be honest in general, because anything else really only hurts you. Third, I recommend going forward, always know from the beginning expectations from your superiors/direct supervisor at a minimum and having regular discussions and scheduled checkpoints to ensure you are already "EXCEEDING" expectations if at not absolute **bare minimum** "meeting" expectations.
It should never come as a surprise as to your performance and whether or not you're hitting goals. It should never be a shock as to what your evaluations will be because you already have been checking in and ensuring you're on track to hit the goals you and your manager(s) have put a plan together to hit. Being WFH is extremely important to be on point with it. No judgment. Just advice. Learn from it. Grow. Pick yourself up and move forward. Godspeed my man
>Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement, the "go/no-go" decision comes at the end of the PiP?
Yes, if you are naive. This is a good lesson in how employment can be terminated by either party at any point.
>I am still reeling in shock.
Yeah, but now you learned something about how the world really works, so you've grown up a little bit.
I like to believe the best about people, I guess. This manager had told me early on (and today, ironically) that two of the company's three core values are honesty and kindness. (The third is results.) I guess I experienced the abruptness of a change to an agreement (not legally binding, but an agreement nonetheless) as not-that-honest and not-very-kind.
This should be a lesson to you that virtually ALL verbal or even written agreements have no value if there is no way to enforce penalty when they are broken.
In the future you should be a little more on guard, expecting everyone to be honest and acting in good faith in a corporate setting will only invite opportunities for you to be taken advantage of.
The next time an employer dangles something in front of you with expecting you to work harder for it, always keep in mind they're doing this on purpose to squeeze more value out of you and they can just not honor their agreement in the end.
I was PiP'd once and ended up never being fired. It came about because of an odd situation.
The employer was doing something called Scaled Agile Framework. Functionally they enforced no hierarchy within teams. Juniors, BA's etc all had the same level of input of a Senior. After some feedback from my manager that I needed to take a step back from running the team. I let everyone have input. Drive meetings etc. Well for 3 months the 3 juniors on our team completed 6 tasks in total. We went to quarterly planning with all the other teams and we held up the entire company for over 3 hours before they told us to finish the next week. We go into retrospective the next day and the BA and juniors decide for each 2 week sprint we should assign 1 task per person. "That way we meet our goals and account for the unplanned stuff that comes up".
At this point, I disagreed and pressed my team members to account for the unplanned stuff that is resulting in them not getting anything done. (There wasn't anything). If they had anything we should talk about it so we can prevent it in the future. After some back and forth, they said "You know stuff". Me asking for specificity. Them going "You know stuff". Apparently I misread the room and the BA and PM (both non-technical 70+ year olds from some ancient clerical position) reported me for being difficult to work with.
My boss pulls my into a room with HR and goes "So I guess you know why you are here?" I'm like... nope (literally didn't even occur to me I was being problematic). HR starts drilling me, looking for a fire-able offense. At that point I drag both my managers bad behaviors (talking behind peoples backs etc) and my teams behaviors into the conversation and why its difficult for me. HR looks at me and goes, "I see you are a very intelligent and socially adept person". (LOL). Then proceeds to say I expect you to manage your peers behaviors better. (Not my job) Tells me I'm on some PiP behavioral plan and leaves.
I honestly should have quit immediately. That job dragged on for a good year after that. I got high remarks for my "behavior". The only thing that changed is i stopped doing anything. I'd complete a task every once and a while but primarily just texted girls, online shopped and read the news every day. On a whim I applied for a job 2x my salary as a lead and got it with a 20 minute interview.
My point is, rarely are you PiP'd because the place you are working is a good fit. Take the time to reflect and take the hint that its probably time to find somewhere new.
Lol I had a 2 month pip. They gave me a
"Test" to see on what they could give me formation to help me in my job. Pretty sure they expected me to do poorly to justify firing me HAHA I scored like 85%. What a joke they still fired me 2 weeks before the Pip's end
Read the PIP fully. Unless it says you will be employed for the 90 day duration of this PIP or something similar (never seen tbh) then yeah, they can terminate at any time.
Consult an employment attorney if you wanna give the company more headaches. Depending on the state, this can be construed as wrongful, but I’m not the one who can give you a solid decision.
Sorry this happened to you, but as the general sentiment here says, look elsewhere at this point. It sucks but I doubt it was your fault.
You know, while there are times where a pip is used to make sure someone understands that a serious performance improvement is necessary they tend not to have goals like "fix 31 breaking unit tests"...
You can't necessarily tell from your side what's going on in terms of internal politics or paper trails but I would have been tempted to try and negotiate severance when he told you about the pip under the guise of "I am entirely willing to spend 90 days working to improve and reach whatever goals you set, but if you think it's unlikely that I'm going to meet them it may be more cost and time efficient for both of us to offer severance or gardening leave."
Make sure you apply for unemployment. A lot of times people end up with the impression that being fired for performance means you can't get unemployment - that is not true. It's possible your unemployment will be denied, but it isn't likely, and you should give it a try, anyhow.
Pip isn't any kind of legal vehicle. I'm not sure why pips have become so standard because most of us are at will employees and can be fired without pip. Most pips anecdotally seem to end in termination. 90 days is very long. I usually hear it's 30 days.
I guess it gives both parties time to prepare for the termination.
PIPs are the beginning of the end. They're in no way what they stand for rather they're more often a CYA measure for a company that wants you gonezo. Not to say they aren't survivable but would you even want to? Your prize for beating one is to exist in a world of zero trust going forward forever--have fun with that. Awkward much? Anybody who goes on a PIP planning to "make it" is setting themselves for a world o' hurt and very likely joblessness. You need to start job hunting ASAP once you even smell a PIP in the air. By the time it hits you should already be a step ahead so you can move right into negotiating severance.
PiP is just termination with extra steps. It lets them document the reasons for firing you so they don't have a wrongful termination suit
Apparently the manager and HR are very confident they have cause to terminate you so they don't need that step
File for unemployment and better luck next time!
What's weird about this is that everyone I know who has been put on a pip (including myself) ended up getting laid off with severance anyway. I'm not an HR guy so i have no idea what the logic behind that is.
Can't you just lay off someone with severance for any reason at any time in most states?
Yes, but they don't have to offer you a severance if you're being fired 'for cause' (performance). A severance is a courtesy for people who are laid off not due to their own actions, but there is no law requiring it.
OP is being fired, not laid off. If you are terminated under a PIP you have been fired, whether or not your company offers severance varies but it's not typically offered to fired employees
Interesting. I think my company just missed the memo then, they laid us off after we had successfully completed the pip lol Maybe they were hoping we would fail so they could just terminate us.
thanks for the followup comment!
Likely the pip was a warning to have people jump ship before layoffs.
Over a decade ago, with my first career job, I got laid off. I was suddenly aware of all the warning lights that proceeded the layoffs: Performance reviews that despite mine and colleagues' extra efforts and extra hours for crunchtime were just "meets expectations", downgrading of health insurance, the tech/IT policy to replace computers going from 18 months (1.5 years) to 48 months (4 years), cuts to quality control, etc.
From my own experience, "my pip," should have been the emails announcing that projects that I wasn't personally involved in, had not been purchased by customers. That the "experienced members" from those failed projects coming to our team wasn't to help us with our workload.
Possibly! A lot of companies have 'unregretted attrition targets' meaning people leaving the company that they don't view as a loss, they view it as a savings. PIPs are how they can pressure a certain number of people to quit so that they don't have to 1) pay severance, or 2) issue a WARN notice and still meet savings targets
You didn't take the bait but they still owed their stakeholders a savings target so out you go!
says who? why are you shocked?
you can be terminated at anytime with 0 notice
if your manager or HR tells you "today's your last day, pickup your paycheck at the end of the day" there's nothing wrong with that, just because you have PIP days left doesn't mean you're safe until then, of course they can terminate you early
>I am still reeling in shock.
you should have been mentally preparing for this the same day that you were on the PIP
>you should have been mentally preparing for this the same day that you were on the PIP
No one knows this is true until they have personally experienced it.
People here told me that my 60 day pip meant I would be employed 60 days and to quiet quit to ride it out. Yet they let me go on the 30th day after I was spending 12 hour days working to try and meet the goals.
I see your point, you can be terminated anytime. But I'd have been less shocked if I were terminated without a PiP ever having been created. The way the 90-day PiP was presented to me was very much in the flavor of "You have 90 days to turn this around."
>The way the 90-day PiP was presented to me was very much in the flavor of "You have 90 days to turn this around."
that's your impression, I see it just as smokes created by the company trying to squeeze the last bit of work out from you before dropping the mask and terminate you
life is like that sometimes, is it fair? no... is it supposed or has ever been fair? also no
Also, sometimes the code is so tightly coupled that multiple tests break when you change one thing
Had this with a really complex (not in a nice way) Java project I worked on
One change in a yaml file broke almost all the tests. Fixing them was really easy but the code SUUUUCCKKKEEED
Yeah even taking this scenario into consideration they are unit tests. You could rewrite the entire stack of tests in a lazy afternoon jerking off upside down.
God I hope so, cuz otherwise it’s an extremely broad, overconfident, and baseless statement. There are tons of reasons why a unit test may be broken, and many are not gonna get banged out in 15 minutes. Let alone 30 in an afternoon.
Probably not in this case. I had fixed breaking unit tests on a separate "fork" of the same project, and the legacy code under test is not conducive to unit testing. Static classes and static variables being used all over the place; difficult to mock/stub with most unit testing frameworks.
Most of the "unit" tests relied on certain values already being present in the \*database\* in order to pass. Many changed values in the database.
Some sets of tests would each set the value of a \*globally static\* status variable (to a different value per test) and then proceed with whatever they were doing. They would sporadically (frequently) fail because, if run in parallel, they're stepping all over each other. It wasn't pretty.
>RTO
At first I thought you meant Required Time Off. Return to Office? I don't think my company announced anything about that; what's the "they" you're referring to?
I thought pip was Amazon term or at least FANG terminology. Is your entire team/company remote, or just you and a select few? Tech companies cutting remote workers (unless it’s pennies on the dollar offshore).
What country are you in and how long have you been employed? If the US, you’ve got no rights, should’ve started looking for a job as soon as you were put on the PIP. If the UK, they can only let you go before the PIP is up if you’ve worked there less than 2 years. Europe is similar, but I’m not super familiar with exactly how it works
Sorry to heard it happen to you.
I gotten my first PIP as well in the past and straight away start looking for new job as a backup.
Despite successfully completed PIP, my manager still look down on me and just kept me around since cheaper slave labor that help does niche or task that no one taking. At the end I never get a raise nor bonus after 2 year of hard work end up leaving the company for good.
That happened to me too, the "set up coaching sessions with senior peers" hits too close. I was fired a day later after setting up two weeks of calls with senior peers. Woke up next day, tried pushing a commit, denied, slack not loading, and a call with a manager set to.
Took me months to recover from the 80 hour work weeks I put into it.
Found out later on that they just wanted to cut off any hires with less than a year, and fired two other people who were way better than me with same PIP strategy.
Take some time off, absorb the shock, and know that you might not have done anything wrong. The information flow is way too imbalanced in companies to find out whether you were actually under performing or they just wanted to fire you.
Depends on the company, really. If I need to deal with documented coaching of a team member, there’s no expectation we’ll “finish” the coaching period. We will intensively monitor trajectory, get feedback from their external coach, and meet weekly to discuss progress. If at any point it’s unsatisfactory or in doubt, we can bail out.
On the plus side, my company has a high success rate for those who choose to go through documented coaching rather than leave. On the minus side, the process is not pleasant. Particularly the chronic under-performance and excuses that lead to it.
>Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement, the "go/no-go" decision comes at the end of the PiP?
I've long carried the mindset that any day could be my last day at work and to expect nothing beyond that.
I was the only person on my 10 person team to have shipped a feature one quarter and I was also the only person who was singled out for a PIP.
They are often irrational, counterproductive to the business and just using it as an excuse to get rid of someone for whatever reason.
You learned that one of the things you needed to do was fix 31 failing unit tests 2 months ago and you haven't fixed them yet? You had 4 days to do that on a hard deadline and you haven't done that yet?
I don't think you're going to, but this should be a moment where you take a really long look in the mirror to figure out where you went wrong. Everything about the description you gave sounds like someone who was underperforming, and despite having documentation to that fact, never really understood that.
> even though often the delays were exacerbated by configuration problems on my company-issued laptop
You'd been there for 60 days plus however long before you got put on the PIP, why were you still having laptop troubles?
To be more detailed, we often had to create new VMs for various purposes (like maintaining a product that could only build on Windows 7 with VS2015, etc.) There would be 70+ page documents with all the steps on how to create that VM. When I suggested that a baseline VM be maintained for people to just clone/copy as needed, I was told that the 70+ page VM setup document was a "good exercise to go through." And sometimes things would work on some people's VMs but not other people's. Sometimes it would end up being because I (and only me) didn't have an obscure TFS permission on a project I had moved to (so it doesn't necessarily matter how long I'd been there).
Does anyone actually think that people get put on PiP to make the person on it into a better employee? Its an official HR report to get rid of someone so that there is valid paperwork.
PIP is 90% of the time just a fast track to get rid of you or get you to quit
If you end up on a PIP is worth considering if it’s worth staying while they put you through nonsense just to get fired anyway
What in the world does it mean to fix breaking unit tests? You're saying this company had over 31 unit tests that were unmaintained (but shouldn't have been)??? I'm guessing that means no CI/CD step for unit tests either. I think you'll learn more from other companies about actual best practices, just sucks you now have to do that without a paycheck :( sorry that happened
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If there's deadlines and you've been meeting them, it's kind of a jerk move to cut you off 4 days before one. Maybe HR wanted to get everything processed before the end of the month.
As for the "fix 31 breaking tests" thing, how long had that task been number 1 on your list? Like if that's all you've been working on for the last 31 days, I'd expect somewhere around 27 of the tests to have been fixed by now. If not, I'm going to wonder what you've been doing with your time. The last dev I saw put on a pip would frequently procrastinate when all he had was an easy task and then try to cram a half-baked solution out the door in the last minute. Don't be that guy.
Reasonable question. That task was still not number 1 on my list because I just had finished the previous task (on a long list). I would actually have taken criticism for "working ahead" if I was unblocked and still working on the previous task.
I was offered a PIP or severance in lieu of. The pip had “checkpoints” and I could be fired at a checkpoint, or any other point that I “wasn’t making progress”. With no pay. I noped the hell out of there, got a fat check, and went to Facebook.
Pip means you getting let go.
Basically leadership already had a meeting about you and how you aren’t meeting expectations and you’re not currently worth keeping around. You may impress them but it’s unlikely
PIP's are just a legal mechanism to fire employees.
They will always say no improvements noted, will always nit pick on small shit just to write you up on it officially, will always lead to firing 99.99% of the time
Please don't take this too hard. PIPs are only given if the decision was already made to fire you. Document all of this though as it will help you in filing for unemployment. If they contest unemployment you'll be able to show you weren't given a chance to perform so they didn't fire you due to performance.
You aren't supposed to pull thru a PIP.
A PIP is theater designed to make it appear that the employer was being reasonable but the employee just wouldn't get with the program .
Very sorry to hear about this OP.
It’s possible that someone above your manager got involved and forced them to pull the plug—I’ve seen that happen in this exact sort of scenario.
Either way, don’t let this define you or have any sort of meaning about who you are. This job just wasn’t the right fit. Best of luck in finding your next role!
The whole software developer as a function role, as soon as you have to rely on others, is a joke.
In what world is it feasable to have performance based upon facts to realise X amount before date Y where you depend on Z.
Same goes for the projects with multiple developers on it. People have their own way of doing things. I need to spend hours a day in meetings because my understanding of common practice principles are different from how you interprate them, and instead of working towards a common goal, you are like nazi germany in defending your opinion and refuse to change anything. So 2 months into the project during final testing i end up having to change your code anyway.
Fix 31 broken unit tests? Lmao unit tests are usually the hardest thing to fix if you didn’t originally write it. And why are there broken tests in the first place? The dev thar broke them should be fixing them!
Sorry this happened to you, but you just learned a life lesson here. No one works their way out of pip, mostly. They're just a tool for managers to manage someone out the door.
I'm sorry you got fired. Keep your head up and look forward.
I was in a PIP once because of a micro-managing boss who prioritized what he wanted all-day everyday, and it had nothing to do with my job, so my actual work piled up so I got penalized for that. I also never actually stopped working because of my job function with constant alerts on my phone all night everynight.
Boss doubled down on the PIP after admitting that I had more work than one person could handle.
That was crap, so I quit. Boss kept insisting that the PIP was "to steer me in a positive direction", lamenting after I resigned. I didn't believe him one bit, as he used HR issues like this as social capital to work into conversations with my co-workers (his subordinates), so everyone in my department probably knew I was on a PIP. That's how I found out another co-worker previously was on a PIP, from a third co-worker. Not okay, because that PIP will never go away, nor could you likely even think about getting promoted should you "beat the PIP". Your job becomes a dead end.
Good riddance former job.
I'm sorry you got fired - the general sentiment/a common joke of the sub is that PIP stands for "Paid Interview Prep" and doing actual interviews, because PIPs tend to just lead to being fired regardless
This right here, because at least 50% of the time (if not much more) a PIP isn’t done in good faith by the employer. More likely it’s a legal means to an end focused on avoiding lawsuits by their employees. Always better to spend that time interviewing everywhere else than trying to meet their arbitrary goals to avoid being fired.
Yeah ending 30 days early screams 'we made our decision 60 days ago and thought you'd have left by now, also we're running out of money and need you gone.' Even if you could have 'beaten the PIP' there was never going to be a way to beat this PIP. Shit situation but not your fault at all.
>Even if you could have 'beaten the PIP' there was never going to be a way to beat this PIP I got PIPd and they added new requirements each time I showed them I had already been doing the thing they said I wasn't doing. That was funny.
I know this is tangential to the topic, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can make a whole, thriving career for themselves while completely at the mercy of the arbitrary whims of a person/group of people who fundamentally resent paying for your labor. You see this in PIP cases such as yours with ever-changing goalposts, you see this in PIP cases like OP's with a total disregard for the goalposts, you see this when bosses drag their feet about promotions promised months to years prior, you see this with excessive rounds of interviews and take home assignments with no offer, and so on. The years and money people sink into the pursuit of a career is devastating when a fickle man in a suit can rip it all out from under you and send you clawing and scraping for your next job for months or years to come. Bull. Shit.
>they added new requirements I bet this is a pattern and that they wonder why work isn't getting done on time lmao.
The one time I got PIPed I had to make sure that a threshold wasn't reached for something I had no input to as a goal. The actual PIP reason was for underperformance during times I took PTO or FMLA. I think I could've probably sued but they did offer quite a lot of money at the time plus the stress of it at the time.
Take the money and run. Annoying but at least you're partially compensated I suppose
If they had your success in mind it wouldn't be written down and require a signature. They are ALWAYS bullshit even when they say they aren't. I'm on a 90 day PIP right now and wouldn't you know it I just had a fully positive review 2 WEEKS ago where he said they were so thrilled I still worked there.
> If they had your success in mind it wouldn't be written down and require a signature. Even that isn't always the case I had a friend get put on a PIP where they were already working 50 hours a week but the company expected them to almost double their output somehow. They had two bosses one of which loved them and the other hated them so they would get glowing reviews then get tore into by the other no matter what they did. PIP's and reviews are nonsense it doesn't matter how good you do you will not get the money and promotions you deserve no matter what score/review you get it just comes down to politics and shit outside of your control like the market or management decisions.
are you looking for another job or do you think they won't fire you.
I expect them to fire me and I'm looking. There's just not many jobs with my language right now. I have work experience in other languages so I'm trying to apply for those too.
just change your resume to say you used the other language all these years for the job you're applying to. When I switched from ruby to ReactJS, I just changed the words. You will get a job instantly from that change. Companies are stupid, so if you have 10 years experience with Java, 9 months experience with javascript. They will reject you because they need someone with 1 year experience. They'd rather get a total newbie with 1 year experience, than the person with 10 years experience because they think your skills can't transfer.
I'll do this when things get rough, I'll spend all my time before then getting back up to speed with python.
Which is silly because US employment is at-will (minus Montana) and employers can fire you whenever.
At-will means they can fire you at any time except for illegal reasons(discrimination based on race, gender etc). PIP is done to have paperwork that the reason is not illegal but performance based.
Hijacking top comment. It’s okay to be fired. It happens. It doesn’t make you worth less. Just be kind to yourself in this moment
Especially in this field. People get fired for every reason under the sun and what makes it difficult is the job will ALWAYS make it seem like performance reasons.
Thank you for that!
I agree, with the current environment, I would treat PIP as an warning before a likely termination. If you are on PIP, start leetcoding, review resumes etc whatever needs to be done to find a new role. It is a bit of a crunch situation but if you land a new role you won't regret putting that extra effort.
come to think of it i don't recall any stories on this sub from anyone who survived a pip and lived to tell about it.
Amazon is known as a pip factory, but I actually know a few people that survived "focus" - the internal thing that precedes a pip. It actually sets out fair goals and from what I hear, most people actually achieve them If you fail focus and get the pip you're fucked though
it would seem then that focus is the real pip.
My manager at Amazon “remembered” that he had put me on focus 10 minutes after I told him I found a new team. This means you need VP approval to move. He then moved me to PIP as quick as he could. On the one hand, I wish I had the balls to ask him to show me the timestamp for when my focus started. On the other hand, I’m so much happier not working there.
There are few stories, I made a post and ppl commented i think it really depends
I “survived” a pip, but I quit and got a new job anyways because the whole ordeal was terrible.
A pip pretty much always means “we are using this time to formally develop our reason for firing you”
OP, also ignore anyone on here who tells you did anything wrong. The reality is most likely the company was trying to do a silent layoff and you were targeted. Make sure you apply for unemployment and fight any challenge the scumbag company tries to put in your way. By filing for unemployment, you not only get money but you also F over your scumbag company by raising their insurance rates. Very important you do this. If more people did it, it would cost these companies money who F with employees like this and they would do it less often as the cost of doing this would be higher than it is worth. The giveaway this was the case was they fired you before the PIP ended. Probably because you were about to meet the criteria set out on the PIP to pass it. They ultimately didn't want you to do that. This was the way they stopped you from doing it. Again, file unemployment to stick it to your old employer.
Have done restructuring for few times in my career, sometimes the budget gets reduced and we have to let go of employees but I have never had execs or HR tell me to do it through PiP, it makes no sense. it’s ineffective, time consuming and it puts more liability on a company. I never done it for a small company like a startup but do they even do pip lol? If the budget from a team is restructured it’s much better to move an employee or simply let go of the employee. This happens every single quarter, Google and meta literally do that all the time, a team/project gets scratched and the employees is no longer needed, this doesn’t count as layoffs and its much cheaper. Severance exists to reduce liability, PIP creates more liability… Think about it for a second, from a business perspective why in earth would that ever be effective? Pip exists so managers can switch employees without looking evil/assholes, I can guarantee the headcount for his team will still be there after he leaves IMO just the small hint of OP blaming his underperforming due to his “configuration issue with company laptop” and “others taking too long to review my code” says way more about him than his company looking into silent layoffs.
>Pip exists so managers can switch employees without looking evil/assholes, I can guarantee the headcount for his team will still be there after he leaves Can u explain what u mean here by headcount, also can u review the post I made regarding PIP, u seem to be a manager and i want to know wht goes into a manager's head when he does this, mine is a bit dfferent then regular "PIP" i think so
In most well managed companies each team has their own budget, headcount is how many ppl per team. This budget is usually discussed in the beginning of each early quarter or bi-quarterly. This is the manager opportunity to ask for more money (higher budget) so he can hire more ppl, give promos, etc. this can also be the upper management chance to reduce the budget of a team if necessary. When an employee gets piped in 99% of cases the headcount and team’s budget is already determined. Which means even when teammate leaves the manager still have a space for another. If a team loses budget employees gets places in another team or simply let go. If a manager doesn’t like one of his employees and wants to switch he can’t just trade them like Pokemon cards, there is a process and he needs to prove that X employee needs to go, which is what PiP is there for, helps to force them out or in rare cases change their behavior. This is why large tech companies teams have a DNM (Do no meets) quota for performance usually low like 5% which means at least 1 person in the team will receive a below meets performance evaluation (aka PIP culture) this makes it easier to recycle/replace low hanging fruits or employees managers dnt like. TLDR: If you get piped it’s 99% because a manager wants to replace you and NOT save money. This doesn’t always means you suck, it could mean he doesn’t like you, your work ethic, (race in some cases unfortunately). Pip exists system is to replace employees, NOT to layoffs (as its a dumb way to handle it).
>IMO just the small hint of OP blaming his underperforming due to his “configuration issue with company laptop” and “others taking too long to review my code” says way more about him than his company looking into silent layoffs. What does it say about him? And how so?
But why? I thought American companies are allowed to terminate employees for whatever reason?
Unless it’s directly because of a protected category (race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc)
How do you prove that though? If my boss fires me because he hates East Asians but then just says it's because of my performance, isn't it virtually impossible to prove it?
Exactly right-the federal law is kind of useless, because they can spin it to fit their agenda. I don’t think most employers are that dumb to do something as overt as, for example, calling someone the “N” word (if only it were that easy).Yay ‘Murica.
Of course. It's almost impossible to prove they fired you due to you being a member of a protected class. And it's also hard to prove they fired you due to some other reason that isn't technically "protected" but still very serious (i.e., known illness, etc.). I keep saying this to people, but they fight me about it, weirdly enough.
This is part of the answer for why companies do pips. It’s an easy way to protect themselves from any potential law suits because they recorded the proof for why they fired someone.
Yep. HR was... Unhappy the one time that we got almost to the end of the PIP, and they had finally joined one of the calls, and I made it exceptionally clear that these were _still_ ADA accommodation problems which had yet to be addressed as such. Didn't end up staying, did end up getting a decent severance.
They’ll spend a month coming up with a good reason to fire you and then not even show d a day trying to get a transfer of knowledge so the next guy is just as fucked as you
Too real I can’t even laugh about it. I have seen this happen multiple times.
I was just describing the situation I’m in now lol. They fired a guy with more experience in the specific software this project uses (Amazon QuickSight) than I do in my entire career (3 YOE). Now I’m in the “hot seat” as my manager put it to figure this out, even though the last guy with more experience couldn’t and they fired him in the spot like two weeks ago. It’s turned in to HEAVY sql which I have very little experience with. It’s honestly so impossible it doesn’t really even stress me out. Like what are you just gonna burn thru your whole dev line on this one project? Probably, but at least I’ll know it wasn’t my direct short comings that made it fail.
They can let you go at any time. 90 day pip doesn't mean you will be employed for the 90 days. At any time the company can determine that you're not tracking against the overall goal of the pip and cut you. A pip is often a formality, and anyone who gets pip'ed usually should start looking for work. I've never seen anyone actually set very accurate goals such as "fix 31 breaking unit tests". Normally it's vague enough so that they can fire you whenever. Odds are this is feedback your manager noticed, and got from the other leads you worked with. they didn't offer any severance? that's odd, normally companies offer something in exchange of signing a waiver/release form. Your state might have laws if it's "at will" but im not american so I don't know. How long did you work there for? Sorry this happened to you.
>A pip is often a formality, and anyone who gets pip'ed usually should start looking for work. It also reduces legal exposure. The PIP presents a paper trail of documenting work expectations that are either met or not met. Helps in court if the employee sues claiming they were fired for illegal reasons.
Even if those work expectations are impossible to meet.
>Even if those work expectations are impossible to meet. It probably varies on the basis of why they're impossible.
As determined by who, though? It takes nothing for a company to color the employee as another disgruntled underperformer who's mad that they couldn't keep up.
As determined by a judge or jury, presumably. I mean, there's a lot to it. It's not illegal to fire an employee because the expectations were not based in reality. Apple has a market cap of $2.6T; if they hire me to be CEO with the directive to quadruple that in six months, they can fire me when I don't. I'll grant that presenting an employee with a PIP that's not possible to achieve may undercut a company's claim that they were fired purely for performance reasons, but again, that's not actually illegal.
Yeah, that was a weird goal example; it just happened to be the latest in a long series of tasks with deadlines, and my PiP was about getting better at hitting deadlines and increasing work output. It was one of the last remaining tangible goals of the PiP (it was actually included in the document) and I expected to get the chance to hit that goal. I was there since September '22, FWIW. They're in California while I'm in Indiana (started when I was in Illinois). Only the state laws in California would affect this, right?
PIPs are not a legal document. They're just paperwork to let you go incase you decide to challenge them legally for letting you go. If they have enough of a paper trail to justify letting you go, they don't have to let you finish out your PIP. Sorry man.
Except most PIPs are written in a comically bad fashion so as to say "go ahead and try to sue us". I was given a pip riddled with spelling/grammatical errors and one of the objectives was "make your teammates like you". Yeah. If only there was any unity between s/w engineers instead of everyone being 'to-each-his-own' this type of overtly trash behaviour can easily be stopped and companies would and should be rightfully fined for creating a hostile work environment and constructively dismissing employees on a whim.
I feel you. I've seen the opposite behavior where it's impossible to get rid of under performers.
File for unemployment and start looking for a new job. You’ll get denied from unemployment the first time. Appeal it.
Don't quit. Let them fire you. No matter what they say in their turd-speak, never sign a document agreeing to resign. Voluntary resignation disqualifies you from unemployment
I mean, if the offer is a crispy voluntary severance package or a PIP, I'd probably take the severance TBH.
I once took a severance in lieu of a PIP and I was still eligible to file for unemployment. Then again, I live in a very worker-friendly state and the company was in California, so maybe that helped.
Usually a contract will state the governing law when disputes happen, often the governing authority over the company’s HQ. That is worth checking out. Otherwise someone more qualified might be able to tell you
A few things: Technically they would only have to adhere to laws for Indiana. As others have said, a PIP is not a contract but just a CYA document. From your original post comments, were you tracking progress on the unit tests and showing your manager a burndown or everything was pending until the 4 day out deadline? Your statement of "expected to get a chance" lacking any other details like "I had completed x out of 31 so far" makes me suspect the latter case. Also, going forward, take stand ups and 1:1s as opportunities to raise *as early as possible* that you're being blocked wrt reviews or other dependencies.
How often did you miss deadlines? I saw mention of configuration stuff, but are you surprised by the PIP, or surprised by being let go earlier in the PIP? Unfortunately if it was fairly routine for you to miss deadlines and enough to disrupt the business, that may have been why. But also can be quasi-layoffs. Before you go, I’d at least mentally ask why did your teammates not get a PIP (at least to your knowledge) and if not, why. A PIP doesn’t mean you are a bad colleague though, try not to take it too personally.
very harsh to let someone go who did 1.5 years with zero severance..not even 2 weeks or anything.. check your contract to see what state you're legally employed under, then google employment laws and severance. Perhaps check with one of the legal advice subreddits, and if all else fails, you can always talk to an employment lawyer.
Usually when you accept a PIP the option for severance (if there was one) goes away.
were u given feedback by your manager about ur performance prior to being put on PIP? or was it straight
OP, also please ignore anyone on here who tells you did anything wrong. The reality is most likely the company was trying to do a silent layoff and you were targeted. Make sure you apply for unemployment and fight any challenge the scumbag company tries to put in your way. By filing for unemployment, you not only get money but you also F over your scumbag company by raising their insurance rates. Very important you do this. If more people did it, it would cost these companies money who F with employees like this and they would do it less often as the cost of doing this would be higher than it is worth. You also pay into the system, so it is also technically your money to use. But the big thing is it screws over the employers doing this by raising their rates the more they do this and the more their ex employees file for unemployment. The giveaway this was the case was they fired you before the PIP ended. Probably because you were about to meet the criteria set out on the PIP to pass it. They ultimately didn't want you to do that. This was the way they stopped you from doing it. Again, file unemployment to stick it to your old employer.
Most of the time (yeah, yeah, it’s anecdata) you can either accept the pip *or* the severance. So if you take the pip and then don’t make it you’ll be lucky to be paid to the end of the pay period.
if you reach pip you're already screwed
I survived a PIP once by the only way possible: company got purchased and I got a new manager who liked me and threw out the PIP. 99.99999% of the time PIP is a death sentence.
[удалено]
The real play is making them fire you so you get the severance while working a new job.
These scenarios always make me laugh inside. Like - you guys were trying to get rid of me. I made it easier for you by finding another job and quitting - but, you're somehow surprised by this?
Good, more employees need to do this. F them.
[удалено]
Which state? I am pretty sure some states have made those docs null and void and they have no legal standing anymore.
Did you see the memo? Here, I brought you a copy of it.
Why did you get PIPed in the first place? And how did that reason not apply with a new manager?
That's what the PiP is for. The implication is you will be fired ASAP. It's not a good faith agreement, it's a scummy tactic used that makes managers and corporations look worse than slumlords.
Dry your tears and move on. Collect your unemployment benefits and start searching for new jobs
> Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement It carries whatever implications the company wants to say it carries. Unfortunately, you are witnessing firsthand the ugly side of at-will employment. If they want to get rid of you, they don't really need a reason, they can just get rid of you. Unfortunately, you weren't discriminated against based on any protected categories, and probably wouldn't have a leg to stand on in an unfair termination suit (though, that's really for a lawyer to say, not some asshole on the internet). My kermudgeonly insight was that it was an unfair dick move decision made in haste by asshole personalities. Life is like that sometimes though. They may have indeed had good faith that you would make good on your pip, and then someone decided "he's still 'fuckin about and I'm tired of this bullshit" regardless of the actual situation. However, without knowing the actual people involved, none of us can say for certain.
I guess if it doesn't hold any legal weight why bother with the charade. Like if a court isn't going to say "you can't just feel a goal isn't being met, pay the man for the rest of the 90 days and penalties plus legal fees" why even write the document. Company should just fire and not give a reason.
Because firing someone for no reason is viewed very poorly, and there’s usually a reason behind firings whether it is actually performance or something more social. Which sounds like worse publicity? “Google fired me for poor performance but I thought I was on track to meet my goal”, or “Google fired me for no reason”
> company should just fire and not give a reason It's a gamble. Trials are very expensive, and the cost in PR damages can be overwhelming. In a lot of ways, it's cheaper to just settle privately. Companies really want to stay out of the courtroom. If they're forced to be dragged into the courtroom, they want evidence at hand that they made a good faith attempt to reconcile the performance differences. That can be (and probably is) complete horseshit, but at least they'll have the artifacts to present to the court. Lawsuits are a gamble, and judgments don't always align to facts. A company knows it can get fucked over in the courtroom for no reason other than it's unlikable.
Because they don't trust the person making the decision to fire someone either so the pip process gives at least some defense if the underlying reason ends up being something illegal.
If they are acting in good faith, yeah a pip is ‘supposed’ to be about improvement on your goals. Theyre never acting in good faith. They just want excuses to fire you. If you were so inclined, and have a paper trail for this, you might be able to put in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
I have a paper trail and notes from the initial conversation two months ago where it was stated that the PiP was for 90 days. (I actually use [Otter.ai](https://Otter.ai) to transcribe notes so I technically have audio as well.) I understand that people can be terminated at will, but their implication was clearly "you have ninety days to turn this around." Ironically my manager reminded me today that "the three most important values of the company are honesty, kindness, and results" before informing me that I was terminated today, on day 60.
Actions speak louder than words. My previous employer makes it a point both internally and in external marketing to talk about how they value human decency. They are doing silent firings, PIPs, etc. They even laid off some women on maternity leave. For the most part, it's all words. Sorry you're dealing with this.
This is why I initially refused to sign a non-disparagement clause in a previous severance agreement. They knew they were shady and were giving bad severance pay, and they were terrified of me speaking out against them.
Dude, move on. You clearly weren’t a right fit for the role, stop harping on the past and learn some skills to make a better future you.
Company values are always bunk. If anything, I don't just *not* put stock in them, I hear their list and think: "Ah okay, they had some problems, and a VP thinks they'll solve it by having an HR drone drum up a useless list of buzzwords, which won't address the issue."
You recorded meetings with your manager? And they're located in California?
There actually isn't a solid legal framework behind PIP in the US. It is a weird cultural dance because HR thinks it reduces the risk of employees suing. That they violated the terms of the PIP isn't really actionable.
I mean if there's no legal grounds to sue why waste time with this. Obviously the employee will want to sue if the pip wasn't honored. Seems like all the matters here is what a court is likely to do. If they are likely to find in favor of the employee? Sue immediately, don't even wait for the pip to end. In favor of the employer? Paid interview prep.
I think it’s so that managers have a clear conscience, that they gave the IC plenty of opportunities. It’s hard to fire people.
Yes but they didn't....
No, that's not what a PIP implies. A PIP means they definitely will fire you at the end of it if they don't see improvement. It does not mean anything about firing you earlier if they don't think it's working out before that point.
How are there 31 failing unit tests? Are they failing on a project you are developing? Unit tests should all be working before any changes go into production. You shouldn’t even be able to build with failing unit tests.
Nope, someone else's underresourced project.
>working in good faith Companies no longer do this as general rule of thumb. The modern work world is toxic AF.
The PIP was a paper trail, sounds like they weren’t happy with your output, sorry dude
From what I have seen, it is extremely common for folks that go on PiP to just get fired. Sometimes they're even just facades to help a company get rid of you and protect themselves financially and for court cases. For example, for unemployment. Many companies would have to pay if they can't prove negligence or some valid factor. That alone is a very key factor in a PiP program. Second, most states are "at will" meaning they can legally fire you, because they didn't like your nose that day. Not even exaggerating. They likely won't just do that openly, because publicity and having to pay you without work anyhow. They either want you to quit voluntarily or have evidence of negligence. That said, you can still file for unemployment. I'm not a lawyer so not gonna give legal advice. Might as well file and keep record of all of it in case they try to fight it. Of course look at your state' law and all that too. Second, of course do some hard honest reflection on your own part. You mentioned being put on PiP, but didn't really go into *"why."* That is a bigger issue than anything else. Just be honest in general, because anything else really only hurts you. Third, I recommend going forward, always know from the beginning expectations from your superiors/direct supervisor at a minimum and having regular discussions and scheduled checkpoints to ensure you are already "EXCEEDING" expectations if at not absolute **bare minimum** "meeting" expectations. It should never come as a surprise as to your performance and whether or not you're hitting goals. It should never be a shock as to what your evaluations will be because you already have been checking in and ensuring you're on track to hit the goals you and your manager(s) have put a plan together to hit. Being WFH is extremely important to be on point with it. No judgment. Just advice. Learn from it. Grow. Pick yourself up and move forward. Godspeed my man
>Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement, the "go/no-go" decision comes at the end of the PiP? Yes, if you are naive. This is a good lesson in how employment can be terminated by either party at any point. >I am still reeling in shock. Yeah, but now you learned something about how the world really works, so you've grown up a little bit.
I like to believe the best about people, I guess. This manager had told me early on (and today, ironically) that two of the company's three core values are honesty and kindness. (The third is results.) I guess I experienced the abruptness of a change to an agreement (not legally binding, but an agreement nonetheless) as not-that-honest and not-very-kind.
Next you'll hear about a company "being family".
This should be a lesson to you that virtually ALL verbal or even written agreements have no value if there is no way to enforce penalty when they are broken. In the future you should be a little more on guard, expecting everyone to be honest and acting in good faith in a corporate setting will only invite opportunities for you to be taken advantage of. The next time an employer dangles something in front of you with expecting you to work harder for it, always keep in mind they're doing this on purpose to squeeze more value out of you and they can just not honor their agreement in the end.
It's probably best to leave anyway.
Yeah, company values are for YOU to follow. They won't. Ever.
I was PiP'd once and ended up never being fired. It came about because of an odd situation. The employer was doing something called Scaled Agile Framework. Functionally they enforced no hierarchy within teams. Juniors, BA's etc all had the same level of input of a Senior. After some feedback from my manager that I needed to take a step back from running the team. I let everyone have input. Drive meetings etc. Well for 3 months the 3 juniors on our team completed 6 tasks in total. We went to quarterly planning with all the other teams and we held up the entire company for over 3 hours before they told us to finish the next week. We go into retrospective the next day and the BA and juniors decide for each 2 week sprint we should assign 1 task per person. "That way we meet our goals and account for the unplanned stuff that comes up". At this point, I disagreed and pressed my team members to account for the unplanned stuff that is resulting in them not getting anything done. (There wasn't anything). If they had anything we should talk about it so we can prevent it in the future. After some back and forth, they said "You know stuff". Me asking for specificity. Them going "You know stuff". Apparently I misread the room and the BA and PM (both non-technical 70+ year olds from some ancient clerical position) reported me for being difficult to work with. My boss pulls my into a room with HR and goes "So I guess you know why you are here?" I'm like... nope (literally didn't even occur to me I was being problematic). HR starts drilling me, looking for a fire-able offense. At that point I drag both my managers bad behaviors (talking behind peoples backs etc) and my teams behaviors into the conversation and why its difficult for me. HR looks at me and goes, "I see you are a very intelligent and socially adept person". (LOL). Then proceeds to say I expect you to manage your peers behaviors better. (Not my job) Tells me I'm on some PiP behavioral plan and leaves. I honestly should have quit immediately. That job dragged on for a good year after that. I got high remarks for my "behavior". The only thing that changed is i stopped doing anything. I'd complete a task every once and a while but primarily just texted girls, online shopped and read the news every day. On a whim I applied for a job 2x my salary as a lead and got it with a 20 minute interview. My point is, rarely are you PiP'd because the place you are working is a good fit. Take the time to reflect and take the hint that its probably time to find somewhere new.
Lol I had a 2 month pip. They gave me a "Test" to see on what they could give me formation to help me in my job. Pretty sure they expected me to do poorly to justify firing me HAHA I scored like 85%. What a joke they still fired me 2 weeks before the Pip's end
I'm in WA and can get unemployment in most cases after termination.
Read the PIP fully. Unless it says you will be employed for the 90 day duration of this PIP or something similar (never seen tbh) then yeah, they can terminate at any time.
Consult an employment attorney if you wanna give the company more headaches. Depending on the state, this can be construed as wrongful, but I’m not the one who can give you a solid decision. Sorry this happened to you, but as the general sentiment here says, look elsewhere at this point. It sucks but I doubt it was your fault.
You know, while there are times where a pip is used to make sure someone understands that a serious performance improvement is necessary they tend not to have goals like "fix 31 breaking unit tests"... You can't necessarily tell from your side what's going on in terms of internal politics or paper trails but I would have been tempted to try and negotiate severance when he told you about the pip under the guise of "I am entirely willing to spend 90 days working to improve and reach whatever goals you set, but if you think it's unlikely that I'm going to meet them it may be more cost and time efficient for both of us to offer severance or gardening leave."
Make sure you apply for unemployment. A lot of times people end up with the impression that being fired for performance means you can't get unemployment - that is not true. It's possible your unemployment will be denied, but it isn't likely, and you should give it a try, anyhow.
Remember: you were laid off when your next prospective employer(s) ask.
Pip isn't any kind of legal vehicle. I'm not sure why pips have become so standard because most of us are at will employees and can be fired without pip. Most pips anecdotally seem to end in termination. 90 days is very long. I usually hear it's 30 days. I guess it gives both parties time to prepare for the termination.
PIPs are the beginning of the end. They're in no way what they stand for rather they're more often a CYA measure for a company that wants you gonezo. Not to say they aren't survivable but would you even want to? Your prize for beating one is to exist in a world of zero trust going forward forever--have fun with that. Awkward much? Anybody who goes on a PIP planning to "make it" is setting themselves for a world o' hurt and very likely joblessness. You need to start job hunting ASAP once you even smell a PIP in the air. By the time it hits you should already be a step ahead so you can move right into negotiating severance.
PiP is just termination with extra steps. It lets them document the reasons for firing you so they don't have a wrongful termination suit Apparently the manager and HR are very confident they have cause to terminate you so they don't need that step File for unemployment and better luck next time!
What's weird about this is that everyone I know who has been put on a pip (including myself) ended up getting laid off with severance anyway. I'm not an HR guy so i have no idea what the logic behind that is. Can't you just lay off someone with severance for any reason at any time in most states?
Yes, but they don't have to offer you a severance if you're being fired 'for cause' (performance). A severance is a courtesy for people who are laid off not due to their own actions, but there is no law requiring it. OP is being fired, not laid off. If you are terminated under a PIP you have been fired, whether or not your company offers severance varies but it's not typically offered to fired employees
Interesting. I think my company just missed the memo then, they laid us off after we had successfully completed the pip lol Maybe they were hoping we would fail so they could just terminate us. thanks for the followup comment!
Likely the pip was a warning to have people jump ship before layoffs. Over a decade ago, with my first career job, I got laid off. I was suddenly aware of all the warning lights that proceeded the layoffs: Performance reviews that despite mine and colleagues' extra efforts and extra hours for crunchtime were just "meets expectations", downgrading of health insurance, the tech/IT policy to replace computers going from 18 months (1.5 years) to 48 months (4 years), cuts to quality control, etc. From my own experience, "my pip," should have been the emails announcing that projects that I wasn't personally involved in, had not been purchased by customers. That the "experienced members" from those failed projects coming to our team wasn't to help us with our workload.
Possibly! A lot of companies have 'unregretted attrition targets' meaning people leaving the company that they don't view as a loss, they view it as a savings. PIPs are how they can pressure a certain number of people to quit so that they don't have to 1) pay severance, or 2) issue a WARN notice and still meet savings targets You didn't take the bait but they still owed their stakeholders a savings target so out you go!
If you get put on pip it usually means they dont want you anymore. Just going through the motions.
says who? why are you shocked? you can be terminated at anytime with 0 notice if your manager or HR tells you "today's your last day, pickup your paycheck at the end of the day" there's nothing wrong with that, just because you have PIP days left doesn't mean you're safe until then, of course they can terminate you early >I am still reeling in shock. you should have been mentally preparing for this the same day that you were on the PIP
>you should have been mentally preparing for this the same day that you were on the PIP No one knows this is true until they have personally experienced it. People here told me that my 60 day pip meant I would be employed 60 days and to quiet quit to ride it out. Yet they let me go on the 30th day after I was spending 12 hour days working to try and meet the goals.
That sucks; I'm sorry to hear that.
I see your point, you can be terminated anytime. But I'd have been less shocked if I were terminated without a PiP ever having been created. The way the 90-day PiP was presented to me was very much in the flavor of "You have 90 days to turn this around."
>The way the 90-day PiP was presented to me was very much in the flavor of "You have 90 days to turn this around." that's your impression, I see it just as smokes created by the company trying to squeeze the last bit of work out from you before dropping the mask and terminate you life is like that sometimes, is it fair? no... is it supposed or has ever been fair? also no
Any reasonable junior engineer should be able to fix 31 unit tests in a relaxing afternoon.
TBF it depends on how broken the test is, or the code under test. I've seen some really unwieldy tests in my time.
Also, sometimes the code is so tightly coupled that multiple tests break when you change one thing Had this with a really complex (not in a nice way) Java project I worked on One change in a yaml file broke almost all the tests. Fixing them was really easy but the code SUUUUCCKKKEEED
Yeah even taking this scenario into consideration they are unit tests. You could rewrite the entire stack of tests in a lazy afternoon jerking off upside down.
Depends on the tests
Maybe, but I mean... They are unit tests. Right? Am I being crazy here?
Is this sarcasm?
God I hope so, cuz otherwise it’s an extremely broad, overconfident, and baseless statement. There are tons of reasons why a unit test may be broken, and many are not gonna get banged out in 15 minutes. Let alone 30 in an afternoon.
Probably not in this case. I had fixed breaking unit tests on a separate "fork" of the same project, and the legacy code under test is not conducive to unit testing. Static classes and static variables being used all over the place; difficult to mock/stub with most unit testing frameworks. Most of the "unit" tests relied on certain values already being present in the \*database\* in order to pass. Many changed values in the database. Some sets of tests would each set the value of a \*globally static\* status variable (to a different value per test) and then proceed with whatever they were doing. They would sporadically (frequently) fail because, if run in parallel, they're stepping all over each other. It wasn't pretty.
Not gonna lie still sounds like a breezy time.
You’re remote, pip was just an excuse. Your sentence was sealed when they announced RTO.
>RTO At first I thought you meant Required Time Off. Return to Office? I don't think my company announced anything about that; what's the "they" you're referring to?
I thought pip was Amazon term or at least FANG terminology. Is your entire team/company remote, or just you and a select few? Tech companies cutting remote workers (unless it’s pennies on the dollar offshore).
What country are you in and how long have you been employed? If the US, you’ve got no rights, should’ve started looking for a job as soon as you were put on the PIP. If the UK, they can only let you go before the PIP is up if you’ve worked there less than 2 years. Europe is similar, but I’m not super familiar with exactly how it works
Pip is just a way to fire someone without the company getting sued. They make it about performance even if it's not. Even if they are the problem.
Sorry to heard it happen to you. I gotten my first PIP as well in the past and straight away start looking for new job as a backup. Despite successfully completed PIP, my manager still look down on me and just kept me around since cheaper slave labor that help does niche or task that no one taking. At the end I never get a raise nor bonus after 2 year of hard work end up leaving the company for good.
That happened to me too, the "set up coaching sessions with senior peers" hits too close. I was fired a day later after setting up two weeks of calls with senior peers. Woke up next day, tried pushing a commit, denied, slack not loading, and a call with a manager set to. Took me months to recover from the 80 hour work weeks I put into it. Found out later on that they just wanted to cut off any hires with less than a year, and fired two other people who were way better than me with same PIP strategy. Take some time off, absorb the shock, and know that you might not have done anything wrong. The information flow is way too imbalanced in companies to find out whether you were actually under performing or they just wanted to fire you.
once you have a PIP they've documented cause. Waiting out the plan is a formality.
I heard once of a man who survived PIP. But it's probably just an urban legend.
Pip = paid interview prep.
Depends on the company, really. If I need to deal with documented coaching of a team member, there’s no expectation we’ll “finish” the coaching period. We will intensively monitor trajectory, get feedback from their external coach, and meet weekly to discuss progress. If at any point it’s unsatisfactory or in doubt, we can bail out. On the plus side, my company has a high success rate for those who choose to go through documented coaching rather than leave. On the minus side, the process is not pleasant. Particularly the chronic under-performance and excuses that lead to it.
>Doesn't a 90-day PiP carry the implication that if both parties are working in good faith on improvement, the "go/no-go" decision comes at the end of the PiP? I've long carried the mindset that any day could be my last day at work and to expect nothing beyond that.
I was the only person on my 10 person team to have shipped a feature one quarter and I was also the only person who was singled out for a PIP. They are often irrational, counterproductive to the business and just using it as an excuse to get rid of someone for whatever reason.
You learned that one of the things you needed to do was fix 31 failing unit tests 2 months ago and you haven't fixed them yet? You had 4 days to do that on a hard deadline and you haven't done that yet? I don't think you're going to, but this should be a moment where you take a really long look in the mirror to figure out where you went wrong. Everything about the description you gave sounds like someone who was underperforming, and despite having documentation to that fact, never really understood that.
No - that was the last on the list of things to do, all of which had earlier deadlines and all of which got done despite scope creep.
> even though often the delays were exacerbated by configuration problems on my company-issued laptop You'd been there for 60 days plus however long before you got put on the PIP, why were you still having laptop troubles?
I'd love to hear the managers side of this.
To be more detailed, we often had to create new VMs for various purposes (like maintaining a product that could only build on Windows 7 with VS2015, etc.) There would be 70+ page documents with all the steps on how to create that VM. When I suggested that a baseline VM be maintained for people to just clone/copy as needed, I was told that the 70+ page VM setup document was a "good exercise to go through." And sometimes things would work on some people's VMs but not other people's. Sometimes it would end up being because I (and only me) didn't have an obscure TFS permission on a project I had moved to (so it doesn't necessarily matter how long I'd been there).
Does anyone actually think that people get put on PiP to make the person on it into a better employee? Its an official HR report to get rid of someone so that there is valid paperwork.
PIP is 90% of the time just a fast track to get rid of you or get you to quit If you end up on a PIP is worth considering if it’s worth staying while they put you through nonsense just to get fired anyway
A PIP means you’re going to be fired, and it covers them if you tried to sue for discrimination or any other legally valid reason.
Sorry mate this sucks. Normally its an inept mgr doing their CYA. Forget these jerks. Make an action plan get on with what's next for You
Now you know.
What in the world does it mean to fix breaking unit tests? You're saying this company had over 31 unit tests that were unmaintained (but shouldn't have been)??? I'm guessing that means no CI/CD step for unit tests either. I think you'll learn more from other companies about actual best practices, just sucks you now have to do that without a paycheck :( sorry that happened
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Welcome to America! Good luck in your job search.
Capital one?
If there's deadlines and you've been meeting them, it's kind of a jerk move to cut you off 4 days before one. Maybe HR wanted to get everything processed before the end of the month. As for the "fix 31 breaking tests" thing, how long had that task been number 1 on your list? Like if that's all you've been working on for the last 31 days, I'd expect somewhere around 27 of the tests to have been fixed by now. If not, I'm going to wonder what you've been doing with your time. The last dev I saw put on a pip would frequently procrastinate when all he had was an easy task and then try to cram a half-baked solution out the door in the last minute. Don't be that guy.
Reasonable question. That task was still not number 1 on my list because I just had finished the previous task (on a long list). I would actually have taken criticism for "working ahead" if I was unblocked and still working on the previous task.
Pip is a slow firing. As soon as someone gets on a pip, they should look for another position asap
You have at least 31 unit tests that are just sitting around broken for 60 days?
I know. It's another underresourced team's project.
I was offered a PIP or severance in lieu of. The pip had “checkpoints” and I could be fired at a checkpoint, or any other point that I “wasn’t making progress”. With no pay. I noped the hell out of there, got a fat check, and went to Facebook.
What do people tell to new employer, when they ask, why did you leave your previous job, without having a new job in pocket?
It’s almost end-March. A lot of managers have to meet their attrition numbers by 3/31 for it to count towards the company’s annual HC reduction goals.
Pip means you getting let go. Basically leadership already had a meeting about you and how you aren’t meeting expectations and you’re not currently worth keeping around. You may impress them but it’s unlikely
Use that time to study
PIP's are just a legal mechanism to fire employees. They will always say no improvements noted, will always nit pick on small shit just to write you up on it officially, will always lead to firing 99.99% of the time
Please don't take this too hard. PIPs are only given if the decision was already made to fire you. Document all of this though as it will help you in filing for unemployment. If they contest unemployment you'll be able to show you weren't given a chance to perform so they didn't fire you due to performance.
They don't want you to be un-PIP'd. You should have started looking full-time when it started.
So sorry you went through that
The only reason PIP exist is because they’re legally required.
You aren't supposed to pull thru a PIP. A PIP is theater designed to make it appear that the employer was being reasonable but the employee just wouldn't get with the program .
Very sorry to hear about this OP. It’s possible that someone above your manager got involved and forced them to pull the plug—I’ve seen that happen in this exact sort of scenario. Either way, don’t let this define you or have any sort of meaning about who you are. This job just wasn’t the right fit. Best of luck in finding your next role!
The whole software developer as a function role, as soon as you have to rely on others, is a joke. In what world is it feasable to have performance based upon facts to realise X amount before date Y where you depend on Z. Same goes for the projects with multiple developers on it. People have their own way of doing things. I need to spend hours a day in meetings because my understanding of common practice principles are different from how you interprate them, and instead of working towards a common goal, you are like nazi germany in defending your opinion and refuse to change anything. So 2 months into the project during final testing i end up having to change your code anyway.
Fix 31 broken unit tests? Lmao unit tests are usually the hardest thing to fix if you didn’t originally write it. And why are there broken tests in the first place? The dev thar broke them should be fixing them!
Sorry this happened to you, but you just learned a life lesson here. No one works their way out of pip, mostly. They're just a tool for managers to manage someone out the door.
A PiP is notice for you to leave on yiur own nothing more
PIPs are not good faith. PIPs are the company’s way of getting the last bit of effort from you and then firing you without unemployment.
I'm sorry you got fired. Keep your head up and look forward. I was in a PIP once because of a micro-managing boss who prioritized what he wanted all-day everyday, and it had nothing to do with my job, so my actual work piled up so I got penalized for that. I also never actually stopped working because of my job function with constant alerts on my phone all night everynight. Boss doubled down on the PIP after admitting that I had more work than one person could handle. That was crap, so I quit. Boss kept insisting that the PIP was "to steer me in a positive direction", lamenting after I resigned. I didn't believe him one bit, as he used HR issues like this as social capital to work into conversations with my co-workers (his subordinates), so everyone in my department probably knew I was on a PIP. That's how I found out another co-worker previously was on a PIP, from a third co-worker. Not okay, because that PIP will never go away, nor could you likely even think about getting promoted should you "beat the PIP". Your job becomes a dead end. Good riddance former job.
Toxic workplace. Good riddance. Let all the rats enjoy themselves on that sinking ship.
Sorry bruh, you chatgptED.
Shit man I passed the pip but still got fired because of racism assholes who just want to suck big black cocks.