Hacker News Reader

Comment by vhodges | Hacker News Reader

I have been on both sides

1) got a talking too about performance - it wasn't called a pip (my mom was dying and I was taking too much time out for medical appointments for her. Note the discussion was shortly after she had passed)

2) As a fairly new manager (at the time) I had to put my first hire as a manager onto a pip. It was painfully obvious to everyone they were not capable and struggled with the most basic things.

While I didn't hold out much hope they would turn it around, I gave them every opportunity to prove to me they could do the job (or learn at least to) they were hired to do, instead they cheated their way through the pip, passing others peoples work off as their own.

View on HN

> 1) got a talking too about performance - it wasn't called a pip (my mom was dying and I was taking too much time out for medical appointments for her. Note the discussion was shortly after she had passed)

If you are in the United States, FMLA[1] provides job-protected leave for these sort of situations and ensures you have a job to come back to when it's over. Most smaller companies I've been at really hate to do the paperwork for it, but they're federally mandated to provide the benefit.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla

I am in BC, Canada which has similar things but yeah, in hindsight, I should have taken some time off, but it was a while ago now (7 years).

Problem with FMLA is you don't get full salary. It's half I believe. So you have to make a choice between working and getting paid, or not working and getting much less.

> I gave them every opportunity to prove to me they could do the job (or learn at least to) they were hired to do, instead they cheated their way through the pip, passing others peoples work off as their own.

I feel like this is the problem with PIPs. From the managerial side, there is this good-faith expectation that a poorly-performing employee will snap back into shape once put on-notice. For people that are chronically incapable of certain tasks, this is a deliberately bad-faith expectation. And while it's not particularly common, it also stands to reason that a well-performing employee could be judged by unfair metrics or assigned an impossible task. So now everyone feels wronged. It's like a minimally-viable abstraction for making a firing appear natural and documented.

It wasn't performance exactly, but lack of skill. They had billed themselves as senior (and were being paid as such).

They were my first hire and made a number of mistakes:

  - I was too nice/eager (one of interviewers said 'no, they can't code' and I should have listened to them).  
  - They passed (with the one caveat) our not very rigorous screening process, this is on me as well. 
  - I did not do a formal review at the end of their probation period (it was becoming obvious they were not skilled, but I dismissed it as coming up to speed with our systems).

The pip was intended to show me they were capable of being in the role, but they cheated and I can't abide that.

Before the pip, I would have probably kept them but with a pay cut, but prevailing wisdom was that it would not work in practice.

Yes of course in most cases they may not snap back, but it's not a bad faith expectation. It's a good faith expectation that they need a chance regardless of whether they end up doing it.

Also of course a well-performing employee could be harmed by this, but the method is irrelevant - that is a bad company and the employee is well to find another job anyway.

I think the problem with your statement is you are trying to overgeneralize. PIPs run the gamet depending on how good the company is. I've never see a PIP be used in the ways you described, and I have never used them in such a way (and never will).

> struggled with the most basic things.

Like what?

Shell stuff, basic coding, tooling. I don't have a problem with people needing to learn. I have a problem with someone saying they have 10 years of experience and having to do their job for them while paired up (literally telling them what to type and them not understanding what or why).

How did this person get hired in the first place?

I was too nice/eager and they DID get through the screening process, clearly this was broken too. I learned lots.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com