Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawygg | Hacker News Reader

Throwaway manager here. I tried to keep a personality hire out of a PIP.

It was a huge mistake.

Turns out when all other options are exhausted, a PIP can be a form of respect. In the hands of the right manager, an underperformer gets one last clear chance to show they can do the job. If they succeed, some the ugly baggage gets put behind them. And if they can't succeed, then the PIP sends a message that they are unsuited for the job at the company, and maybe even at the industry at large.

The alternative to PIP'ing an incompetent (not just an underperformer) is micromanagement. That comes with pretense, hostility, and disrespect to their person for an indefinite period of time.

View on HN

An even better token of respect is to just can the person and give them a respectable severance package, so they have months (plural) to find their next thing.

Don't see how that's strictly better since the person loses out on potential feedback from the PIP vs straight firing.

PIP also doesn't prevent someone from getting severance, firing is firing.

I see your point. My points are that if one really wants to show respect then (a) don't waste people's time and (b) give them a respectable severance. If you can do (a) and (b) via a PIP process, then that's cool.

Interviewing fulltime vs potential feedback? Notice pay is different from severance.

They can just stop working on the PIP if they don’t care to turn it around

Honest question, if someone is performing horribly, why do they deserve a severance package? Isn't that was unemployment insurance is for?

1. They might be a good worker, but a bad fit for their role. That’s as much on the hiring manager as the employee.

2. People, even lousy workers, talk. Treating people with respect on their way out may decrease the person’s negativity/bitterness. Consider it a marketing expense.

3. Severance packages come with legal releases attached, at least in the US. Less risk of lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.

To compensate the employee for the mistake the company made in hiring them.

The longer the years of service the longer the successful track record. If you work 25 years somewhere for those years your employer was happy with you. A new manager / business downturn / new system / new disability / personal prompting a poor performance means the employer must support the employee and that can become severance.

The length of employment is the most important part of the equation.

I think the problem is that you can't really know if the PIP is being done in good faith or not.

In good faith, the process makes sense, right? "You are not performing, you have been told if you do not change it will be a problem, you have not changed, this is formal notice you must change or you will be fired."

In bad faith, as others have described around this thread, it's just a performance around legal departments being risk-averse when most places in the US are at-will and you could fire them with 0 notice, so they're making a paper trail out of whole cloth with the outcome predetermined, so attempting to "work harder" to get out of it is just you giving a lot of effort when you're about to need to work really hard to find another job no matter what.

wow, unsuited for the whole industry?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com