What’s PIP?
Performance Improvement Plan. Basically HR collecting evidence so you can’t sue after they fire you.
Yeah. Just to add, it is ostensibly meant to be a way of going “hey, it looks like your performance is suffering. Maybe this is due to workload, stress, etc. problems. Let’s work together to get you back on track”. But of course it is really a sinister way to invent reasons why someone needs to be fired. Because if you get fired after PIP then HR can say “well we tried our best to help you succeed and you just couldn’t do it”
They are a way of gaslighting and victim blaming an employee while firing them.
Or they’re a tool to give the employee some quantifiable and measurable areas they need to improve on. This way both sides are clear of expectations and there’s no surprises.
Not all bosses suck. I’ve had to put a few people on them and they’ve helped, never had to fire someone afterwards.
That’s certainly a possibility, but if someone told me they were put on a PIP, and asked me what they should expect, I’d tell them that in all likelihood it means that they are going to be let go in the near future.
It’s a different story if the company does regular performance management with all employees. For example I work in the public sector and we do annual performance reviews, but also annual performance agreements, which are basically PIPs but without the prerequisite that performance has diminished.
Well yes. A PIP is a last resort. It’s what you do when coaching, mentoring, and flat out ordering haven’t worked. If you get to this stage you’re at the precipice.
This 100%. If you’re at the point where a PIP is happening, the employee shouldn’t be surprised by it.
What does the half shield next to your username mean?
At my previous job I think they actually published stats on pips internally and it was like 50% success rate. I mean it’s not great but the alternative is you just get straight up fired. I think PIP is probably generally a good thing.
Gonna disagree with you and say, “ALL bosses suck.” by virtue of the power differential.
“Not all bosses suck”
Said By: A boss that fires people.
That tracks.
They literally said “never had to fire anyone”
But… ok, sure let’s go with your “interpretation”
Firing people does not mean you’re a bad boss.
Nah you just don’t get it. Firing is a capitalist invention designed by the elite to keep the population down. Everyone is an excellent employee and every manager everywhere is getting a bonus and poorly utilizing team skills.
I feel like you’re being sarcastic but I’ve seen enough posts here to think you might be serious.
Yup. PIP == quit immediately, or at least spend a majority of your work day finding a new job.
Yup. PIP == quit immediately
And forfeit unemployment payments?
Exactly. Let them pay you to find a new job, don’t quit.
I don’t think you don’t get unemployment if you get fired after a PIP - that’s being fired “with cause”.
Even if that’s true you get paid while on a PIP. You stop getting paid as soon as you quit.
From the employee’s perspective, it’s basically an amount of time for you to find a new job while still on the payroll at your current company. There are exceptions, but generally speaking you either won’t survive the PIP, or you will but you’ll be at the top of the list during the next layoffs. And even if you somehow survive all of that, you’re not looking at good raises and career advancement anymore at that company.
So use it as a runway to the next job and move on.
Buddy of mine survived a PIP and is now one level up. Took a long time but he did it. Sometimes the PIP is related to politics (ie. Asshole “leaders”)
There will always be outliers but the general advice is still solid: if you’re on PIP or something similar, you should start the job search immediately. Coming out in a better position is possible but not likely enough to count on.
Eh, I was on a pip and was promoted during it.
It helps if you’re actually valuable to the company (knowledge wise).
How come? That doesn’t make any sense at all.
If you were on a PIP, your performance was below expectations for your current level. To be promoted your performance needs to be consistently at the next level.
What kind of company was it that contradicted itself so completely?
Not necessarily. My skill set made me the right choice for the new position. It was more of a job title change than anything.
I do suspect that my boss never submitted the pip to HR, though. He never submitted any of the other ‘disciplinary actions’ he performed over the 7 years I worked for him.
So you weren’t on PIP and you didn’t get promoted.
Your comment made me laugh out loud. That was well done.
I went from a admin to Sr engineer, so it was a promotion, but I was really doing the job of engineer before the promotion.
You can offer value while fucking up other things that need correcting. In theory a PIP is meant to clearly highlight a behavior to help the individual correct it. We’ll just fire a person if they don’t really have a chance.
In all the companies I worked at in there last 20 years, there’s simply no way someone can get promoted while on a PIP. Nor can they get a salary increase, bonus, or shares. It’s a strict rule, and common sense frankly.
It doesn’t matter if they exceed some aspects and fail in others. If they’re on a PIP, they are not meeting the expectations for their role, period.
Then I think you got very very lucky.
In my career space, if someones is not immediatly replaceable (even for advanced positions that require degrees) its considered a failure of managment to not have business continuity in place.
You never know when life happens, your lead tech or lab coordinator could have a date with truck-kun and be stuck in the hospital for months. If the important things are not written down then you need to look elsewhere because managment isnt doing their job.
I definitely got lucky by having a good boss (most of the time, but he was bipolar so every so often you got screamed at for no reason).
And yeah, I actually did a lot of work to help with the hit by a bus scenario because everything was so siloed when I started.
At my job we had to fire some guy who just never work, but HR out him on PIP first and assigned him to another team at the company. A few weeks later the new team also wanted him gone, so it was time to fire him. Except HR forgot to tell him he was on PIP so he was only moved to another team yet again. This third team wanted him gone even faster than the previoua.
performance improvement plan and I am in no way speaking from experience
In the UK PIP is Personal Independence Payment, which is our disability benefit, which had me really confused, because no fucking way
A. your boss cares enough (or is even able) to get you on it and
B. the Department of Work and Pensions would give anyone PIP for “mere” mental health issues (I have multiple disabilities and am declined every time I have to renew my benefit because their default is simply to decline all applications).
So yeah, “performance improvement plan” makes much more sense lol
I reported a hostile work environment at my old job, where my new manager told another employee that he was “going to make his life a living hell until he quits”. I was forced to enter EAP - I can’t remember what it stands for, but basically seeing a corporate therapist to “deal with my anger issues”.
All this started because I had no choice but to report him for violating literal federal law, which the company swept under the rug.
Jokes on him though - he eventually put his hands on me in front of several others and I got a year’s salary. I tried to walk away while he was screaming in my face. He put his hands on my shoulders and shoved me onto my chair. I could have sued for more, but I took the agreement and ran and found a new job shortly thereafter.
Why does it feel like every comic by this guy is drawn completely identically, just with different dialogue each time lol
It’s called efficiency and you should know about it. We might have to put you on PIP afterall…
It’s called an art style. Most artists have that.
I don’t mean the style, I mean the exact same layout, expressions, comedic formula, etc
I swear I’ve seen like 5 of these comics where the drawing is literally identical with only the dialogue changed
Not hating, obviously folks like em, just making am observation
Look up Dinosaur Comics. Been doing the same shtick for years!
Maybe it’s the simplicity of the art style. Big round heads, small body’s, usually posed standing, everyone is same shape, dialogue focused comedy. I don’t know, I’m just spit balling here.
Edit: having a look at the website the comic is publishes you are right. Hell you’re even more right today since the last two comics are almost exactly same. Same characters, same positioning, same actions. The only difference is the dialogue and the facial expressions.
I imagine the artist has a bunch of stock art he just cuts and pasted in to the comic so he doesn’t have to redraw something he’s already drawn.
It’s the cyanide and happiness formula - copy and paste anything that doesn’t absolutely need to be redrawn.
You have no control over your work or work environment. You do not understand why things are done the way they are. There is no belonging to anything other than a paycheck and sad trombone pizza parties. You are not growing from your work to reach your potential, or aren’t being actively developed or grown. Your uniqueness is not recognized, you are a serial number.
The great news is, we’ve added menial cost mental health EAP to gaslight you as if any human could succeed in the framework above.
There was this one guy who wrote whole books on this kind of stuff. He called this “alienation” and was trying to warn us about it all the way back in like the 1860s.
You talking about Durkheim and “anomie”? If so, yes the concepts since the beginning of industrialization haven’t changed, unregulated capitalism has only exacerbated the core issues of humans not having evolved to work the way companies want to operate.
Then they change their mental health therapist access program with Dialogue to give you 30 minute sessions to quickly “fix the issue” that’s hindering your performance without addressing the actual mental problem that you are facing.
Work Chronicles
so it’s a comic series about work? that’s the most unimaginably boring, middle class thing i’ve ever heard. they fucking post on LINKEDIN, too
It’s like Dilbert but without the batshit insane artist
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I’ve got a 40% success rate with PIPs and I’m okay with that number. Our company also offers free licensed therapy through our healthcare. These political comics have lost all nuance but maybe that’s just me being an old man.
