I’m a new grad who started at one of the Big Tech companies this past year. Been recently notified that I’m in danger of being placed under PIP due to underperformance, which I thought was fair due to extenuating familial circumstances. I’m personally feeling despair in being capable or being able to stay in the tech industry considering my lack of ability or general aptitude.
Can someone explain what pip is, I am assuming its not the python package manager, and I am not getting the meaning from context.
“Performance Improvement Plan”, It’s a process for when an employee is believed to not be meeting expectations.
Depending on where you’re at, it may actually be intended as a way to help you improve, or it may be the first step in being able to fire you without fear of being sued for wrongful termination. Lengthy documentation of underperformance is usually seen as the best defense in that sort of thing. I think a lot of people assume it’s the latter.
Personally, I think that if a person can genuinely understand their underperformance, it could well be a genuine attempt at improvement. If only as a way to push someone to buckle down for fear of losing their job.
I’ve had friends who got put on PIPs in situations where they felt they were put onto tasks or projects which would have been difficult for anyone to accomplish with the resources they were given. In a few cases, it seems to come from the same few shitty managers.
In either case, it’s probably not a bad idea to start mentally preparing yourself to move on.
All the advice I’ve ever heard is to start looking for a new job if you’re out on a pip. I don’t know how well that advice tracks if severance is on the table though.
I will say this though, there is no harm in looking. Ever.
At the point where I had ~5 years of experience I was put on a variation of PIP for being overly negative about a (new) project’s direction and feeling that our efforts were very misguided. My manager provided some training items on soft skills, then I left the company a few months later of my own volition. While I still feel that the project was fundamentally flawed, and last I had heard it was scrapped shortly after I left, I do get the sentiment and have used it to at least better gauge when/where to critique and try to provide insights going forward.
