PIPed someone first time as manager
This is my first time to piped an engineer . I felt so bad doing it . I knew I did the right thing but as a human I feel bad. I Does it get easy managing poor performer afterwards ?
It never gets easy. The day you start feeling comfortable doing it, you shouldn’t be a manager anymore.
Some people totally deserve PIP and it can keep the team honest in their efforts. You will get desensitized after the second one and need to be on guard against it.
What goes around comes around. May the karma deal with it. Remember this on your dying bed about your sins.
Dude some people deserve it. It's not a charity
Google please. We deserve real unions and the ability to fight back against an obviously rigged performance management system.
No, not really, it doesn't get better, though you would find your way to cope better. I am already worried about Q3. As someone who had to put -10 in Focus and 5 in pivot, directly or through SDM reporting to me) in last 8 years, I felt very bad every time, couldn't sleep well for the first such case though I knew that the person going into Focus was absolute disaster for any project. Gives me satisfaction though that I managed to save 4 and could promote 3 of them within next 1.5-2 yrs.
If your boss doesn't ask you to PIP someone, what would be the reason for you to PIP them? Don't just say underperformance. Please define it. Super curious how anyone can write code, pass bar raisers, do so much for so many years, and yet all of a sudden fall into PIP.
Good question. If my boss (and their bosses) hadn't forced me, I wouldn't have put those 4 in Focus, I fought hard at my boss's level but finally it was decided at 2 levels above me. They didn't deserve to be there and that's why they came out of it and got promoted later as well. Now for the others whom I believe were not meeting the performance bar - I will give you a real example which you may find hard to believe - this person had been in Amazon for 2+ yrs, got into my team based on reference from my manager(we went through the usual process before taking him in). They were not able to complete the tasks, not able to provide clear updates, code used to go through 10+ revisions and caused issues in production. I still gave them long rope but other engineers working with them started complaining that they have to do this person's work too. I gave different project to this person too but same results. It was difficult for me as I had to explain to my manager too. I spoke to this person openly and informally and they said that he is not able to understand the complexity and they thought that the tech stack and level of tech depth needed for work in this team is too much and other engineers in the team are much smarter (not bragging, my engineers are indeed very smart, good that I don't have to compete with them 😀) . Anyway, so we both agreed that they are not meeting the bar and I informally made sure that they get their stocks vested before I take any next step and also they get as much as possible as part of pivot payment. In short, there are genuine poor performances which can be difficult to hide and same person can be successful elsewhere.
Are you Indian? Were they American?
You forgot the extra space before the question marks
Umm k. So is that right ?
To me, if you have tu PIP an engineer, you’re the one failing as a leader, not the engineer. What that’s just me.
Not everyone is actually motivated or wants to listen to feedback
L take. Some people just suck and you don't know until they start actually working.
What did they do? Did they deserve it?
May you get pipped one day. Amen.
Summon the pip gods!
Yo, my manager at Amazon was cool and a nice guy. At some point, the stakes became much higher and he had to PIP me, despite him telling me until that point that all was great. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t easy for him. But the truth is that I don’t keep any resentment against him. He was probably pipped already and had to survive to provide for the family. I also wasn’t very effective and was lacking focus and efficacy. I found a job at Snap, and the timing was so good that I racked up an eye popping amount of 💰 during my years there. Now I don’t need to work anymore for the medium term at least, and likely forever, and I’m very happy. Looking for my next step very calmly. If the PIP was deserved, you’re just growing as a person. That being said, timely and clear feedback is better than a PIP, so you can go towards that.
Everything in your comment makes sense except the sprinkle of that flex
The intention is to make clear that people can rebound handsomely.
You’ll become a cold blooded pipping machine In no time! Selling your soul to the devil himself for bananas!
🤣🤣🤣