Thanks so much for sharing this! Your other comment(link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871688) and this post show(link: http://skloverworkingwisdom.com/blog/index.php/performance-i... ) how common this is. In my personal experience, even startups do this.

Which I guess is more fault to US law having high severance cost, than people being sociopaths.

In fact, don't try to anthropomorphize the companies (Bryan Cantryl said that out loud recently about Oracle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v... , but it applies to all companies and all bosses).

"Fault to US law having high severance cost"? No. That's not it.

When you factor in morale damage and the amount of managerial time spent on them, it's more expensive to run a PIP than to let someone go with a severance package.

PIPs are paper shields in a lawsuit, and do nothing about disparagement, which severance contracts usually cover. A PIP doesn't actually establish that the employee was an objective underperformer, only that he "should have seen it coming".

The real purpose of the PIP is two-fold. First, it's to make the employee feel like he deserves to be fired or that he has no recourse, even though that's not true. Second, it's to make the HR and finance offices look good because they "saved money" on severance packages, when what they actually did was externalized the costs to that employee's team.

PIPs make no sense. When companies fire people, it's typical to close out that person's computer access and take him out of the building immediately, as if it's a danger to have him in the building for another minute. Yet companies have no qualms about keeping an essentially fired employee in the office for a month on a PIP.

PIPs have a purpose. Just as there has to be an orderly and codified system for promotion in larger companies (to avoid favoritism, etc.) there generally has to be a codified system for termination due to under-performance. A manager shouldn't just be able to fire one of his team arbitrarily when they haven't broken any rules/policy.

PIPs provide a codified, constructive way to deal with these situations; they make explicit to the employee that they're on the edge of being let go, and they force the manager through a process to demonstrate that the employee is not appropriately qualified or motivated for their job. No manager _wants_ to do a PIP. Frankly, it's usually easier to just pawn an underperformer off on on another team. But the reality is there are appropriate situations to do one where just passing the buck is unacceptable.

I have seen folks get PIP'ed and let go, and I've seen some come back and have a good career with the company. (Obviously the latter is less common.) In some cases where you have a young guy who just isn't stepping up, the PIP process serves as a wake-up call that the manager isn't kidding around.