Bear in mind that Grigory is describing his experience in Switzerland (confirmed in a response to a comment: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-fired-fro...), so this might not be the same as elsewhere.
It seems the recurring theme here is if your employees are slacking, more micromanagement isn't the answer. Either give them a reason to get excited about coming to work or fire them. The PIP process is an orwellian farce. The only saving grace is I bet most companies that use them don't actually know they don't work. Or maybe it's like interviewing; they know it doesn't work, but they don't have anything better?
[0]: I won't go into details, but it required getting two or three approvals per day from managers who were already backed up with work.