On being the employee who “needs improvement” | Hacker News Reader

On being the employee who “needs improvement”

virtuouscode.com

206 pointsjamiepenney190 comments

I don't know what the motivations for the bosses in this story were, but in corporate America personal improvement plans are fundamentally about gearing up to fire someone more than any actual improvement. When defending yourself against a wrongful termination lawsuit, it looks good to courts to say, "Look, we met every week, we had these conversations, and things didn't get better enough."

In the story linked, it seems like the author was prioritizing family or health over work at times (me: Good! We need more of that!). The employer can't just fire you for that as it looks a lot like wrongful termination. So they need to build up a paper trail.

Honestly to me it seems that the author was extremely unprofessional. He just disappeared for whole days without letting anyone know. In all the companies that I worked it was explicitly mentioned in the contract that such behaviour was subject to disciplinary actions up to dismissal.

I'm not sure " To the degree that sometimes my bosses were left hanging, waiting for a day or more on my work." necessarily means what you're saying. There are absolutely ways to communicate that you need a personal day - or that something is delayed because [reasons] - that aren't 'just disappearing'.

If you need a personal day then use one of your allocated vacation days. It's still unprofessional to be springing these on people at a moment's notice rather than communicating them ahead of time, though.

If you aren't using a vacation day then you should absolutely be reachable throughout the entire work day, and disappearing for a day at a time is unacceptable.

It really depends on how the team was being run.

Some remote teams are like co-located teams and work synchronously with set office hours. Other remote teams work asynchronously instead and individuals are free to arrange their work and life as they see fit. In the latter case, if somebody is working on a task that'll take a few days, not hearing from them for a day or two isn't unusual or a problem.

It sounds like perhaps he thought all remote work was asynchronous, but his employer wanted him to work synchronously. But it would take a severe communications breakdown for that to get to the point where a weekly performance review was needed. Normally, you'd talk about how this all works before the person is even hired.

But honestly, when he describes it as humiliating, having a problem with being managed by younger people, and characterising being "judged" by his bosses as threatening, it does give the impression that the prima donna label isn't far wide of the mark. It's absolutely fine for younger people to manage older people, it's not humiliation to have weekly meetings to resolve a performance problem, and your bosses judging your performance is not a threat, it's a mandatory part of their role.

>But it would take a severe communications breakdown for that to get to the point where a weekly performance review was needed. Normally, you'd talk about how this all works before the person is even hired.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. Often these expectations are not explicitly set. And often (probably more often than not), managers will let it get to the point of "exploding" and suddenly you find yourself in such a meeting. Many managers are uncomfortable with these conversations. They are often feeling defensive going in, and to counter that they will wait until they have enough "data" to have the conversation. But by that point, the damage is done.

Severe communications breakdown? Perhaps. Rare? Not at all.

I've never seen a remote setup wherein being unreachable for more than 1 day during normal work days would come across as legit. It sounds downright unprofessional.

It's not. You're judging asynchronous/remote working styles according to synchronous/co-located standards. There isn't necessarily any such thing as a "normal work day". Monday–Friday 9:00–5:30 isn't 100% applicable when your team members aren't in the same time zones or observe the same national/religious holidays. So long as they get the work done when they say they will, the exact hours they work aren't important.

No, I'm judging by my extensive experience co-working with remotes. No "time zone" makes it legit to be non-responsive for over 24h during work days. It's 100% ok to be not working but that's referred to as "day off" and should be communicated as such.

It's not just you that has extensive experience with this. Sure, some teams are managed synchronously as if they were co-located, but just because that's what works for you, it doesn't mean that is the only way to do things. You quite clearly have a concept of a standard work day because you keep going on about "work days". Not all teams are run that way. If you communicate to your team that you want them to work to set hours and they don't? Sure, that's unprofessional. But stop pushing the idea that your way is the only way and everybody else is unprofessional. Different teams have different norms.

I think it is misleading to label "expected to be responsive within 24 hours during the work week" as "managed synchronously as if co-located". Sure, there are even looser arrangements that can work great for some contexts. And it's absolutely the case that norms vary. But "within 24 hours" more-or-less puts all timezones on the same footing and is pretty far from co-location.

While there was clearly a mismatch of expectations here, I don't think working in an asynchronous manner is necessarily unprofessional. And there's really not enough information in the original article to see how the mismatched expectations developed.

There could be reasons... one thing you might not have experienced is not having explicit management, and not even knowing who you /should/ inform. That happens from time to time.

This is possibly indicated by "bosses". Not having explicit line management sucks.

There is a really easy solution to the "no explicit management" problem: Just go to 1 boss and ask "When I want to take a vacation day, who do I talk to/what is the process for that?"

Works best if that is early on after joining the company. Or just ask the same question to HR, they would guaranteed know what the process is.

It doesn't always work in my experience. The guy who signs off on vacations might be different than the guy managing day-to-day work.

There might not be a clear vacation policy (as much as you like etc).

Ask HR? I've worked at companies with 100 people who had no dedicated HR staff...

In my case, I had a supervisor magic-up a title promotion for himself based on seniority. He started telling everyone he was "the lead supervisor" including his peers. His peer, my direct supervisor, told me to escalate work/issues to the "lead supervisor" before our manager. When I did check with HR/higher management, they were flummoxed.

If this were a problem, then his or her manager should have said something the very first time it happened. Waiting for it to happen multiple times and being on the verge of firing someone before telling the employee they didn't like it is wildly incompetent.

It's entirely possible (and this is pure speculation) that this was a pattern his managers observed, and one that continued even with regular corrective feedback. I've been on the managerial end of that situation and it's really no fun when no improvement is seen even when expectations (and consequences) are clearly and explicitly laid out. Some people just don't get it - but again totally speculation, may not really apply in this situation.

You are making a lot of assumptions on what is "professional".

A contract is an agreement. There are companies paying very high salaries to very low - expecting very high commitment to very low - in various combinations.

It's up to the company to clarify expectations.

The article is vague about what the main problem was in the bosses view, which they must have told him at the original "needs improvement" meeting (they actually should have told him earlier in a friendlier setting, too).

If it was his non availability when expected (meetings/telecons) or missing explicitly agreed to deadlines, I agree with your non-professional label.

If he got a task to do in 3 days and delivered in 3 days he did just fine even if he was on a beach with the phone off the first day. In this case the failure is with the management who didn't know how to run a remote team (which is a rare skill, too).

It depends on what the work is like, too. In practice all of the most successful teams I've been on have been highly collaborative (i.e. reachable). The kind of team where everyone goes incommunicado for days on end working on independent deliverables tends to suffer from low velocity, poor team cohesion, and ultimately inferior quality. I'm collaborating with coworkers constantly throughout the day, including occasionally sitting in front of the same computer to work through something. Change latency from seconds to days and everything suffers.

It does seem that was the case and then if you can simply say "please never disappear for the whole day without telling me" and that would be the end of it. I think there's more going on here.

"Please be reachable during normal business hours" is a very reasonable demand of remote coworkers. Most of the problems I've ever had with remote coworkers was with them not being reachable and consequently blocking team progress. These people inevitably got poor performance reviews and did not move up in the company, and some got fired.

When you can turn to your coworker next to you and ask a simple one minute question that unblocks you, but you can't reach your remote coworker for an entire day and you thus fail to make progress for an entire day because of their truancy, you begin to resent them really quickly. It doesn't matter if you're their manager or not; it's super irritating.

Did you communicate to them that their absence blocked work? If you didn't, they likely thought that there were no problems and continued in that behavior.

Part of what makes corporate America suck is the kind of passive aggressive resentments that never get expressed. Suddenly the remote worker finds that everyone hates him and has no clue why.

I think that is a somewhat cynical view of the matter; I appreciate that "American Work Ethics" are highly flawed and mostly theatrics (I say this as an American expat who has experienced work from all over the globe), but as much as there is management theatrics in the US, there's also a lot of "woe is me" from employees when they're disciplined.

I'd really hate to see how the author of the piece would have reacted to the Russian Managers at the company I'm with at the moment, as the managers certainly don't sugar coat when they're unhappy; it's not abusive, it's just very to the point. Having been a manager when I still worked in the US, it was incredibly difficult to correct inappropriate behavior because virtually every time you did, you did it wrong to whoever you were correcting. Try to be gentle? You were unclear. Try to be polite but to the point? You were curt. This sort of dance suggests to me that we just don't handle criticism well professionally in the US. I'm sure this is just observer bias, but I see a tendency to avoid confrontation at any cost, with too many places hoping it just "works out".

I do think it's from both sides of the employer/employee line. I have been at places that were more interested in just removing people who had some bad habits or needed to have a line drawn for some behavior while otherwise being model employees. I have also seen employees who were absolutely resistant to any criticism for a multitude of reasons, and ultimately the just continued with bad behavior until they were fired or left the company out of frustration with the constant meetings.

The author touches on some very true feelings in the article - no one likes being reprimanded. It's harsh, it's embarrassing, and it saps your ego for many reasons. But like others have commented, I do think that they acted unprofessionally - I imagine the story would have been much different had the author simply PM's a manager or boss "hey, family issue, going to be incognito today, I'll try to get an update by X" or just anything to keep them in the loop. The author also seemed unaware of the expectations of their bosses before hand, so maybe that's the fault of the company or the fault of the author. The age disparity I appreciate the uncomfortableness of, but it's going to be something that is more and more of a reality. (Ageism in tech is very real, so not discounting that, but the reality of the world is that there are going to be many young tech managers; staying out of management is great, but it needs to come with the understanding that eventually you'll be older than your bosses on average).

Unfortunately it seems that the same smiley, inoffensive, A-for-effort mentality that exists in our school system has fully invaded the corporate world.

I experienced this personally after talking to a report about their absenteeism. Within a day I received a lengthy email from them complaining about my directness. That 30 second exchange was escalated to management; they agreed that my feedback was justified (the employee in question had missed our team's only recurring meeting for the past month) but suggested I adjust my "tone" to avoid embarrassing them.

I can't help but see similarities when I read this article. Speak directly to someone and they'll get their feelings hurt. Sugarcoat it and they'll claim that you weren't clear enough. Casually hint at the issue and they'll claim you were passive aggressive.

Something is fundamentally wrong with an environment where adults can't have honest and direct interaction for fear of hurting someone's feelings.

While I appreciate your agreement, I disagree with the reasoning - I don't think it has anything to do with that (and you can check my comments to see that I don't even think that "issue" is all that much of an issue in and of itself [1])

Instead, I think it's just a bad mixture of arrogance and antiquated power relationships in the modern workplace. Especially with technology, the age difference between any given two employees can be pretty drastic in either direction; with two peers, this typically isn't much of a problem, but when you have a manager/employee relationship, this can strain the relationship if both sides aren't willing to get outside of their comfort zones a little. Some of my most difficult colleagues and employees were people who were older than me, or thought they were (I look much younger than I actually am), who felt they could just ignore me because of my age. (or theirs, same result if for different reasons) And for sure, they took being wrong very hard, especially if I were the one to disagree and explain why.

Similarly, the love of having a social status quo makes it very difficult to enact change in people via any confrontation. People aren't just resistant to change they themselves aren't trying to enact, they're hostile towards it. The countless games I've seen played where poor programmers had to convince their bosses that a project was actually the boss' idea are simply ludicrous, but it's the only way in these environments that such projects were able to happen.

When a team works well together, it's because of mutual respect - the best teams I've been in, despite drastic differences in age, politics, and philosophies, everyone got along well professionally and respected each other's domains, challenging appropriately, but also conceding when appropriately. It's when people start digging their heels in and insisting that they've conceded enough or let pride get in the way that we get stories like you mentioned or like the author is describing. It takes a lot of maturity to quiet the part of you that wants to fight every criticism simply due to the fact that it's a criticism; it's that impulsive response, plus the above reasons, that people have such issues.

(Of course, all my opinion and experience, your mileage may vary)

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485882

> but suggested I adjust my "tone" to avoid embarrassing them.

Oh, I know this so well, but also from incompetent superiors. Not giving you an example of what would be a better tone, but just vague things like that. Of course, if I'm not a bit late too often, or something obvious like that, I don't need a tutorial on how to get out of bed in time. "Ahem, cut it out" is enough there.

But in other cases, it really felt like they were bluffing, and I realized I really need to leave ASAP when I could actually call the bluff and leave them standing. E.g. boss comes up because they think I've been taking too long on task X, which they know fuck all about, proudly so ("I don't need to know that"). They stand next to me, ask if I need help which translated to "why are you still doing this", I roll my eyes (NOT because my feelings were hurt, really just because I was doing my very best, and because I knew I was doing better works than their "metrics glasses" allowed them to see) and say "should I explain what I'm doing? that'll just take more time but okay" and they'd be like "oh okay, I was just saying".

In a way, that was funny, in another totally unacceptable. Even more than clowning around in school, I wanted teachers I can respect. Even more than slacking off at work, I want to get shit done and get supported in doing it. If I'm doing something wrong, I want to be told what it is, in concrete terms. Because otherwise, I'm suspecting you don't even know, and that I should have your job. Roughly speaking. I certainly met a fair share of people who hardly worked because they were higher in the hierarchy. They were sweating because they constantly had to pretend to know what they're doing, not because they worked so hard. Not that I wanted their job, but when they were sick nothing changed on the ground floor other than who stamped or authorized certain things, production did not slow down. That's for sure, and that's a problem, too.

I don't want to "turn this around" and pretend employees can't be pains in the ass, too. But with colleagues, I had no huge expectations, but once you feel like the only adult in a conversation with your boss or even the boss of their boss, and they cede the ground though while saving face to themselves, it just gets impossible to take the place seriously on anything but a "personal" professional level. That is, I learned for myself, and I tried to do good work in a shit situation even though it couldn't possibly keep the company from tanking, but I could not get into any mindset of honestly coming up with ideas on how to fix the company. I expect those who have been there before me, get paid more, supposedly know more and have more authority, to at least give it an earnest shot, too, and I wasn't seeing that. They all just had excuses and slogans and "that's how we do things around here". Only half of the promised things ever happened, but there was always plenty of marketing material for it in advance.

But I know I and they had harsh teachers. Several of them grew up in the GDR, one of those had an officer for a father. So not an "A for effort" mentality, but still not honest. So I both disagree and agree on that point. I think it just starts with adults trying to answer the questions of kids that are uncomfortable to them honestly, instead of blaming the kids for coming up with questions they should be asking, too. It would do both them and their kids good, and 20 years later who knows what becomes possible.

That is exactly the subject of the book, Crucial Conversations. They talk about the Fool's Choice, the false dichotomy of speaking truth (and holding someone accountable) while having a good relationship.

It is possible to do both and the book has specific tools to get to that. The little bit I am applying is working well -- better than what has been happening before.

You can find a wiki summary of the book and see if it helps.

I once had a boss that would get really worked up and angry if you made him mad. He's spew why he was upset at you. But then that was it. You knew when it was over. I miss that refreshing interaction in a weird way.

I've worked blue collar jobs where bosses are way more direct, like your Russian managers - and it's better. I remember one who would tell me most mornings, "Try not to fuck up today!" When a boss is angry and direct in giving feedback, we don't become resentful; we get scared for a while, then settle down. It's the natural way of hierarchy. We all need course correction from time to time, and the modern white-collar way sucks.

This guy's bad feelings were increased by his isolation. Compare this to an old school environment where you got yelled at by the boss, then emerged from the office to the jokes of your co-workers who heard the yelling through the door. That's a more natural environment.

(The old school boss sometimes fucked up by abusing an employee in front of co-workers. It should always be done behind closed doors.)

However in many years of corporate work I can rarely figure out what my bosses actually want or what they're thinking. They talk about corporate initiatives and get that uncomfortable "lying" body language, probably because they don't really believe this stuff but have to parrot it.

Getting back to your Russian managers - I think we are wired for hierarchy but we need certain signals to be comfortable with it. We like to work for bosses who are comfortable wielding power. When the boss projects too much weakness, the power relationship becomes very uncomfortable. I'm guessing that the remote bosses in the story didn't give strong course correction early on because they felt uncomfortable. They let the situation escalate, then took this drastic action.

I had three different style managers within a three year period.

1. An old army guy who was about 48 who left the military in his early 30s and became a developer. He was smart, direct, but polite. He called a spade a spade, put family first and I enjoyed working for him. He would always tell you when your stuff stinks. He had a falling out with the main office located in another state about two hours away because he intentionally hired senior developers who were all in our 40s who weren't afraid to shake things up and do things the right way. I specifically took the job at the company because of him.

2. After he left, the company promoted a developer to management who would not rock the boat. He was a nice guy, but would never stand up for doing things the right way and you didn't know where you stood until you got a review. I left the company as soon as was feasible -- I put in my letter as soon as I closed on my house.

3. Then I went to work for a company as the software architect for the entire company. My manager there was person who was technically strong and knew how to play politics - not in a bad way - he knew how to navigate corporate structure and would sometimes clean up behind me with my more direct approach at getting things done.

Which one you preferred? #1 or #3?

Managers like #3 have the ability to advocate for their directs when it comes to career development and advances and when it comes to salary.

The one weakness with good managers who are both technically strong and know how to navigate corporate America and "manage up" seems to be that they don't have the time to be technical leads and get into the nitty gritty of what their department is doing. They have to hire or promote someone as the "benevolent dictator" who enforces best practices and who has interpersonal skills to keep the manager informed and to talk to the customer - either the internal or external customer.

The architect role is really important for a type 3 manager.

If you need a mentor though, manager #1 is better but go in with the understanding that the only way you're going to get ahead in your career with that type of manager is to learn what you can from them and be prepared to advocate for yourself within the organization or more realistically, find another job and use what you've learned.

Time is a multiplier on a lot of issues. There are a lot of things that are essentially non-issues if addressed immediately, which can be problems if they linger. I think the white collar world could do with more directness!

>I'd really hate to see how the author of the piece would have reacted to the Russian Managers at the company I'm with at the moment, as the managers certainly don't sugar coat when they're unhappy; it's not abusive, it's just very to the point.

I don't know - he may actually prefer it?

I had a manager who would be polite, indirect, etc when he wanted to criticize me. As a result, he did a really poor job at it and because he felt defensive he felt he had to strategize the whole thing, and it was a waste of company time. I cannot correct his misconceptions because he was so indirect that it wasn't clear what his concerns were, etc.

My other boss: He occasionally has a tantrum and throws F-bombs - borderline shouting. Very scary in the beginning, but overall better. The direct feedback loop works well. And when he's wrong, even if he won't admit it, it is less stressful for me. It's easier when you know someone is wrong than when you don't even know what the person is thinking.

Anyway, to the larger point - a company should invest in coming up with an appropriate methodology for having these conversations. Managers should follow it ("stick to the script"), and employees should be aware of it as well. That way, at least there's no side conversation on how appropriate the feedback was.

A less cynical viewpoint is that personal improvement plans give an employee time to job hunt.

I've made that comment to people when I've put them on a PIP before. We both knew what was going on...

If occasionally you have to do something for your family during hours you have to work, you at least owe your coworkers/manager a quick "I'll be offline for a few hours". He didn't do that.

There was no indication from the article that the company demanded unreasonable hours.

This is very true in corporate America. They are NOT really interested in improving your work performance. They are simply starting the process of letting you go while building up the necessary paper trail to show employment lawyers (in case they show up) that the management did their best to try to help the employee improve performance but that it just didn't work out. They are just covering their butts.

So if you ever get called in for performance improvement meeting by your manager, you should just start looking for a new job. Or at least start saving your money for unemployment.

And as for the original poster, I'm sorry that it happened but he should've been up front about his schedule so that his managers know what's going on.

Yep. U.S. "improvement plans": Accumulate actions and documentation to justify and CYA the action already planned.

If you ever face one of those, and you have the option to walk away and start something else / somewhere else, go. Just like the B.S. in the name, "improvement plan", anything they say that sounds positive about the action is most likely just being disingenuous.

I'll take all this back a step further: If you are not happy with the job, or have a lot of friction with your management, walk away. The sooner you get out, the better -- for your peace of mind, career, and reputation.

Real improvement is sadly lacking from many workplaces, these days. The HR ideal, again contrary to what they say and the ideals they "paint" in their rhetoric, is the completely fungible employee.

If you haven't experienced real improvement in the workplace and in your own career before seeing an "improvement plan", you certainly aren't going to see it, after.

Well, I guess there are the occasional exceptions. Don't count on being one.

Trust your gut. Even when the resulting action you need to take is "hard". Neglecting your intuition -- real intuition; you usually know it when it hits -- ends up being much harder, in the long run.

The key to being a successful remote worker is a foundation of trust. Its unfortunately Human Nature to assume the worst when a remote contact is unreachable when you need them . Therefore it's crucial to establish a reputation where your co-workers trust you to do the right thing connected or not. The moral of the story is not about abusive bosses or misaligned corporate goals. It's just about maintaining that crucial level of trust in the team. And it's a two-way street . Both manager and employee play a an active part. Personally I would never hire a remote worker I could not confidently trust nor would I work for a place that didn't implicitly trust me

Edit - I've been a remote worker for over 10 years and will likely continue as long as I possibly can

I find managing upwards is the best way to deal with these situations. I've had micromanagers before and no one enjoys that random "hey wheres X at?" question so what I do is give status updates every so often. I avoid the stressful question entirely this way.

It makes your managers life easier and yours as well and allows you to give updates on your time instead of theirs.

This works remotely and in person. I work my face off a lot of times so it's valuable to turn the tables and not get caught in the middle of something with a question that can take me out of work flow.

At the end of the day, managing people is very hard. Transperency works very well for me.

I can't stress how good the above comment is at dealing with this. As a long time manager, people that behave this way are a total joy to manage.

Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable, unless you are in a deadzone of cell reception or driving. But, if you practice the above, it shouldn't be an issue. For example, a post to #OOO: hey, running an errand for the next hour, offline.

> if you have a smartphone... there is no reason to be unreachable

It is totally fine to be unreachable nights and weekends[1] without providing notice to your employer; being able to detach from work completely from time to time is key to minimizing burnout risk, and what you do on your own time is none of their business.

[1] With the exception of formalized support rotations, of course

I certainly hope parent poster meant being reachable during working hours.

Never assume management's expectations.

I meant regular working hours.

Being unreachable during core business hours is definitely a huge problem from the perspective of the non-remote employee (me) who's in the office for the typical eight hours a day trying to get something done and being blocked by a coworker who's unreachable because they're remote. If you a remote worker, the onus is on you to never let the fact that you're not in the office become a burden on your coworkers. If you end up being harder to work with because you're less reachable then your coworkers will begin to resent you for it, and that doesn't lead down a good path.

If you're not online and available during the expected business hours for your position then you're not really doing 100% of your job, because you're not able to assist your team members as is expected of your role.

Note that this applies to members of standard software engineering teams, and not necessarily to contractual work that involves delivering products on certain timetables but not necessarily close collaboration with a team.

Lots of places offer flexible business hours, even for people coming in the office. Not everyone always takes lunch at the same time either. Even people in the office are not 100% available all the time. Your attitude towards remote workers seems unnecessarily hostile.

You're misinterpreting my post. At my current job we are flexible -- people come in and leave at different times, eat lunch at different times, etc. I'm not expecting everyone to be at their desks from 10-6 all day every day. That's why I said "core business hours". There's a difference between someone who is unavailable because they're off eating lunch and someone who is incommunicado for many hours at a time and impedes progress. I've seen remote workers drastically slow down progress by simply being unavailable while all of the non-remote workers are present and blocked on them for something. In theory an onsite worker could do this too, but in practice they don't simply disappear for hours at a time at the office.

Our team is usually fully remote. I've actually worked my full career in mostly remote positions (15 years now). I've very rarely experienced people randomly disappearing for hours at a time, and usually a simple text will clear things up. However, if you work in a flexible office and your team has core business hours, official or not, your manager should probably convey this. This just falls under "managing expectations", and is not necessarily a failure of the employee.

Sometimes emergencies will necessitate missing even core business hours. This is more a matter of having more responsibilities (family, kids, etc) than being remote though. But if an employee has these sorts of responsibilities, I'm guessing they are more likely to take up remote work.

There are positives and negatives to hiring remote workers, and I think there are several ways to compensate for the negatives. Obviously since I work remotely I think the positives outweigh those negatives. But I also think placing so much emphasis on one of the negatives, that I rarely experience in practice, is extremely narrow sighted. But maybe your remote workers are bad at working remotely, maybe your company is bad at managing remote workers, or maybe there's confounding variables like the one I mentioned above.

I think the answer is that the remote workers were just bad/slackers/not devoted to their jobs. As I said, they failed to move upwards in the company and some were even fired. This was not at a company that was a particularly good or high-paying place to work, mind you. Maybe you've been luckier in the caliber of people that you've worked with, but I contend that, in general, across the entire workforce, it's not rare to see people taking liberties with remote work.

I'm a remote worker and I'm sure it's occasionally a pain that I'm at the gym, or sleeping, or otherwise not responding on Slack or whatever.

However, like many remote workers I work in a distributed team across several time zones. So it's not just "he goes to the gym in the afternoon," it's more like one person leaves the office in one time zone in order to beat the traffic jams, while another person in another time zone has to pick his daughter up from school, another in a third time zone gets up really early but can't do night calls because of family life, and so on. Slightly wonky schedules actually give us more coverage in case of crises, and the only way we could ever line everybody up for the same work hours would be to fire half the team.

We manage it all pretty well by scheduling our meetings in advance, not being afraid to pick up the phone, taking ownership of our work, and having senior people in different zones who can help fix urgent problems.

(However I totally agree with the "need for trust" comment above. I worked locally before going remote in this job, and also in two of the three other remote jobs I had in the past.)

Distributed teams across multiple timezones is a bit of a different situation though; you're naturally going to be more asynchronous there, and the team structure will be different. All of my experience with remote coworkers has been on collocated teams with the occasional remote worker in the same timezone. I don't have any interest in being on a fully distributed team; I like being physically present with my coworkers and I tend to get depressed ("cabin fever") if I'm alone all day every day. I realize that that might work for others, but it doesn't work for me, so I'd never do it.

> I tend to get depressed ("cabin fever") if I'm alone all day every day

I think we found your problem

Humans are social animals. It's not just "my" problem, it's "most people's" problem.

I see you being downvoted, but I don't get it. I actually work in the office, with 3 teammates nominally there too, but often working remotely, so I spend 2/3 of my days without any of my team around. Even the other teams around me are often out traveling, and I'll be the one tripping the motion sensor to turn on the lights at 9 or 10 in the morning.

It's not comfortable for me as an almost-every-day thing.

Too many people think that what works for them must be ideal, and should work for everyone. I honestly think that most people will not thrive in a fully remote, work-from-home environment.

Too many people think that what works for them must be ideal, and should work for everyone.

Agreed.

I honestly think that most people will not thrive in a fully remote, work-from-home environment.

That may well be true. But there's clearly a non-negligible group that swing very much the opposite way. What we're looking for is flexibility, not one-size-fits-all.

> What we're looking for is flexibility, not one-size-fits-all.

And yet people look at me like I have a third eye sometimes (including several posts up in this exact thread) just because I, like many people, don't like working from home.

I can certainly understand that preference, even though I don't share it. I will, however, say that, when phrases like "humans are social animals" get deployed, it's quite easy to read them as implied criticism of those of us who need substantial amounts of time alone.

I am one of those people who need substantial amounts of time alone too. That doesn't mean that I'm not a social animal though, and that there isn't some balance of social contact that is desired. There's only a very tiny percentage of people who truly desire no human contact at all (think hermits); merely being introverted still does not get you close to that level.

In my situation, I feel like the dynamic has changed, and that's part of what bothers me. The team has always had a tendency toward flexible scheduling, since we do have some fully-remote workers living elsewhere. A couple years ago, that meant that someone might be out a couple hours, maybe once a week. Now it means "I've got an errand at 2, so I'll wfh today".

The other members of the team seem happy with the arrangement. Maybe it would work better for my situation if I had a good home workspace available to me, too. There are other things I'm not happy with there, and I'm leaning toward thinking that my time there has just run its course.

We run an entirely remote company, and the cabin fever is definitely a real concern.

If you ever have to be a remote worker in the future, I'd highly recommend getting a co-working space as it really helps fulfill a ton of those social needs. Your employer might even pay for some (or all) of the costs associated.

That's definitely the only way I would ever consider being remote full-time. Though at that point you're still working in an office, just not with your coworkers, so it's still inferior to on-site working in many respects. The biggest advantage I suppose is you can do it from a low CoL area.

I think the other advantage is it totally separate any concept of "butts in chair hours". Nobody in a coworking space is going to quietly judge you if you leave at 1pm, which would be more of a concern at an on-site location.

A co-working space gives you the option to have a social work space, but you get to choose each day (and even each hour) if that's what you want.

I think they other advantage is in a commute. You have many more options about where you want to be co-working than you do about where your company's location is. If your company is across town from you residence, and you have an hour commute you could find a co-working space that is closer to home.

Do you have any other strategies against cabin-fever?

I've tried co-working but once you add in your own chair and monitor (ergonomics) and eavesdropping-proof location (security) and taking the laptop home at night (security) and on top of all that having a commute again, it's kind of a pain.

I will probably eventually rent my own office (at my own expense) near where some friends work, but that's a pretty expensive way to guarantee social interactions.

I'd be curious what else you've come up with.

I'm not the original person you are asking, but over a 27 year career in IT, I've worked from home for 17 of them.

Here's how I stayed social. First, I used the time you would spend commuting or going out to lunch to get non-work chores done. I'd do laundry in the morning when I'd otherwise be in the car. I cut the grass or worked out during lunch, etc. I'd already be fixing dinner during everyone else's evening drive time.

That freed up my weekday evenings to be social, since I wasn't in after work commute-cook-chores hell.

I'd spend time at programming language groups; taking classes related to hobbies (brewing, a little woodworking); going out with friends to nice restaurants on Wednesdays when they weren't crowded; and doing some social volunteering. I got involved in running a couple of software conferences and joined a wine-and-movies social club.

I found—since I am a "gregarious introvert"—that not having to be around coworkers all day left me more energized to socialize with friends and family in the evenings.

And instead of a social circle dominated by coworkers, I have one that provides interactions with people from all walks of life, and have friends scattered around the globe to visit when I retire.

If you plan well and work at it, you can be more social working from home.

Invite local friends to work in your space?

Cabin fever is definitely a risk. I'm quite comfortable working remotely and we have a few others doing it on the team (mostly senior tech people) but most of the team is in one of the various offices.

My preference would be to go to the office and be with my colleagues 2-3 days a week, and work from a home office the other days. We have some people who do that. But all the offices with direct colleagues are at least a 12-hour flight away from me, and I like where I live, so I have to just deal.

If I ever find myself leading a remote-first team I would make it a priority to have good strategies against isolation.

That's certainly a way of working, and if that's what you've agreed too then certainly you should be as available as possible.

There are more asynchronous ways to do things, and not always restricted to contractor-style arrangements.

Personally, I think it's unfortunate if the default way of working assumes such tight coupling: for me at least, it's inimical to achieving any kind of deep focus.

>Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable.

This is a silly attitude if you meant it very generally. Workplaces should set expectations - remote or otherwise. And people should be judged by them - remote or otherwise.

As an example, for my last job (non-remote), I told them during the interview that:

1. I will not be on any IM software.

2. I will check email only 3 times during the work day.

"Is that a problem?"

They said "No".

Just set clear expectations. If you have a remote worker who is often unavailable, but you did not have this conversation when he/she was hired, you are part of the problem.

(I had to loosen 1 above once we hired remote workers - it was unfair to them).

This only works if your management remembers your status updates.

If you're worried about that, make them public. Middle managers are easier to get than programmers, so you may have leverage walking up the chain to your boss's boss.

You should be sending status updates to your team's email list anyway, not just to your manager, as they are useful to all of your coworkers. I can't even begin to count the number of times that, upon hearing in a daily stand-up/status report that someone was working on or was about to begin working on a specific thing, I was able to give useful direction on it that saved hours of work. Teams that go off to work in isolated silos don't have good velocity. Sometimes the five seconds it takes to say "Yeah I tried that approach already and gave it up, so I recommend Y" can save days. And this will come from your coworkers more often than it will from your manager, so always send status updates to the whole team.

Qualified middle managers are not easier to get than programmers, in my experience. And if they (and their reports) are qualified, they'll not micromanage, nor need to.

If your manager is the kind that brow-beats when they can't find you, and, they forget things you tell them (in writing), then reminding them of the thing you have told them, in writing, to their bosses boss, will basically get you fired.

the best is to send them written by email. In that way, it is clear and evident that the status updates were always sent.

Yep. This is sage advice, I think even for in-office workers. Visibility and clear communication to your managers is critical to success.

> and I had been taking advantage of the freedom to prioritize family needs when they came up. To the degree that sometimes my bosses were left hanging, waiting for a day or more on my work.

> From my biased perspective, it is difficult to see how these “personal improvement programs” for a disappointing employee can ever be a constructive force.

> By the end, they were quite happy with my work.

...sounds pretty constructive to me?

The biggest problem appears to be his/her having taken it very personally and then subsequently holding a grudge.

I completely and intuitively understand what this employee is reacting to, and I think the it is hard to articulate why the approach his managers took is not great.

In this situation the managers could have gotten the same exact result without making the employee feel humiliated. Something along the lines of "stuff is falling through the cracks, let's do a meeting to touch base once a week so we can make sure everything is going well."

In those once a week meetings, the managers could provide positive and negative feedback in a balanced way.

However, once you've told an employee they are being "a prima Donna" and basically you need fixing, every meeting is another denigrating experience. That whole PIP idea makes sense for a paper trail justifying termination, but is otherwise terrible for morale.

Edit: in all relationships, professional or personal, try to keep your feedback specific and impersonal. "We need a reply to emails within 24 hours" is much better than "you have a communication problem." "Don't yell at John during meetings." Is way better than "you lose your temper too often."

Etc.

I agree that PIPs are mostly just HR covering themselves in firing an employee, but this just reads like a long list of excuses for a person not performing their job. Its at-will employment for both sides, the company isn't obligated to care about your personal issues. If your work output isn't good, it kinda doesn't matter if you have kids and your manager is younger -- theyre giving you money for your work not because theyre your friend.

I think people that fall into this mindset should realize that most of the kumbaya things companies say are pleasantries. Employment is a business situation and its healthier to not get confused about that.

I had a contract with a household name theme park company that is known for treating its employees like disposable widgets. It made headlines a while back by laying off tons of people and only keeping some on to train their offshore replacements. That kinda place. So while I was there, there was this one guy in the department who was almost never at work. He was always "working from home." Occasionally he would turn in some work, but there was no way to really justify his position. I came to find out that his wife was having serious medical problems and he had been spending most of the last year at the hospital 24/7. Everyone on the team, including the manager, just picked up the slack and not one word was ever said about him or his (lack of) productivity.

I'm not sure I really had a point here, because this isn't about a company's false kumbayas. However, even at a big megacorp people will sometimes take care of one another when the going gets rough.

That is no doubt a great thing. I'm not trying to suggest that workplace bonds and friendships are meaningless, just that people need to have appropriate expectations about what the relationship with the company fundamentally is. Theres no doubt space for compassion, it just shouldn't be viewed as an entitlement.

What's with the fake obfuscation? Any reason to avoid saying simply "I worked for Disney"?

Leaving aside the clear miscommunication that led to the "needs improvement" state first, it seems to me the management did just fine after that:

1. They quickly and clearly told the employee of the problem.

2. They proposed a course of action

3. Their proposal worked (at the end they were happy with his work).

It was not pleasant for sure (for both sides, I bet), but would it be worse to say nothing and terminate him for non performance in a couple of extra months. My 2c.

My thoughts exactly - this is a clear case of the process working as intended.

And in general I agree with other posters that the success (3) is rare. In general if one gets on the "needs improvement" plan it is time to get out on your own. In theory it doesn't have to be this way, but in practice it does.

The intended process ends with the employee being fired. The only reason to do a PIP is to cover the companies ass when they get fired or encourage them to quit. This person frankly messed up by staying at the company.

The correct way to do this if they actually want to let the employee improve:

- Ask the employee if there is anything going on with their life - Ask them how they feel they are doing and validate them - Tell them about some of your concerns - Let them explain their side of your concerns - Propose a way to improve the situation where both parties are happy - Reiterate that they are happy with the work otherwise

If the employee improves, encourage them and make them feel safe in the room. Repeat the steps if the situation does not improve. If this doesn't work start the official PIP, i.e. start slowly firing them.

Yes, it worked as intended. And still the employee felt humiliated, "the damage was done" and the mutual trust was eroded. So this processo doesn't work at all, even in the best scenario. That's why the author is criticizing it I guess.

"1. They quickly and clearly told the employee of the problem."

As a general rule, if you wish to keep the employee, you should start with an informal warning that their behavior is unsatisfactory rather than a formal procedure.

>It was not pleasant for sure (for both sides, I bet), but would it be worse to say nothing and terminate him for non performance in a couple of extra months.

Those aren't the only choices, though. I think the point of contention (which isn't clear in the article), is whether they had any conversations about it before initiating a formal process. If not, I completely agree with the author even if the author was irresponsible with his work ethic.

Think of the asymmetry. If I'm dissatisfied with my manager, can I start a formal process against him? Generally not. My only option is to have a conversation (be it with him or with his superiors).

Conversations should happen clearly before a PIP.

I've been on both ends of the spectrum, from being PIP'd out the door to never hear from them again -- after burning bridges to be there and dedicating years to the mission -- to getting multiple base salary increases in a year and "keep doing what you're doing, you're definitely getting noticed".

Getting fired is definitely not the end of the world. In fact, I'd say it's more a measure of the employer/employee compatibility. The hardest part of the interview is determining "do I want to count on this guy/gal/team/company every day?" and sometimes it takes getting shown the door to realize that the answer was "no" all along. From my perspective, if you've never been fired, you've never tested the boundaries of your employability.

Unfortunately, the hard part of every subsequent interview with other employers is "So what happened at company X? You were fired, right?"

I've been through what the author is describing, but in an on-site office position. It's horrid. They're exactly right on how these processes poison all other interactions. My boss would call me in to ask if I was going to the company picnic, but the history meant that every "Hey, can you see me in my office real quick?" was a gut-wrenching terror moment, certain that I was getting fired or told off again, or something.

It's easier to deal with than you think. Don't outright admit to a firing when the question comes up. I'm not saying make something up on the fly, because they'll smell the bullshit, but think of how you can spin your termination in a positive light. Leaving because a project was completed/cancelled or company priorities changed is generally seen positively, even if the truth is you were fired from one of those jobs for being incompatible with the rigors of the role.

If you're just coming out of a firing, the worst thing you can do is have a mea culpa moment of clarity when you're negotiating for your bottom line. You'll get the old standard, "thanks for your time", and away they go to the next person, who may have also been fired, but bent the truth in their favor to get the job.

OK I've being working remotely for close to 10 years, most places were very flexible about hours and taking time during the work day for family things etc. But one things none was ever flexible about is remote employees dropping off com. channels for days. I think that is clear abuse of trust and the main fear why so few jobs are remote in the first place.

Yes. Whenever I work remotely I make an effort to be very clear about when I'll be available and when not. I also make an effort to respond quickly to E-mails and other things just to signal that I am actually working during the times I am claiming to work.

When managing remote workers I hate it when somebody disappears and I don't know what's going on.

Remote work requires a high level of trust and responsibility from both sides so act accordingly.

That would depend on the level of trust and whatever agreements you made. There are jobs like that, some people aren't into owning slaves but still need outside expertise. Which is nice, since some of us are more into living than being slaves.

Sure they are called consulting does not have much to do with the article though. Comparing slavery to having a super flexible very high paying job with only hard requirement being timely communication just shows how much some of us in tech are detached from reality.

It's kind of common sense right? (Or maybe not). If your employer trusts you to work remotely, theres an obligation to be responsive, or at the very least be clear about times when you're going to be unavailable. To me, that's just basic professionalism. These people are paying significant money for your services, you can't treat that casually.

I feel like many of the commenters here are missing the point of the post.

> My takeaway from pondering this today is pretty straightforward:

> Talk to your people. Don’t wait. Do it now, and never stop. If they are meeting expectations, thank them regularly. If they aren’t meeting your needs or the needs of others in the company, tell them now. Don’t wait until you find yourself identifying “patterns”.

and then a little later:

> If you can identify an incompatibility like this early enough, it doesn’t even have to be rancorous. Incompatibility happens. Nobody needs to feel like a failure over it.

When the author is relating his own experience, he's not saying there was no problem to be addressed. What he's saying is he thinks that situation (and many others like it in our industry) can be handled better, and he wraps up the post by taking about what some of those ways might be.

Agreed. I am learning something called "crucial conversations" right now. These are conversations where opinions vary, stakes are high, and emotions run strong. People have an aversion to having these conversations. It usually ends in silence or violence.

The book I am drawing this from claims that handling it is a skill that is teachable and learnable. I have been trying to apply what little I have learned so far and it had been working way better than what I have been using.

If you get to the point that you're on a personal improvement plan, you should immediately look for other work. There are no circumstances in which it will turn around.

There are no circumstances in which it will turn around

Note that you used the passive voice, as though the circumstances are completely out of the employee's control.

They more or less are. They've already decided they want to get rid of you. If they actually wanted to keep you around they'd have had a bunch of more casual conversations about what you need to do.

Employers don't like letting people go. Hiring people is difficult and expensive.

Typically, employers would be much happier to see marked improvement in the employee's performance rather than to have to follow through on letting that employee go.

They are. Why anyone is willing to adopt the delusion that a "personal improvement plan" is about improving anything I cannot understand. The circumstances are far less severe and consequential, but I can only compare it to a political dissident in a totalitarian state being tortured so long that he eventually believes he was undermining some righteous, just society with his actions.

You shouldn't take it as a personal insult or grievance against you, but the "personal improvement plan" is what HR came up with when your boss requested that you be let go. If you've committed a crime or violated some policy (no matter how trivial) you can be let go immediately. But in most of the United States, it is simply a bad decision (financially) to just let someone go. It is much better to have some documentation of their inadequacy. Hence the weekly meetings.

The person conducting these reviews (be it your boss, or someone else) is probably bored out of their mind that they must participate in these meetings. The phrase "what did I do to deserve this?" probably goes through their head each time they complete one. They don't care about your performance at all at this point. They may provide an objective review, or they may just copy in some boilerplate. Something that sounds great like "fails to meet established goals". It doesn't really matter.

Again, it is completely pointless to take any of this process as any sort of rational feedback. At this point, the decision was already made that you need to go. They just need some documentation before you are let go. I would take the fact that you are being let go as feedback, but stop there. The "personal improvement plan" isn't about you. It never has been.

If you're in a financial situation where you can, just resign. If you can't, that is understandable. But no one involved is going to be upset if you just resign. I'd offer 2 weeks, but they'll likely just counter with an immediate resignation. If anything, everyone will be at ease.

At this point, the decision was already made that you need to go

I've been a manager with HR in these kinds of conversations. At the point that we decide to put an employee on a PIP, it's because continuation of the current performance is unacceptable - not that the particular employe "must go", just the current behavior. We typically have lots of other employees performing at a higher level or with better attitudes, so it isn't just some random whim where we have it in for someone and are unwilling to allow for them to rectify the problem.

If the employee were to improve his or her performance (typically improve his or her attitude), as an employer we would be more than happy to continue that person's employment.

It's a defeatist attitude that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>Note that you used the passive voice, as though the circumstances are completely out of the employee's control.

If you've been put on a PIP, it means your employer has decided if your work doesn't get better, they're going to fire you.

Provided you haven't been phoning it in, this means you have to give an unsustainable amount in order to reach what they want from you. Seeing as how that's unsustainable, you're going to fail eventually.

These processes aren't really designed to help rectify the issue, they're designed to cover the companies arse against union action.

if your work doesn't get better, they're going to fire you

How is that completely out of the employee's control?

Provided you haven't been phoning it in

And maybe they have, which means they can do something about it.

>How is that completely out of the employee's control?

Employers often ask too much of their employees. It's why unions exist.

This is untrue. It usually will not turn around.

About 15 years ago I was put on one, and it wound up working out. I've known a couple of other people who have beat the PIP as well. In the vast majority of cases though you are right. As time has gone on I've realized that the chances are so low it's not worth someone trying to beat it.

Agreed

And I guess people are right. It might be that, in the majority of cases, the person will be let go.

But don't go without a "fight" (which I mean, trying to prove your worth, and improving yourself, and not by antagonizing the bosses) if you think it's worth it

I strongly disagree with this advice.

If it gets to the point of a PIP, you're in very hot water at most places. But that does not necessarily mean you are going out the door.

If you care about keeping your job, step one is to ascertain whether your management is truly willing to invest in working it out, or simply going through the motions. It's time to level with them and have some very probing conversations on what's going on to get all the cards on the table.

Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed. And to be honest, even managers that want to make the PIP work often don't really know how to. So, yes, it's hard for both sides, but it's not hopeless.

If you decide management is being sincere about their desire to keep you, here's my advice:

- Stop whatever it is you think you need to do to do your job, listen to what they're asking of you, change your behavior, and ask for feedback when you think you've done well. A PIP is a sign that implicit expectations and communication have failed, so you need to fall back on being unnaturally explicit.

- Prepare for a rift in your personal relationship with your manager that is going to take some time to repair. It's likely a very awkward situation for both of you, and you are going to feel attacked. No easy way around that. Even if you succeed at getting out of the doghouse, the rift will persist until you start to rebuild the 2-way trust.

It's a bad spot to be in, and it's only going to work out if both parties believe it can work and are truly committed to doing some hard reflection and behavioral change.

This largely depends on the company. Once you have been PIPed often transfer options are limited. Personally by the time I get to the point where I am going to PIP someone I have already invested significant time and energy trying to help them through 1 on 1s, getting input from my boss, and trying to work with all tools at my disposal. If I need to get HR involved I have already made up my mind that they will no longer work for me. Once HR is involved in many ways what happens next is out of a managers hands. I view the creation of the PIP as the train leaving the station. The tracks lead to a specific outcome.

All that said I suppose if things really did change I would approach what happened next with an open mind.

In at least one company I worked at having PIP in your file meant that it would be impossible to switch teams ever again. What manager wants the potential liability.

Also if there are is stack ranking with a curve people are going to have to be PIPed just to make the numbers work (not justifying it, just saying it happens). Having watched people be hired on to teams for the sole purpose of being let go it is really important to know what is actually going on.

>Most managers do not want to fire their reports, if they can help it. But a PIP is often the last breakpoint before they have to do the deed.

As someone said, it varies from company to company. Many managers treat it as a step to firing. And if you listen to employees who've been through it, many will have stories about how unfair it was - unfair in that others who had worse "infractions" were given a pass. To them, it was clear the boss just wanted them out of the team and was using some pretext (not the real reason) to get rid of them. Very often, that pretext is not maintaining appropriate work hours.

From Netlfix's former HR manager:

>One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria’s job was to find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn’t like automation and wasn’t particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her.

>I replied, “Why bother? We know how this will play out. You’ll write up objectives and deliverables for her to achieve, which she can’t, because she lacks the skills. Every Wednesday you’ll take time away from your real work to discuss (and document) her shortcomings. You won’t sleep on Tuesday nights, because you’ll know it will be an awful meeting, and the same will be true for her. After a few weeks there will be tears. This will go on for three months. The entire team will know. And at the end you’ll fire her. None of this will make any sense to her, because for five years she’s been consistently rewarded for being great at her job—a job that basically doesn’t exist anymore. Tell me again how Netflix benefits?

https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

Well yeah, but that's a sign of both parties not actually being committed. There's a lot of assuming in that scenario. A lot of that uncertainty would disappear with some candid communication.

"Maria, what you're doing today is X, Y, Z. We wanted that before, but going forward, we need A, B, C. My impression is that you like doing X, Y, Z. So, we've got two choices, and both of them are difficult, but we need to be upfront about this. We can part ways, and I can try to help you get to a place where you can do X, Y, Z. Or we can commit to work together to transition you to A, B, C. I believe you can do it. The question is what do you want. It's tough, but you have to choose."

And my advice to Maria would be:

- Make sure you know what your bosses actually want.

- Decide whether that's something you're into.

- Be sure of their commitment to actually develop you.

If she could answer all three of these things affirmatively, it could be worth a try. My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.

What you said is almost the same as what the HR person told her manager. Have the conversation, and if it's clear she no longer fits the role, let her go with a good package. Why make everyone unhappy with a PIP?

>My only point is that it's wrong to say definitely that a PIP is a death sentence. It's more like a cry for help.

Not completely disagreeing with you there. I don't believe in either extreme. I do not think most managers are doing it as a cry for help. I also do not think every manager is doing it to fire someone. Just pointing out that it very often (if not the majority of times) is the case in some companies.

To an extent, this is the prisoner's dilemma. The PIP is used for both purposes, but it's safer for the employee to assume the worst. If the PIP was never a path to termination, then employees would be more receptive to it.

It's different, because the HR manager closed the door by preemptively assuming Maria wasn't up for it. My point is that if the manager and the employee both fully buy in to the possibility of a productive future, that's a necessary (but certainly not sufficient) condition for success. In that case, some type of explicitly shared strategy for getting there is crucial.

But yeah, if you, as the manager, have decided it's a lost cause, it's best to just go ahead and initiate the separation. In that case, I agree with the HR guy.

And I certainly agree with you that in many instances, the PIP is a reflexive CYA move from management or HR.

Years ago I was put on a PIP. A year later at the same company I was promoted. The things I learned about managing my time while working towards the PIP goals still serve me well today.

I know others who have had similar experiences.

Whether or not it will turn around depends both on management's sincerity in providing the PIP and the employee's willingness to accept that he or she actually needs to change something.

When an employee isn't working out, it's almost always because the role is a bad fit and not because they have deficiencies as an engineer or as a person.

That's why performance improvement programs are so degrading and insulting. The person doesn't need to change, they need to be in a role that's better suited to their abilities, temperament, or whatever is causing the mismatch. Often that role is in a different company and if so then great because everyone is better off and that's a good thing.

I honestly think your employers have been super generous already, one ought to know what is expected of him/her and realise they shouldn't leave themselves open to criticism by abusing the trust of the employer, always be in a positive balance, put in more than you take out and make sure it gets visibility.

I wouldn't keep someone who is not performing for whatever reason, because by the time I lose trust in that person, in my mind he's pretty much out of the door. Because this is business , it's not a charity , one is responsible for their own life.

As for those who say ' company culture and fairness ' I say your competitors are already eating your lunch

If a boat veers off course and you don't touch the tiller, you're a bad sailor.

If an employee veers off course and you wait until you're ready to terminate them before you say anything, you're a bad manager.

And it's not always them, it's sometimes you. Have you never thrived under one manager, been reshuffled and then suffered under another?

Mediocrity cannot be remedied, unless you are a big company where you have dedicated departments to cater for these sort of people ( and by the way, they aim to accomplish the same outcome, just a little bit slower and more paperwork). All I am saying is, an employee has no business performing a job he/she cannot do unless he is a trainee with a good attitude. I leave this comment section with one last nugget of wisdom :

There are more skilled and deserving individuals looking for jobs that they can't get because a bad manager is holding on to a mediocre employee.

"Mediocrity cannot be remedied"

Nobody said anything about mediocrity, and nowhere in the story does it say that quality of work was the reason for the PIP.

At this point in my career I've realized that if you're told your performance "needs improvement" and someone isn't assigned to mentor you and help you perform better then you should start looking for a new job.

Not apprenticing you is like saying "you suck, fix yourself". No. That's not the culture you want to be a part of.

I've been that guy. There have been times someone helped me and I grew and it was awesome. There have also been times I wasn't helped and there was a ton of unnecessary thrashing. It's just bad leadership. My guess is the work environment is maybe a little toxic in other ways too.

When I was 20, I was a lead engineer on a project with an upcoming deadline. There was a disagreement on how to implement something. As the lead engineer on the project, it was my job to break these "ties" so to speak, especially in the wake of a deadline. I thought about and made my decision. When the next meeting about this disagreement occurred, I informed them of my decision. I expressed my frustrations in the decision in solidarity with my team (there was no perfect solution), but said we don't have any more time to budget for this issue.

I was calm, but assertive. I also express myself whilst talking by using my hands. Apparently, the older engineer was upset and informed my manager about my "tone". My manager was in the meeting and disagreed that my tone was bad and said it was up to me if I wanted to apologize.

So I did. Even though I felt I was perfectly fine, I apologized. The reason why I did was for team cohesion. If it means that I can work well with that engineer again and not have them hold something over me, I'll suck up my pride and apologize for something that I feel I didn't do.

My takeaway from this is that frequent 1 to 1s are a good idea for every single employee, from the day you start to the day you leave the company.

You need to use them for positive feedback as well as negative, and general chats about progress and ideas.

They are utterly and completely useless. You should speak with your boss continuously, regardless of the 1 on 1s. Maybe it's a coincidence but with all the worst bosses that I had we had 1 on 1s. It's just a way to hide their incompetence in my opinion.

What is the difference between a one on one and speaking with your boss? I use them as synonyms.

The presence of others. A 1 on 1 is private, but you can speak with your boss when others are present.

Managers need to be available when things happen. I mean, they have other meetings, but during the day they should be able to give or receive "immediate" feedback; don't wait until the scheduled weekly (if you're that lucky) one-on-ones. However, if everybody is busy, and there's no immediate need to walk into each other's (virtual) office, it's good to have the scheduled interactions, to make sure you're still aligned as well as still pleasantly interacting as humans. (If the latter wasn't the case in the first place, maybe... wrong job.)

1 on 1s are not for feedback on day to day stuff. They are supposed to cover the more meta aspects not related directly to delivering on a daily basis. If your boss is using 1 on 1s to cover operational stuff they're wasting the opportunity to help improve the team wellbeing and progress.

I don't think we really had a disagreement, here. Just keep in mind that one-on-ones vastly differ between companies and managers, among other things in frequency.

In my situation, my boss is one of the 10 other people in the same office (when he isn't in meetings). All of us ask each other quick questions but try not to hold longer discussions there, because it disturbs everybody else. So more than that becomes a "one on one" in the discussion room. Nothing scheduled.

The problem with being continuously available is that it leads to "squeakiest wheel" syndrome where the loudest complainers get all the attention. Meanwhile, the quietly productive people quit because their frustrations aren't heard.

In my experience 1 on 1s are nice because it allows me and my boss to speak in private consistently. When we are both in cubicles it's hard for me to have candid conversations if I know everyone is listening. It probably depends on the person but I have always really liked one on one meetings.

It also establishes a pattern so that other employees don't automatically assume that seeing you and the boss in a meeting room means that you're having a candid conversation.

Or unwillingness to hire enough headcount due to being "lean".

As a boss the problem is employees take up so much time. Each employee really needs at least 30 minutes of your attention per day averaged over the month (mostly just chit chat, but also mentoring and feedback) [1]. Once you have more than a couple of people to manage there goes your whole day.

1. Yes some people are fine with less, but this is the average amount of time people need. Putting in less just results in a build up of management debt that will come back and bite you in the butt.

...isnt managing and helping out your employees like half your job?

It sure is (actually a full time job), but I also have another job worth of non-management activities on top of this. At least I enjoy it all :)

I believe it was Andy Grove who suggest no more than 6-8 direct reports for this reason.

6-8 sounds like too many. Anyways, in addition to probably being unfit for people management, it sounds like it would take away all my coding time.

Personally, I think that mixing management with programming leads to bad results.

The latter statement proves the former. A good manager prioritizes management over work that an individual contributor might do. If that doesn't suit a person, they're likely not fit for management.

I've seen many managers fail for this reason.

A manager doesn't code.

Having had from 3 to 14 direct reports the ideal is probably around 7. Too few results is too much attention ("hey boss I have a job to do") while 14 results in total burn out and neglect ("we haven't spoke in weeks - what is your name again").

Tell that to Gartner Group: according to my management they recommend an average of 10 direct reports. They also recommend you don't have "technical managers" just pure managers without technical delivery goals; all that is strictly delegated to individual contributors.

If your management is buying "advise" from the Gartner Group, that is a "bad management smell" IMHO. My advise is to work on your escape plan.

Every time I read or hear Gartner Group "information" piece on a subject that I am competent to judge the value and accuracy of the information, it is at best useless fluff, typically is mostly wrong, and commonly totally wrong.

"An average of 10 reports" goes against the commonly accepted magical number[1] of 7 +/-2. I suppose if the "pure" managers are only pushing paper (unable to judge technical merit), they can support more direct reports. That structure sounds like a recipe for perpetual technical problems.

What you quote sounds like classic matrix management[2] which results in two bosses, one controlling your HR side and one controlling your technical side. That does not work well in my experience because the two managers have very conflicting goals and neither of the goals are in in alignment with your goals. In the ensuing fight, the HR manager always wins because he controls your pay and assignments... and usually is the manager whose goals are least aligned with your goals.[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management

[3] 24 years 9 months in a large corporation with matrix management. It was OK until the Ginormous Enterprise bought the division and sucked all the fun (technical work) out of it.

Funny how all military's have much small span of control normally 3-5

Interesting. Any reference for this?

Look at how military units are set up

If you can't have a weekly one to one with all your direct reports, the solution is fewer direct reports.

1:1s are far from a solution.

Many "competitive" companies use this asymmetrical conversations behind closed doors to push employees to overpromise and therefore under-deliver.

It's also very easy to manipulate employees into feeling guilty or develop impostor syndrome.

That's like saying you shouldn't have elections because totalitarian dictators can abuse them. If your boss's plan is to make you feel bad, it doesn't matter what management technique they use.

I find that PIPs tend to compensate for bad management in general. By that I mean I know where everyone is on their projects and weekly checkups are a norm, if not more than once. I know a few people who have been on PIP at work, I have don't know how many don't complete it but it does tend to correct their manager as well since HR follows through with insuring that the program is followed. It is a program, HR has a check list of items that must be met each week by both manager and employee. This tends to remove some of the stress on the employee as they do see both sides have to play ball.

that being said there have been a few put on PIP I think would be better separated. I guess from this standpoint it does serve to protect company interest.

I do know that working remote introduces all new problems, the hardest I had to learn was to not let myself be distracted and I actually ended up with a personal check list that became natural after a time. I now understand how to make sure those who get more than one WFH effectively use this privileged and keep it.

If you're willing and have the list in convenient form, would you share it?

What an interestingly bizarre article.

What we're all missing is how these things were presented - were the managers being unreasonable dicks in the way they talked about

"Mismatched expectations" about availability aside, what does the author expect when they're supposedly letting their team down?

I've had a number of conversations with managers were they've told me I'm letting them down and I'm always incredibly grateful for them. Sure, they're sometimes hard to hear, but I would much rather to receive feedback early so I can act on it and be better at what I do.

Also not to mention how incredibly valuable I find regular peer-review cycles (last 2 companies I've been to do these every 6 months). They've always found it super helpful to be told what I should continue doing well and what I need to improve on. Does everyone want to be the best at what they do?

That's not what happened though. Obviously we only see one side of it, but this reads like they suddenly accuse him of being bad, and instead of letting him self-correct, humiliate him by letting juniors micro-manage him. And gang up on him, 2 against one.

I'm not sure what this post is complaining about. Whatever is advocated at the end seems to be exactly what the managers at this company did.

How can the author say that they don't see the point in these plans what it appears that they were able to correct their behavior and stay at the company until it went under?

"By the end, they were quite happy with my work." Looks like the author is building this whole drama out of nothing.

(Using an alt account for obvious reasons)

One thing I wish that I had been prepared for out of university is that there is just a lot less feedback on how good of a job you're doing. Nobody grades your work and there is a skill to getting specific feedback on your performance.

Asking "how am I doing?" at a weekly or fortnightly 1-on-1 isn't going to get you anything useful. You need to ask someone you're working with directly and frame a question in terms of situation-action-?impact?. So "When you submitted that PR and I pointed out two cases that I thought could use additional tests, was that useful?"

It's important to know what parameters they use to determine who or what needs improvement. There have been times when a manager told me there was a problem and it turned out he had inaccurate information. The manager was looking at the wrong version, branch or had 3rd hand information. Managers have claimed to be unaware of what I was working on even with daily standups, task tracking and working a few desks away. Some managers are terrible.

In my work it's nearly impossible to meet requirements or deadlines, because requirements documents are non existing, and deadlines are pulled out of thin air by non technical management. Fortunately they haven't complained about our performance.

>"I realize if this is the most humiliating thing I’ve had to deal, this puts me in a fairly privileged category"

Not necessarily.

Jay-Z once said, having grown up in the projects, dealing dope as well as getting shot at, etc. none of that had been the most difficult thing in his life. The most difficult thing in his life was dealing with personal turmoil in his marriage.

People need to drop that thought that if you have money you are "privileged" and therefore any issue that affects them mentally are really non-issues in comparison.

>"it is difficult to see how these “personal improvement programs” for a disappointing employee can ever be a constructive force. At best they seem misguided. At worst they appear to be a cynical HR ploy to save face before terminating an employee."

That is for sure. If your boss were to ever lose faith in your ability, seek reassignment. There is little chance of recovery --and the cost of recovery, where possible is too great. There will be eternal doubt in their mind. It's the nature of the mind.

Slightly off-topic anecdote:

I've been having conversations with a really smart friend of mine (PhD in one of the sciences, and fairly good with programming) who decided to repurpose himself as a software guy, got a job a couple years ago at one of the tech giants (not the big four though).

Everytime I talk to him, he expresses annoyance that his team and lead are dogmatic about CS principles and want him to modify his programming practices. To give a few examples, he thinks being against using goto in C/C++ is dogmatic, and that there is no need to develop a testing framework until the software is developed, among a bunch of other things. All this while he piled on at the rate of about 1000 lines a month into the codebase (he started this project from scratch, surprise surprise).

I have been trying to convince him of the need to develop software engineering skills and that it's more about lessons learned from history than being dogmatic about anything.

Recently he started expressing interest in climbing the corporate ladder and becoming a manager or something. Good for him, I didn't point out anything, but to me, he felt like one of those types who are more interested in their career bottomline than in developing good principles and practices of the work they do (something that disappointed me coming from him based on the person I knew for many years).

Just recently I heard he got awarded for the software he developed. (For context, the company is a tech giant but not mainly-software. I was very surprised to find out that they don't have an internal document or guide on coding conventions, hence a developer gets to do whatever he/she likes).

Point of the story? not much except that it's another data point supporting my cynicism towards short-termist and superficial attitude of majority of people, especially those involved in the corporate culture.

Because I can see where this is going. This guy would want to become some kind of manager as soon as he can, and hand over the development to someone else. If that someone else has good software engineering skills, he/she would be able to poke many holes in this codebase, and/or would be put in charge of fixing the bugs (likely due to bad quality and hasty implementation of the code). This will delay and slow down the progress of the project, because fixing those bugs would involve fixing the quality of the code through heavy refactoring, etc. And then this same manager would get to claim "When I was developing, the project's pace was great, and now you guys have started slacking off and creating lots of bugs".

> he thinks being against using goto in C/C++ is dogmatic, and that there is no need to develop a testing framework until the software is developed

The important thing missing here - context. There are perfectly valid situations where your friend could be right.

> he felt like one of those types who are more interested in their career bottomline than in developing good principles and practices of the work they do (something that disappointed me coming from him based on the person I knew for many years).

Maybe he wants to become a manager with good developped principles?

Of course you know your friend much better than we do. It's hard for outsiders to judge the situation.

> There are perfectly valid situations where your friend could be right.

I didn't say he thinks banning goto is dogmatic (and I never heard him say that his team completely disallows any use of it). You could be against goto and still be okay with its occasional use.

He seemed to be of the opinion that there is no reason to be against goto in the first place, because he never felt goto's use hurting his productivity. (and his use of goto, the way he explained it, definitely was more complicated than the rare cases where I think you could let it slide, e.g., the way it's used in the linux kernel code to get to the bottom of a function in case of failure, etc).

And why should we be against goto in the first place? Unfortunately, you cannot answer this question in one sentence, or a paragraph. "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" is not a theorem that has a proof. You have to read about it, and ideally, you have to experience what spaghetti code feels like, and what a goto-free codebase feels like. If you're not willing to take such a dive, you would never find out the answer. And if you have opinions in favor of goto without taking such a dive, don't be surprised if I lower my opinion about you as a scientist/engineer.

> Maybe he wants to become a manager with good developped principles?

And call me a negative nancy but your chances of developing good practices have diminished if your bad coding practices are reinforced through internal awards and the like. And I have no doubt his contributions may have felt significant to the higher ups enough to decide this deserves an award. But only in the short term. If this code gives problems in the next quarter or something, do they go back and review if the hasty implementation in the last quarter and liberal use of goto had anything to do with it? Likely not if your company doesn't even have a coding-conventions document.

I think it's pretty simple to make the case for goto, or any construct, being harmful in a work environment. Code is ultimately social, and if your colleagues find it difficult to read or use, then by definition it is harmful.

For another example, I love functional programming, but my colleagues hate it. It is, by definition, harmful for me to use at work.

I'm confused about this article. On the one side I agree with his point on constant and timely feedback. On the other side I disagree with his dismissal of yearly reviews and weekly meetings.

You need these more formal environments to quantify the performance over a longer period of time. In doing so you can correct for biases, and get feedback not just from the manager but from everyone you work with. Additionally you can aggregate the data company wide to see patterns and hopefully try something new. I'm sure plenty of people do it wrong and that might be a different conversation.

Maybe what the performance improvement was missing was a human touch. Giving feedback without caring for the person can feel cold and calculating.

It's also not clear to me how pay-for-performance and promote-for-performance is supposed to work without some kind of systematized performance review system. And I will say that, at least in my personal experience, pay-and-promote-for-performance is hugely important in getting the most out of your software engineers.

Performance based pay and the whole hr infrastructure around it is designed to lower the pay quanta it has < 1% to do with rewarding performance.

Why do you say that? And what exactly do you mean by "pay quanta"? Rewarding and incentivizing high performance seems to obviously be in the business's best interest, so why do you say they don't focus on it, even for the companies that do it explicitly for that reason? Are you claiming they're lying as to their motivations?

quanta is hr speak for the increase in pay budget and yes in practice PRP is used to depress pay

As someone on a PIP who is quite sure the problem is on my side, not the company's, I wish there were mentors that a software engineer could hire to help you figure out how to debug problems with his/her job performance.

I've been this person. I was not only somewhat surprised, I also felt betrayed. It was apparent that complaints had been building for some time, but I heard very little of those complaints in the form of direct feedback. It was only in hindsight that I realized my coworkers had been subtly dropping hints for a while.

It sucked. Then again, I actually did kind of suck at my job, too. So maybe the real lesson here is that sucking at your job sucks, not just for you, but for your managers and coworkers too (albeit for different reasons).

Sounds like your manager dropped the ball. Management makes the big bucks to avoid these situations, not pass blame to the people they fail. Firing an employee should reflect at least as badly on management as it does on the employee. Why did they hire you in the first place? Are their hiring policies broken? Why are you expected to read minds?

I've asked myself similar questions, and it's good to hear that they aren't unreasonable ones.

Readers might be interested to know that I actually made it through the PIP period and kept my job. When a wave of layoffs came, however, I was let go. I am sure that having been on the PIP contributed to their decision to cut me.

I think this is too one sided.

In these types of situations you generally have to allocate some of the blame to the company, instead of the employee.

Sure, the employee might not be performing to expectations, but why were they hired in the first place?

Im not saying that in some situations the employee isn't clearly to "blame", but I think it's important to hold management accountable too.

I wrote this on a thread off of the original blog post from Coraline. I mentioned the content of a book called "Corporate Confidential" in which a former HR professional talks about how corporations uses performance reviews as a means to legally fire someone because they cannot fire someone for the real reason. I said it was cynical though others viewed it otherwise.

This past week, our small team had brought in an executive coach that works with the material from Crucial Conversations. A wiki summary was circulated around. When I read it, I knew it applied to what was going on with our team as well as personal relationships. Crucial conversations are moments when opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. Being able to have crucial conversations and handle them well allows someone to be effective, influential, and helps out the team and community tremendously. The follow-on book is called Crucial Accountability, which teaches how to deal with people who breaks promises and violates expectations.

So I stand by what I said about the cynical view of "Corporate Confidential". Using performance reviews to legally fire someone might sound like a case of corporate greed and that is true to some extent. In addition, I think people are -not- having those crucial conversations. It is easier to plot a way to ease someone out than to have the crucial conversation about what is really going on. Taking that frame with Coraline's story: if seems to me neither Corolaine, nor the github manager was able to have crucial conversations. In some ways, Coraline admitted to it in her blog post.

On a larger scale: Github had had various controversies. I wonder how much of that came from not handling crucial conversations? People hold their silence until they can't take it any more and it goes from silence to violence. Very pubilcly.

These crucial conversations isn't just about managers being able to take to employees and holding them accountable. It is also about employees being able to talk to managers and holding them accountable too. It is about speaking your truth -- adding meaning into the shared pool -- while still having mutual respect and keeping a friend.

It is something I am deep diving now. I'm tired of the merry-go-rounds where nothing seems to move forward, both in my professional and personal relationships. The little bit I am grasping from this seems to be working.

My biggest takeaway from Crucial Conversations is that you have to be watching out for when a conversation turns crucial. This can sneak up on you, especially in business. If you're having an argument with your significant other, it's usually obvious, because of the emotions involved. But we tend to let things slide with our colleagues, and people are _usually_ more reserved. If you miss it, then it has to come back, and it always comes back harder. If you can recognize when a (ongoing) conversation (first) turns critical, and handle it appropriately at the time, it can prevent needing to be on a PIP.

Of course, some managers and reports are never going to get along well, and you may just be in the crosshairs of ambitious jerk with a personal vendetta for a perceived slight.

Ah, but I digress.

Anytime they say that -- what they really mean is that they only way for you to "improve" is to GTFO.

Another (not so gentle reminder) to follow this poster's advice, and make sure to always have a decent emergency fund saved up, at all times.

So that when something like this does happen -- and it has happened to nearly all the best people I know, at one point or another, that they are told, in one way or another (either directly, in "secret code", aka PIP): "Look, we don't think this is working out" -- you can be prepared to say the natural, adult, self-assured thing: "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Do you want me to agree to separate from you, or do you want to separate from me -- and if so, on what terms"?

Because really, no one has time for soul-killing head games like PIP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776772

I disagree on the yearly reviews. I find that only companies that had them gave yearly raises. So while I don't particularly like the idea of being reviewed, you're going to be informally anyway, so you might as well get a raise for it. A lot of people, myself included, have a very difficult time approaching the topic of raises and other salary negotiations and a set, yearly review helps alleviate that. And if the company is going to give a yearly raise, whether there is an official review process or not, you can bet money that anyone getting a raise has been 'reviewed,' even if only in the boss's mind.

Everyone "needs improvement"

Yes, even if you're the top performer or you think you're the smartest person on your team.

yep give me any employee and any company's performance management system and I could have them on a pip inside of 9 months

Ah, Cardinal Richelieu. Thanks for stopping by.

The problem with posts like this is that we only get one side of the story. Bottom line, everyone - up to your top performer - "needs improvement", so the phrase is meaningless. The world isn't static, and if your employees don't demonstrate a reasonable interest in continual improvement, it's a bad sign. If am employee is operating unsatisfactorily now, objective benchmarks and timelines need to be set, not weekly meetings, unless the employee is asking for that level of feedback.

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