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Comment by dav1app | Hacker News Reader

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project.

The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public.

The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours.

I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incapable.

I remember coming back home with a feeling that I was incompetent, even with my 11 years of experience with JavaScript. I didn't sleep that night, trying to build it even with delay.

Saturday morning I had a burnout. I was afraid to lose my job because I sustain my family. I thought throwing myself from my apartment window. That was one of the worst days in my life.

I got fired on Monday morning.

Got another job on the same day. Almost twice the salary.I told them that I need a little time to cleanup my mind and they gave 2 weeks to recover from that situation.

I'm happy now.

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That is just awful. I'm glad you got out and got something better.

When someone tells you to do something that's both impossible and utterly unreasonable, just stick to telling them it's impossible.

If he tells you you're incapable, tell him he needs to use a realistic planning for these things, and if he can't do that, then he's incapable.

There's no angle from which this is even remotely acceptable. Even more so because it involves financial transactions: writing anything related to that in such a hurry is a recipe for disaster.

This manager needs to be fired hard, or he's going to bring that company down.

This. Also separately I really wish there were better legal courses for situations like that. Forcing someone to forgo their personal plans on a Friday night and suddenly work on moment's notice should be considered unethical and inhumane, and wrecks society, peoples' mental health, childrens' well-being, and much more.

The need for overtime work should be communicated in advance, or there should be an explicit, voluntary, paid on-call rotation for things that occasionally need immediate attention, and on-call should be limited to things that break and need fixing, not things that need to be built.

"No." is a perfectly reasonable response as well, especially since in this case, GP was fired on Monday anyway.

All relationships need healthy boundaries, in this case, their relationship with work, and work's relationship with them, is unhealthy. If online research about healthy boundaries isn't enough, I recommend seeking a professional's advice (like a licensed therapist or psychologist).

No psychologist is going to right wrongs that need to be addressed through legislation.

Rights have been stripped from individuals and workers. We need a massive redressing of the “corporate” world. Workers rights matter. We’ve got companies that are too big to fail being bailed out by the government meanwhile companies can schedule you for just under the minimum requiring benefits but still take up as much or more of a commitment as a full time position.

"A lack of planning on your end does not make it an ermergency on mine"

This is one of the reason I hate about PIP( performance improvement program). They set ridiculous goals for you in very short amount of time that nobody can possibly complete, then fire you on grounds of incompetence. A friend of mine who works in Facebook told me that an employee committed suicide due to the pressure of PIP. I suspect that guy was put into PIP due to poor rating (meet most), then was given a ridiculous task which is impossible to complete. That guy was stressed out and that eventually lead to depression and suicide. RIP

I can't speak for Facebook, but I know that in some companies, it really is possible for individual contributers to successfully complete a PIP. I've known at least 3 coworkers at my workplace who have been put on PIPs. They were given realistic expectations that didn't require them to work 50+ hours per week, and they completed the plans successfully.

Of course, a manager who's put on a plan is generally gone in a few months, or they're allowed to step down into an individual contributor role.

that just seems weird though. for it to get to the point of a PIP being necessary, a lot has had to gone wrong until then. feels like it's a blunt instrument, used when usual communication has almost broken down. are expectations not normally discussed more informally in regular 1:1s already?

i do know people who have successfully completed PIPs and stayed. but every person who's taken the PIP as a signal to look for another position has done better in their careers and been happier than those who stayed. i get not everybody is in that position, but even if the PIP itself is reasonable, being PIP'd is not. it's a symptom of an underlying issue of poor management and should be interpreted as such.

In one example, I think the poor management was with a previous manager who allowed the person to get away with not performing at the level that he should have been. When that manager finally left, it took a PIP for the guy to understand that the new manager expected better performance, and that was after months of warnings.

> but even if the PIP itself is reasonable, being PIP'd is not. it's a symptom of an underlying issue of poor management and should be interpreted as such.

That's a very broad statement but, whilst the sentiment is no doubt well-intentioned, it's also misguided.

Sometimes no matter how much feedback you give, how directly you express it, or how many ways you say the same thing in your weekly 1:1s it just doesn't get through. Occasionally people don't get it. Occasionally they don't want to hear it. Whatever the reason, you're not seeing the results you need, and whilst performance issues are often a result of some mitigating circumstance (divorce, bereavement, illness, and many others), sometimes they're not.

At that point a PIP may be entirely reasonable, whether it looks that way to the employee or not. This is especially the case if the employee's behaviour, performance, and/or attitude is having a detrimental effect on the rest of their team. Unfortunately, it often is.

Contrary to what you've said, a strong indicator of poor management is a failure to effectively manage performance, and to develop and maintain high performing teams.

Managers are held to account on their effectiveness in delivering against company goals. Effective managers sometimes have to work with an employee to correct performance issues. Sometimes the needed improvement doesn't occur. As cold-blooded as it sounds, this will probably lead to that employee being shown the door.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that every manager who uses PIPs is automatically right or some kind of enlightenened management genius. Like any tool, they can be used ineffectively or inappropriately. But if they're never used at all that's as big a red flag as if they're used too much.

i have worked at places that never used a PIP. they were fine. they did due diligence when hiring and helped employees grow. maybe i live in a diverse area, most people are socialized pretty well after university and a few years of employment. so disagree about never using them being a red flag. maybe at megacorp inc, when you're hiring thousands, it's a fact of life. with terms like "unregrettable [sic] attrition", you'll forgive me for being cynical.

none of the PIPs i've seen have been reasonable, but small sample size. i have also luckily never been on the receiving end, only observing from afar. hell, sometimes idiot managers have put their best, most helpful employees on a PIP because they're... spending a lot of time helping other members of their team! so their individual performance goes down, but the team performance goes up. but when you view people as "individual contributors", you don't see that.

i'll happily agree with you on "a strong indicator of poor management is a failure to effectively manage performance", and go one further, a stronger indicator of poor management is a failure to effectively evaluate performance. unfortunately, that is exactly what makes PIPs so tricky. ignoring who's perspective is most "correct", there's still a divide in either performance expectations or perception. the better strategy is still to leave, not see the PIP through. which makes PIPs a good signal for "you're about to be fired", but a bad signal for "we disagree on performance", simply because that difference in perspective exists. putting it on paper is again not necessarily helping the employee. if "it just doesn't get through", is a PIP going to change that? if they aren't performing, if "it just doesn't get through", why not fire them? a possible answer: passive aggressiveness ("work with an employee to correct performance issues") and leave a paper trail aka. ass-covering ("the needed improvement doesn't occur").

but look, i'm not a manager, and don't want to be. could i fire someone? probably not. so is a PIP more humane? i think so. at the end of the day, it sounds like we both agree what it's for, just that you didn't agree with my phrasing. fair enough, although i still maintain from an employee perspective, assuming poor management if you get PIP'd once is a good plan. if you start seeing a pattern, then it's time to look in the mirror.

PIPs are merely an escalation. Ideally yes, there would be communication before you reach that point about expectations, how they're not being met, and how to improve. That's not going to fix every problem though, so you modify your approach as the problem persists. The alternative is to just fire people if more regular, casual communication hasn't done the trick. I think it's more humane to give people clear notice that it hasn't been happening though, and it's either time to really get serious or leave.

I do think it's close-to-analagous to an altimatum in a relationship, though. Sure, there's probably been communication up to that point, but now it's decision time and it's time to get things sorted out or part ways. It's probably headed for parting ways regardless.

It's a sad story; but PIP is really the pink slip; you take it as an advance notice that you're going to be fired, and start looking for jobs. I've heard stories of people completing PIP programs successfully, but quite honestly, I don't get it. Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Makes no sense to stay. I could understand staying with the company & switching teams/departments, but staying in the same place makes no sense to me.

Circumstances sometimes are not that clear. Being put on a PIP where I'm employed is at the discretion of the manager, and sometimes it's just the combination of the report and the manager. One of my colleagues was put on a PIP, switched teams, and is now doing much better. However, some companies limit mobility during a PIP so it's not always possible to achieve this outcome.

Good for him. Usual SOP for a pip is to nail their feet to the ground.

As a manager, can confirm. By the time you get to this point you are being "managed out". There is a basic expectation that you will either leave (preferable) or be fired at the end of the PIP process.

I've heard of people coming back from it, but it's rare. And I think it would need to be the trigger for some kind of personal epiphany that completely changed behaviour for that kind of effect.

I only have a data point of 1 on this so it may be different than other companies, but by the time I'm implementing a PIP, I've already made up my mind that I want the employee out. I've already worked on coaching them and identified that it isn't a temporary issue or something personal they're going through outside of work. HR is my last resort and a PIP is merely a formality I'm forced to deal with. There is a world in which they kick things into high gear and turn things around, but I've usually given up hope and the onus is on them to prove that they are capable.

PIP isn't a pink slip at all companies. I once got a PIP when working at a mid-sized corporation. Fortunately my performance wasn't an issue, they just didn't like that I was frequently late to the daily morning standup (which upper management refused to allow us to reschedule to later in the day despite my insistence), didn't appear attentive in meetings, and was working from home too much. I started coming in to work on time and stopped coding during meetings and they took me off the PIP a couple weeks later.

Of course I took this as a sign to gtfo of the company, so I started applying, left for a massive promotion and 40% raise, and now I work remotely at a company where we only have standup once every couple days and it's not first thing in the morning. Nobody's micromanaging my work schedule or nagging me for not clocking in at a certain time, and I'm making way more money especially since I don't have to live in SF/NYC anymore and pay nearly half my compensation in taxes and cut a third of my paycheck to a landlord. Funny thing is that I'm actually more responsive/available now because I value my job more, enough to enable Slack notifications on my phone and respond asap (within reason). Couldn't be happier.

Companies want to look 'Agile' so they will treat it as though it is a religion. The daily stand-up bullshit gets taken to such an extreme that it becomes counter productive. If you work at such a place, simply get out. There is nothing that spells long term disaster more than rigid adherence to voodoo process.

The daily stand-up is entirely reasonable and productive if you do it right. The problem is people who insist on doing it wrong. Upper management has no business deciding when a team has their stand-up. Agile means "people over process", after all.

Sure. But the real reason management loves the 'morning standup meeting' is because it enforces morning attendance of all employees. So much for those flexible work hours. Oh, you do get to go home late to finish your work of course.

My team has morning standups. We first changed the time, then agreed to make my participation optional, when it became clear that (due to personal reasons) I was struggling to make it to the office on time. It's a shame, too, because they're some of the best standups I've ever had. Our flex time is actually a thing, with some of my team mates showing up early and usually leaving around 17:00.

I think I was asked, at every interview I've been to in the last few year, how I handle receiving difficult feedback. This is the only place I've ever interviewed at where I was asked how I handle giving difficult feedback.

In my team, when someone can't make it, they call in to the meeting. It's a short meeting, just a few lines per person. Doing it over the phone is totally fine.

Management shouldn't even be at standups. Its for syncing with your peers, not an instrument of control. But I guess this is what you're saying, right?

Eh, the first place I worked didn't claim to be agile or anything. The daily meeting wasn't a stand-up (we sat and usually ate breakfast at a cafe or chatted in the lobby). It was still a really useful meeting.

I sit during my teams standup, it’s a standup because it’s a daily sync not because of literal standing.

actually it is supposed to be a literal standup. standing encourages very quick and to the point updates.

Yes but the act of standing is a crutch, if you pardon the pun. What matters is brevity.

Agreed, I don’t need to stand to ensure my teams concise in their update. The parking lot concept is a great way to shorten meeting and politely interrupt people when they are long winded.

You are missing my point entirely. Yes its called a standup because standing encourages brevity. Just because you sit or stand doesn't mean its a standup in literal definition though.

it's a literal stand up so people don't dither.

lot easier to become restless standing around than sitting down.

I guess if you drop the facade that it’s supposed to be fast and allow people to sit down, eat breakfast and drink coffee it doesn’t sound that bad (even if it’s still not a productive meeting).

Well, it's supposed to be fast because it's supposed to be done by a small team, of fie or six engineers. If you got fifteen people taking turns it doesn't really work. Even worse when the whole point is for middle management to check your progress, rather than an engineer-only meeting where you can discuss actual technical issues you're having so the more senior members can give you a pointer etc.

The funny (or tragic) thing is, treating a version of Agile as a religion that's right for all teams all the time is against everything that Agile actually is.

Sure, just like actual existing Communism is against everything that Communism actually is.

Both Communism and Agile are at odds with reality (current productive forces and human nature) so they tend to devolve into tyranny.

First, I don’t have my teams do daily stand ups.

But in the rare times that I have, it’s mostly because the team tends to get pulled in a lot of directions, and the standup is a reminder to focus.

There is usually a larger organizational issue that leads to a team pulled in so many directions. But that’s a lot harder to fix.

>I started coming in to work on time and stopped coding during meetings and they took me off the PIP a couple weeks later.

So, you were consistently late for work, didn't pay attention in meetings and were admittedly inattentive and working from home "too much". So you were put on PIP and you took that as a reason to leave the company?

What did you expect them to do? You sound like a nightmare employee. I'm sure the company is equally glad you're gone.

You have a very weird definition of "nightmare employee". Nothing there says he was toxic; nothing there says he wasn't productive.

I had a job where I put in longer hours than any other person on the team and was the most capable of handling the widest/diverse workload.

My manager was obsessive about when I showed up at work- despite never missing a meeting. If I got in at 7:30 one morning and 9 the next, it drove him crazy, regardless if I was putting over 9 hours a day every day.

He valued predictability over production because he was an obsessive control freak not because it made anything better from the point of view of the company or my actual output.

I may have been a nightmare for him, but I don't think I was the problem- a manager should manage for productivity/outcomes not for his pet peeves. My current manager (at another company) understands how to maximize output and is comfortable as long as work gets done and everyone is much less stressed.

Yea I didn't even mention my prior job. They had a mandatory 9:30am attendance meeting that they called "standup", and if I showed up 5 minutes late my manager would joke about it coming out of my bonus. Despite this I don't think he actually cared, but the President did, and ultimately he answered to him. I quit that job soon after and my only regret is not leaving earlier.

Some people aren’t cut out for being on time to late morning meetings (930). It’s a culture mismatch and there are companies that do perfectly fine with no meetings before noon and whatnot.

I wish there was an easier way to learn about this culture as part of the job search. I like to have candidates shadow for a day or two to meet the team and see how days go.

People who are into being on time have it as part of a larger philosophy, I think. Being late for them means something specific. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone change modes on this but it’s probably easier to change their philosophy than be late to a bunch of their meetings.

The only nightmare i see is a company that values a warm body being in a specific seat for a specific range of hours over actual productivity. Physical presence is not really required most of the time for most engineers.

Presence based management, colloquially known as "Butts in Seats Management", is the opposite of results oriented management, IMO.

I hate it when a company says it's "results oriented", but turns out to be mostly "butts in seats" that demands results, too.

It might be an unpopular opinion, but once you are on $250k+ a year like most of the readers here, it is reasonable of the employer to demand both your butt in a seat and results.

I my personal experience the guy who turned up at 8am and started getting shit done, always was far more productive (and indeed ended up a much better coder very quickly) than the “judge me by results not hours” guy turning up at 9:45. Even despite the latter guy being smart and more experienced.

Yes, I was consistently late for a software engineering job where 95% of my productive time was spent in front of a computer and "lateness" was arbitrarily defined by upper managers who moved the standup time 1.5 hours earlier to passively start enforcing attendance. Standups went from being a team thing to being mandated top-down by executives completely uninvolved in the day-to-day of our team's work.

Notice I said "didn't appear attentive in meetings". Yes, I was not very enthusiastic about our 15-20 minute morning daily standups where every employee goes around justifying their own existence and reitering what is already on the Jira board.

Yes I was working from home "too much" in a job where I was working from home 1-2 times/week, and for the first 6 months it was never an issue, but then when a new manager took over (with no involvement in our team's day-to-day activities) all of a sudden he had an issue with it. Not because my/our output was any lower than before, just because some marketing executive noticed that my team was working from home more than the others (made more apparent by an open office), and assumed this meant we were probably slacking.

You sound like one of those nightmare "managers" I worked with who destroyed the company's culture and caused the company's enormously high attrition rate with most employee's only averaging ~1 year before quitting for greener pastures. I'm glad I no longer work at companies with corporate drones like you.

One of the benefits of completing a PIP might also be signing off an internal transfer to a team with better fit. There could be times where it's worth going through it to get something better - as long as you're quite far detached from the previous team.

Almost nobody wants to receive via transfer someone with a PIP.

That depends entirely on why they're in a PIP. My team might have completely different needs than the other team.

That unfortunately depends on people being rational. There are those stupid enough to not want to hire the unemployed because of their own prejudices.

There are plenty of idiots involved in hiring, that's certainly true. But I was recently (for the first time in my life) had to hire a lot of new people for my team, and I noticed I hire people on probably very different traits than some recruiters and managers do. I don't like candidates who just give socially acceptable answers, I do like candidates who give creative answers, who are vocal, opinionated, weird, outside the box and against the current. And I'm well aware people sometimes get fired for really stupid reasons. I doubt I'm the only one.

With that criteria, I would never be able to get my team complete. Most of the time I get existing employees transferred to me, I have to accept what I get or do the work myself (which is not possible). With new hires it's not easier, I interviewed candidates for 6 months without finding anyone (we don't pay so well, even if we are in top 50 in Fortune 500) and some director simply transferred me someone to fill in the role. I am just a senior manager, I said no but I was overranked and overruled.

I'd disagree that a PIP is a blanket pink slip.

At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!).

People who've responded positively to this have seen reasonably good upward trajectory, and those who've responded negatively have been managed out.

> Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you.

Or you haven't yet figured out the parameters by which you're being evaluated. Once you figure this out, the next step is deciding whether you want to subscribe to those parameters or not, and acting accordingly.

> "At my current employer, I've personally seen (and mentored!) people on a PIP who've been given reasonably concrete feedback on how to improve their performance in terms of the parameters set by the organisation. (The last part is key!)."

I think the mentoring is also a really important part.

so, what are some of those parameters set by the organization?

At one job I was working late in office and no one could see it. I wasn’t good about my weekly activity report.

No pip, but I fixed those issues and wow - I worked less and org was happier

PIP is usually the pink slip with 2 exceptions: 1. forced ranking. Even if you have the best team in the world, someone will be the last in that team. It can be avoided by rotations if the manager is smart enough. 2. Edge cases. I personally got via transfer a direct report already on a PIP from the previous manager. The short story: the previous manager is a moron (still working in the company, promoted since, failing upwards), that person is fine, working in the company 8 years later, mid-rated.

Well it could be that you've reached a certain age and aren't confident that you'll be an attractive hire to anyone else. It's just an anecdote but I remember chatting to someone who worked for Microsoft in Ireland and was going through a performance review / PIP like process. He was in his early fifties and said that it inevitably seemed to happen to people once they reached a certain age / salary point.

Age discrimination in hiring and retention is a real thing. This seems like a systematic way to cover over it to make it look like something else. Smarmy, at best.

An honest performance improvement program should come with some guidance on how to actually improve your performance, what the are, if any, and whether the expectations are realistic at all. Simply telling people "work harder or you get fired" has never worked.

A lot of companies put everyone who screws up (in a big enough way) on a PIP so they can fire them at the drop of a hat if they screw up again. Not that you shouldn't also look for other jobs but it's very much a box checking exercise in that case. Just don't screw up for 30/60/90 days or whatever and you're fine. Often times your manager will re-arrange your job duties to help you out with this (assuming they want to retain you).

This points to another problem with toxic management : pathological duplicity which makes it impossible to take them at face value because everything is done under pretenses and leaves not only them but the whole market crying wolf when they ask for something that they are actually saying. Human Resources to help with disputes? Everyone knows they are all about ass covering. Team player means they want unpaid overtime, etc.

It may be harsh but fair to attribute to being infested with sociopaths or their culture.

I was given a ridiculous PIP once (two weeks after a receiving an outstanding annual review -- politics, eh), and actually completed it successfully (driven by rage, I knew I was going to be let go regardless).

Boss acknowledged I completed the PIP and then fired me for my "bad attitude during the process."

Well, he wasn't wrong about the attitude, I suppose.

I've never been on one, but I imagine if I was my performance would drop to the absolute minimum. I love my job, but I come first. Hell, I'd even be applying elsewhere and taking interview calls from inside my cubicle.

I was fortunate enough to be part of a couple startups when I was younger that went belly up. I've lived through the fear. I don't have any now. Happiness and work/life balance above all else, even pay; not some manager's unrealistic deadlines.

I generally agree- its a clear shot across the bow that the company no longer wants you there.

A funny story though from about 10 years ago (IE financial crisis): A sales person my wife worked with was put on a PIP. It had very clear revenue goals, modified his commission plan to be more performance based, but he could make more if he exceeded those goals, etc.

To everyone's astonishment, he started selling like crazy. There was only one problem- his boss forgot to "unfire" him with HR. Right after the PIP period expired, he gets a big deposit that isn't his commission check in his bank account- it was supposed to be a severance payment.

The guy immediately withdrew it from his bank account, and kept as little in there as possible so they couldn't get it back without confronting him, and later claimed he thought it was a commission and claimed to have spent it. They made him pay it back on a payment plan in the end, but only after forcing them to admit it was a severance and all that. He left as soon as he could find a better job.

Treating PIP as a pink slip is toxic. It might have become acceptable, but it's still toxic. I've only been placed on a PIP once and it's my go-to story for explaining what a PIP should really be.

I had just moved to United States with my wife and my 7-year old son. Since this was the second time I had moved from one country to another, I expected to be able to handle it reasonably well. Instead, I got seriously depressed by the absence of my friends and the cultural paradigm shift (i.e. the Seattle Freeze). I also had to deal with my family's emotional fallout -- both my wife and my kid got depressed and I was trying to help them as much as I could. On top of it all, I got an abscess and had to go to ER. As a result, my productivity dropped to zero.

The problem wasn't the productivity itself, but that I had mismanaged the situation. Instead of trying to talk these things over with my manager, I kept pushing myself, promising to deliver and failing to do so. It came to a point where my manager scheduled a 1-on-1 with me and told me he had no option but to put me on a PIP. He said he was extremely perplexed, because he had formed a completely different image of me during interviews and thought I would perform much better. During the 1-on-1, he kept prodding me to explain what was going on, until I broke down and explained the situation. He asked me why I hadn't told him any of that before. I explained that I had thought the American corporate culture was that you're expected to leave your baggage at the door and that nobody else should pick up your slack -- you're here to work, not to be babysat. He was appalled by the idea and explained that I should've talked to him and we could've organized things better. He reiterated that, because my lack of performance had percolated up the food chain, he had no option but to place me on a PIP; it wasn't merely up to him anymore. He explained that a PIP was a chance to prove that I really was capable of fitting my role and that if I met the PIP goals I would be in the clear, not just with his team and at that moment, but in the future too - managers aren't allowed to hold your PIP against you.

We then sat down and worked out a PIP. During the following 6 (or was it 8?) weeks, I met all the goals and that was that. After 2 years of working on that team, a much more exciting opportunity for internal transfer opened up, I applied for it and it worked out great. Nobody even mentioned my PIP.

In my opinion, that's how a PIP is supposed to work. For anyone interested, the company in question was Amazon. There are lots of things one might criticize about Amazon, but this is one thing they did absolutely right.

Disclaimer: current amazon sde

I was shocked at the end of your story that it was Amazon you were talking about, but I'm assuming this story happened at least a few years ago. I know of one friend who was put on a PIP around 2013 or 2014 - he is still with the company, has been trusted to be the technical lead for several large and important projects, and the only thing standing between him and a promotion to L6 is laziness in preparing the paperwork.

Amazon seems to have changed the process to what they call the "pivot program" - when previously you would have been put on a PIP (and given severance if you accepted it and failed it), you are now given the choice of

1) take severance

2) appeal (you will almost certainly lose, I don't have data for this but have heard about many of these appeals and exactly zero have gone in favor of the employee)

3) do the PIP, and if you fail it you are fired with no severance

Given that you are now offered severance as an alternative to a PIP and don't get a penny if you fail it, being put in the pivot program is unambiguously a pink slip. Sad to be reminded that Amazon used to be good at this, I don't think they are anymore

I'm really sad to hear that. For the record, my case was in 2013.

As far as I understand the PIP means the company wants to fire you. They just want to do this to mitigate liabilities and you suing them.

My country most developers are freelance contractors as we don't like to work as employees. During good times you can switch easy to good projects and more pay. Contracts are 3 months with extension so every 3 months you can re-negotiate. off course during down turns it can be more difficult to find work. Just build a nest egg for those periods.

Wait till the taxman twigs there is $ going begging

My manager's manager told us publicly that whoever sets the goal must also do the work.

Practically he implied that we don't have to agree to any objectives that are imposed on us.

It took me more than a decade learning how to estimate a task realistically not based on expectations. Due to pressure I always underestimated before which led to mounting troubles on the end despite of working hard.

TechLead, a youtuber that worked at Facebook, has covered this story [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbEQriZEfoI

Everytime I see one of this guys videos pop up I can't help but this he's a bit of a parasite. Leaching off anything for views. He doesn't seem to provide any valuable advice in any video I've watched, yet people lap it up (although his following have a very distinct demographic)

What's the demographic?

Developers who want to work for FAANG companies.

I've tried watching him a few times and got the same feeling. He also goes to great lengths to remind everyone (all the time) of how much money he makes. Is that normal for people in Silicon Valley?

Yeah, that guy has some kind of personality defect.

But, more sadly, it just goes to show how desperate his audience is for someone they can look up to and who will, authoritatively, give them some kind of guidance.

He's part of the self-help-vlogger-industrial-complex. There's A LOT WORSE than him out there too.

I always assumed his videos were satire.

Yeah me too. I mean, he is building his channel around this character of being 'the tech lead'. It's a youtube personality. Don't take it too seriously :)

Well, not satire, by his sarcasm can be easily confused and misinterepreted. I don't think he's intentionally showing off how much money he's making.

I like him and I like how he's projecting the life of a regular developer from SV in his videos.

That's how I take it. I find his videos hilarious. No more a parasite than any other YouTuber.

Performance improvement plans are a way for companies to keep a paper trail for legal purposes, rather than a effort to improve performance.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/30/facebook-employee-suicide-be...

That entire concept is in response to the high costs of frivolous employment lawsuits. It's to have a paper trail of evidence to show that the termination was with cause.

It's amazing how much overlap there is between jobs where they treat you poorly, and where they don't pay you enough. You'd think it would be the opposite, but it's all part of them not valuing you.

Poor pay is often a result of a downward spiral of dysfunctional/failing organization. Your manager gets paid poorly, your coworkers, other teams. Best people leave first and new good people don't want to join. Demotivated teams lacking any talent produce bad product. Poor product looses customers, which forces management into freezing/cutting salaries. Everything compounds. After certain threshold there is no way back, but it is surprising how long can organizations with no hope stick around, and just keep people miserable.

I wish I could +1000 this... so true that poor pay is a result of a downward spiral!

Interesting how it's easier to have talented people eat microwave ramen for a year while you're energized building something new. Once the salaries go up, then drop, you start to spiral down the drain.

Isn't the "building something new" job somewhat of a gamble though? To get in on the ground floor of something big for a bigger payday down the line? The same can't be said for a struggling company cutting salaries.

Next time this happens to you, write down minutes of the meeting and send the doc to the guy asking to confirm that this is what they ask. When they fire you on Monday, sue.

Is this actually possible?

Yes, sending an email is very easy these days.

Shades of Leslie Nielsen.

Thanks for enlightening me on the technologies of the 21st century. Maybe I meant if it‘s actually possible/makes sense to sue him because of an impossible deadline? Who knows

To answer your question (sort of): in my state it is not possible. It is state by state; my state is "at will" employment. This means, in my state, you can be fired just because. Employers in my state can't violate federal law of course -- they can't discriminate etc -- but they can fire you because "you're just not good enough" with no details or documentation.

That said, it is likely CA has it's own set of protections that make it harder to do.

Usually, it's the company's internal policies that require a PIP and all the documentation even in an "at will" state. This is to maintain the appearance of fairness and to avoid the possibility of employment litigation (companies of course often operate in many states and federal law is always a concern). If you document, you avoid all this. The firing though is usually a _fait accompli_; the PIP is CYA.

Every state is "at-will" except for Montana, which has some additional protections. There's no winnable lawsuit here unless you have a contract that's being breached.

Depends where you live. In America, no chance. In the UK, easily.

sucks you can't take the severance though. its usually a don't sue us card

This is actually a great advice.

I would also add that if it is legal for you to do so - send a BCC to your personal email just in case, or keep offline copy of correspondence.

BTW that was probably an illegal act by your employer. They gave you a clearly impossible task then fired you when you couldn’t complete it. That’s unreasonable.

You might want to contact an employment attorney in your state for a consultation. Your state Bar association can give you a referral and probably a free consultation. They will be particularly interested if this was the culmination of a pattern of bullying behavior (consequences vary by State) or if there’s some kind of protected class involved (eg you are over 40 and the manager wants a younger team).

It might seem like an unnecessary hassle, but legal action can help your remaining colleagues and possibly put some money in your pocket.

For at-will employment, employers can legally fire employees for unreasonable reasons, including unrealistic expectations of work performance.

I believe that this sort of thing usually isn't worth the trouble. Acts of revenge are rarely really satisfying. Just find a new job at a better-run place. Then email all of your old colleagues about how much better the new place is - maybe you can recruit some of them and get a bonus for that too.

way strong, this one's long game is

The world is filled with incompetent managers who have no clue about the requirements or conditions and are afraid to ask, they play authority card or even intimidate instead. Very dumb.

I feel unlucky never being fired and leaving 4 out of 5 cases because of bad management (poor task allocation, inadequate yet wasted resources, focus on appearances instead of essence both in steering and execution, poor communication or attitude, misuse of authority - including not using authority where necessary). I almost wish of having a (real, not induced!) feeling of incompetency, the feeling of the need to improve, instead of the feeling of wasting my time at work.

Not implying anything, but perhaps they wanted to fire you or wanted you to resign for whatever reason (including those that have nothing to do with you personally).

Happy for you it turned out well, but the whole story is quite weird.

It's obviously impossible and the timing is awful, so it has to be voluntary and there's something behind it. Did he need a reason to fire you? But that seems like a really bad reason that could backfire in a court.

There was no internal grievance procedure you could have used.

Court? You must not live in the US. We got rid of any wisp of legal protection from job termination years ago... It has a catchy name invented by the lobbyists that wrote the laws... “Right to Work”

The only part of job termination covered by "right to work" laws is that one cannot be fired for refusing to join a union.

I think the only legal protection you get from the US government is on the basis of race/religion and what not, as well as some of the original Union terms like 40 hour work week and overtime. Right to Work has to do with whether you are forced to join a union or not. And if not, then don’t get the supplementary legal protections of whatever is in the union’s agreement.

You become “fire at will” not because the law says so, but because you are not in a union. On the other hand, most unions will still protect nonunion workers.

I’ve never really heard of programmer unions though. Would be curious.

My thought was that if there was a need for a reason to fire him, maybe he was in a place where there are some legal protections. Usually if you are in a place where you can't be fired at will, firing you for a bad reason is something you can fight in the courts.

If you can be fired at will, why even bother going through the whole thing in the first place, just fire him.

What an absolute joke. I suppose that just meant the new manager wanted you gone. Glad you got out of there and into a better place.

Dirty HR tricks when they want you out of there, but have to justify it legally. Funny thing is that you could probably still win them in court as any expert would confirm that task was unrealistic, so it's such a bureaucratic nonsense...

One of my goals in life is to never be susceptible to this kind of situation (been there some years ago). So far I manage to have as big a financial buffer as needed to be able to quit instantly in that situation without batting an eye.

Indeed I never hide my ability to do so and I try to make very clear the things "I won't do" at any gig I take. Either before I start or very early in the process. At my current job it is "I won't program in a language without both types and IDE". Because of this I only work on the parts that are in TypeScript and the the JS, Ruby and Python parts are other people's problems.

I may seem like an asshole, but so far it works. Almost a year later I haven't been fired. And they seem happy about my work. And I am definitely not near burnout. Stark contrast with the older days.

You don’t to me, I spent the last 4 months saving every penny to so that I had 7mths runway in the bank as I was approaching the inevitable “fuck this point”.

I accepted an offer for a new job yesterday and so I won’t need that buffer but I’m keeping it, ISA’s and pensions are all good but I didn’t leave myself enough readily accessible cash to just say fuck it and walk if I needed to.

Smart person. Now don't stop saving and increase your runway even further. The difference between having a few years worth in the bank and not is incredible.

New offer comes with a big salary increase (and me and my partner are saving for a house) so I'm going to be able to save about 70% of my salary after all outgoings - outside of work my goal now is to max out ISA's and then save the rest until I have enough to cover at least 2 years - I noticed there is a peace that comes from having immediate access to enough money to quit (even if you have no intention).

> I may seem like an asshole, but so far it works

I do the same, it's amazing how well it works. As long as you genuinely try putting (what you think is) the company interest first, people actually appreciate you more if you don't do what you're told, but what you think is best. At least that's my experience so far. And it makes sense - because not everybody can afford to challenge the status quo & conventional wisdom, people that can do it can become very valuable.

Depends on the people so. I usually fail at the point when personal interests and politics come into play. Which is my most common "fuck this" event.

I actually think this is a fair enough approach: better to be doing something you're happy doing than to be miserable and complaining, that's for sure.

There is, of course a trade-off, which I'll illustrate with our situation. I'll only hire full stack developers, by which I mean people who are willing to turn their hand to anything in our systems, because it gives us more flexibility in terms of building teams, working across sytems, providing support, and so on. But we're a relatively small tech organisation with a lot of demands on us and so need that flexibility. People obviously have areas of specialty, but broadly they'll poke around in any system they need to.

I'm not saying you're wrong: not at all. Just that the trade-off is perhaps more limited options. That may not be a bad thing if they're not options you want though.

With out an IDE is a bit of a redflag - all developers need to be able to hack with just a cli, yes its not ideal but some times you have to do it.

A very experienced dep/ops in extrimis should be able to hack code even if there is no installed editor - I have recovered a stuck systems by editing config files with awk.

Used to do this when I was young, not any more. It's not that I can't I just refuse work with "hackish" languages, tools and projects.

"I thought throwing myself from my apartment window." You got it backwards. You think of throwing your manager out the apartment window.

The best Defenestration is a good Offenestration

Stealing that!

>If you are wise, however, this is precisely what you will avoid doing because the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born—or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born.

— Douglas Adams, H2G2

My aunt had a terrible job in an office building downtown Chicago. One of those jobs where the boss was a maniac and made them work crunch time month after month.

Across the street from her building is a ~10 story jail with an exercise yard on the very top. My aunt said she used to fantasize about how if she could throw her boss out the window, they'd put her in jail and at least she could go outside sometimes.

And right across the street from that jail, were jail tacos. The first place you would go when released from jail.

I miss jail tacos.

(Here is a picture of the basketball court on top of a 10+ story jail, very weird fixture of the Chicago loop: https://www.google.com/maps/search/corrections/@41.8764071,-... )

Kudos for landing a better job. I guess you were quite young at the time and I hope you matured more than to put yourself in such a harmful situation again. If you deem that something is senseless, impossible or on the verge of abusing you must say so and stand your ground. It is the right thing to do not just for you but for your coworkers and the larger ecosystem you are moving about. It's what that general said about 'The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept' only this time it was about the standard you put up with.

All the best

Thank you for this! I'm about to go through a forced job transition and this has helped me feel a little more hopefully that it will all work out, possibly for the better. Glad to hear you're happy now!

I'm so happy to hear you found a better path forward.

If anyone is feeling burnout for doing impossible or hero work, please remember your job is _not_ your life. You can escape the toxic situation.

Do not be some other man's squirrel.

The great thing about being given 6 hours to do a 6 week job is that you know it's impossible. So you say "I'm going to need to work from home". Then off you go to the beach. Or a job interview. Pull a Paula [1]. Then come back and say "Oh it's waiting for app store approval".

[1] http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_brillant_paula_bean

> The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. > > The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours.

That is not only impossible, it is reckless. A good way to lose not only money when things break, but get your access to credit cards and bank transactions eliminated when they learn their procedures were not covered.

If I was in that situation, I'd do some form of:

What do you want by 11PM? A design?

Really, you want the whole thing completed?

Is this some kind of a joke?

(Depending on relationship) Walk out the door without saying a word, "I quit," or even better, just stand up and say, "Everyone who thinks this is absurd walk out the door with me right now."

Why: What I've learned is that employees ignoring an unreasonable boss sends a rapid signal to upper management to get rid of the unreasonable boss.

You lose benefits and the possibility of taking legal action against the (former) employer if you quit.

Even in "at will" employment states you can sue for unlawful termination.

In this situation it would add up to 'constructive dismissal' so he wouldn't necessarily lose any rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

The problem is. People think that when you don't live up to unrealistic expectations that it's their own fault, when really it's just egregriously poor management. In my experience, whenevever someone isn't meeting expectations, it means 95% of the time the problem is the manager. the solution as you found, is to leave and find somewhere else that values your hard work.

That's so stressful. We've asked every new hire to take a week of PTO during their first month. I wish more places did that - you need time to adjust while switching jobs. But, you're typically stressed while looking for a new job, so you can't really relax until you have a new job and steady income + benefits again.

I'm sorry about the stress you must have been under.

I am, however, looking forward to the absolute crud an org like that will have to eat when they have managers like that. No org can last long with such levels of incompetence... Chapman's In Search of Stupidity is a chronicling of that.

Good God, what a terrible situation but an even better outcome. So glad you didn't take your life.

Sounds a lot like at-will employment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment)

A shady personnel manager at a former job explained the difference to me: If someone is terminated as an "at will" employee, they can collect unemployment and possibly other benefits as well such as severance.

If they are terminated "with cause," no benefits. I have never seen a PIP, but it may require you to sign away your rights as an "at will" employee.

Is it possible they wanted to fire you anyway and gave a task to you that they knew was impossible so that there would be a reason for it?

I guess they wanted a reason to fire you?

Regarding twice the salary - seems like you got as much respect as pay. That's usually how it goes.... :(

Sounds to me like constructive dismissal

Sorry to hear you went through that and glad to hear you made it through. Wish you all the best.

Absolutely insane you had to go through this, but happy to see that you're happier now.

Glad you got out and best of luck!

you should have quit on the spot.

what kind of company takes 1 morning to fire an employee? that does not sound realistic.

Maybe they needed or wanted a reason to fire them. If that’s the case, it was all ready to go on HR.

I mean it only happens in movies when an employee gets fired and immediately put his stuff in the box and leaves the building. In real life there are labor regulations that don't allow this, there is the notification period et cetera

Depends. Even in Germany the company can simply decide to get you physically out right now as long as they keep you on the pay roll for the legal notice period.

I saw this go down right in front of me once. She technically still worked for us for 2 weeks I believe, but I saw HR approach her, bring her out of the room for a few minutes, then she came back and started quietly packing things into a box, and left within the hour.

I don't know the full details, I think she did have some kind of warning weeks before, but ignored it because she thought she was immune to being fired. She was the worst developer I've ever worked with so far though, personality-wise and skills, she definitely lied in her PHP interview. That's also on that company though, I have no idea how she passed that interview (okay, I do have an idea, no programmers ever spoke with her).

That's simply not correct, at least in the US. The process I've seen is the employee is taken to a meeting room, they're told they've being let go, they're walked to their desk to retrieve their personal belongings, and they're walked out the door. From the employees perspective one minute they're working like normal, and perhaps a half-hour later they're standing outside unemployed.

I’ve seen this before.

Get an email the day before to deactivates someone’s access at X time. Next day they get called into a meeting 10 mins before X and then escorted to their desk and out a couple mins after.

I've had similar experiences, where I'm told in the morning to be available to handle an account deactivation immediately at X time, and then at X time I'm given the name.

What really sucks is when you have to do it for one of your teammates. :-(

> I mean it only happens in movies when an employee gets fired and immediately put his stuff in the box and leaves the building.

It's not only in the movies. I've seen it done in real life a number of times. In the US, anyway, this isn't prohibited by law.

I doubt that firing on such a short notice properly followed the correct procedures, in the UK that's an automatic loss at tribuneral.

I am very glad you managed to parlay a bad situation into a better one.

Fuck incompetent management. It is a virus that eventually ravages the entire host (organization).

Yikes. You should send his boss/ceo/investors a spite email telling the story about how he lost a worker who was working for 1/2 market rate by setting impossible deadlines.

> You should send his boss/ceo/investors a spite email

That is a horrendously bad suggestion.

A spite email sounds like a bad idea, but this manager sounds very harmful to the company, and the boss/ceo/investors might want to be aware of that.

And why would he care anymore about it? The company failed him, so why would he be helpful for them anymore?

He did his job, he moved on, whatever happens there should not be expected to be his problem anymore.

To help other people who end up at said manager/job.

That manager is toxic and should be reprimanded and/or fired. The employee certainly has no ethical obligation to do them any favors, but it could prevent that manager from abusing current and future workers in this way.

This is a situation where the interests of the workers aligns with the business's ability to succeed. Why not leverage that to try to improve working conditions there? Seems like a win-win for everyone but the toxic manager.

Because if the CEO is smart, they'll fire that manager before he does any more damage to the company, and maybe hire the developer back.

Nossa senhora! Parabéns pelo novo trabalho! ... que fique tudo tranquilo.

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