What is PIP?
If you're at the PIP stage, it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go, but for legal purposes, they need to look like they tried to give you a chance, so they work with HR to craft specific-but-typically-unattainable goals which would theoretically allow you to save your job if you hit them all. But with boss+superboss already wanting you gone, the likelihood that they'll agree you've hit an improvement goal that's usually a thinly-veiled form of "stop me from hating you anymore, lol" is pretty low.
If you get a PIP, in nearly 100% of cases, you should just take it as notice that your employment is going to end at the specified review date in the PIP. It's not usually worth trying to hit the goals. Focus on interviewing.
That said, I once managed an individual who had survived 4 PIPs by the time he reported to me. I heard that he was eventually fired about 2 years after I left, but not sure if it was his 6th or 7th PIP. He was a particular discrimination liability at a company that was very sensitive to that type of thing.
https://cdn.n7.gg/pip/pip-1.png
https://cdn.n7.gg/pip/pip-2.png
Not every company is awful.
1) build a plan and make meaningful progress on a high impact, but stalled, project
2) communicate about progress and/or roadblocks to the team, and ask for help where needed to get past said roadblocks
3) be more proactive about finding and proposing high impact work, or areas where others could bring their expertise to help benefit my work or get it done faster
Details are confidential, of course.
The problem is that those are two highly correlated data points. Toxic bosses are eventually found but at that point they leave a track of dead bodies.
What I have seen sometimes is moving around disgruntled employees. It has its own problems but a lot of the times they are recovered and even become very productive again.
Agree, and this is often overlooked. There's a handful of people I used to admire whose tendency to readily believe whatever's being sold by their middling middle management chain has left me deeply disappointed.
Middle management is a necessary evil, but there's little hope if upper management fails to recognize and subvert its inherent incentive structure.
It rather stuck in my mind.
(I also did not, ultimately, end up exiting the company as a result of the PIP, just for completeness given the context of the thread.)
This means if an employee here were put on a PIP, it's usually (but not always) the first step towards them being fired.
BUT, I’ve only ever seen the “unattainable goal” type.