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Comment by gardenhedge | Hacker News Reader

Is PIP just an American thing? I don't think they could do it in Europe, right?

So, you are European, and you hire a dev who is clearly not contributing or pulling their weight. Maybe they lied about their experience on their resume. It doesn't matter. What do you do? Just let him coast forever, collecting a paycheck while wasting company resources and dragging the team down?

You know it's possible to fire people in Europe, right?

If only there was a structured process for that. Maybe we could call it a "performance improvement plan," or PIP for short.

That fact your reply to a comment about having a structured way to fire someone could be called a "performance improvement plan or PIP for short" is hilarious to me.

It seems you have accepted that PIPs are just a tool to fire someone but still think calling it a PIP is perfectly logical and desirable to the point that you snarkily suggest that this is what it should be called.

I don't know about your situation, but at every company I've ever worked for, firing a report for performance reasons requires the employee to first be placed on a PIP. Call it whatever you want, but in most cases (from both the employee and manager perspective), a PIP is not designed with the intent that the employee should remain at the company.

Yeah, there's typically a 3-6 month probation period

They are common in the UK.

Once someone has been employed at a company for two years, they can't be dismissed without going through a fair disciplinary process.

A PIP is a good way to demonstrate that an employee is not performing adequately, even after being given an opportunity to improve.

they do. I worked in a callcenter in austria a few years ago to work on a few soft skills. They may make you sign one. no idea what happens if you don't sign, but nothing was ever enforced on me either if a goal wasn't met.

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