Comment by pixelmonkey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pixelmonkey | Hacker News Reader

Many years ago, when I worked in high finance, it was common knowledge that 3-5% of the staff would be fired every 1-2 years, all at once. This created a lot of tension every time rumours swirled that the "culling" was coming up. But, when you were fired, you were simply given a phone call, out of the blue one day, told to come to an office, and then offered a severance package based on your years of service, and escorted out of the building. At the end of one of those days, everyone not called breathed a sigh of relief. (And some who were not called, but didn't really want to stay either, secretly wished they were called.)

As cold-hearted as this practice is, it seems downright humane vs putting 3-5% of staff on a PIP or "Pivot" or whatever, and forcing managers and staff to play a weird charade (akin to psychological torture) that this has something to do with individual performance rather than systematic payroll cost control at the corporate finance level.

> and forcing managers and staff to play a weird charade (akin to psychological torture)

Psychological torture is there by design and not as a side effect.

I've been working closely with Amazon sellers for more than a decade, when I first heard how they stressed out employees I thought it fit the image that we had from our end, as sellers, perfectly.

I've come to suspect that Amazon has behavioral scientists and psycologists working on how to build the most threatening way possible to communicate, to stress sellers out as much as they can, to have them broken at their feet.

They will send emails like "Action required: your listings have been deactivated", for simple stuff that require a couple of clicks to fix, and the problem is that it's not like the story of the kid who cried wolf, sellers are terrified when they receive those emails. Sometimes 20-30 families depend on that business and an email like that could mean everyone is out of a job.

That is just an example, this strategy is applied in such a consistent manner through their communications that it puts it beyond doubt that it's done on purpose.

And please, don't be heartless to say, that's what you get when you your company depends on a big corp. I've seen that thrown around here when so many can get their lives turned upside down by Google or Apple too.

If you are put on a PIP, at least you have some time to start looking for a new job. The takeaway seems to be, one on a PIP, put all your effort into finding the next job rather than trying to keep your current one.

if you don't pass the PIP, you often get blacklisted and won't ever get hired again. so if you get another job and quit, say good bye. If the new company you work for get's acquired, you will be let go and won't be integrated back into the fold.

PIP is part of the game. Everybody knows that it's a bad indicator of capabilities on its own.

A PIP can happen for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with the employee's performance, and often does.

A PIP or two won't be held again anyone on its own.

There are a lot of companies out there. I no more want to go back to Amazon than an abusive girlfriend.

I learned that the hard way.

I should have known better.

Far better to consider the PIP your 30 days' notice.

I guess there's also a chance of someone snapping and doing something bad in bad faith as an act of revenge. Especially that from what I understand PIP/Pivot basically means you're out.

Do you know what severance is?

It's about liability management I think. The company can show a judge that "they did all they can" while like the same time gathering a paper trail on the employee.

In the US, at least, you don't have to show a judge anything.

Unless the employee sues you, which is discouraged by practices like these.

Sue for what?

"I was terminated because I'm <insert protected class here>"

Yeah and the years and the time you spend in litigation won’t be worth it and you could instead be spending the time and energy getting another job.

Doesn't it depend on the state?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com