Comment by pipthrowaway23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pipthrowaway23 | Hacker News Reader

This post title struck a chord with me. I was PIP'd from Amazon earlier this year and am currently on a medical leave which is going to end very shortly. I'm going to have to go back to work and probably will just take the severance and GTFO because culture in my org is toxic and unreasonable, and my first PIP was designed from the start to be impossible.

I was a high performer, but have no real mentors. I have a couple friends who can provide referrals, but their companies all have hiring freezes right now - as do many tech companies from the looks of things. It's every week I see another post on HN about a company doing layoffs, and I expect more to come.

Even if I could find the motivation to grind leetcode (goodness, I hate interviewing in tech), the economy and companies are currently in a very touchy and cautious state it would seem. I'm in a HCOL area and rents since COVID are at an all-time high, and to make matters worse I need to find a new apartment in the next few months (and no job = no approval, so that's fun..)

I know I will probably be best served by finding a less paying job with a lot less stress, but that isn't exactly an easy thing to narrow down.

I'm not exactly sure what I hoped to achieve by sharing this, but I suppose it's just nice to have some camaraderie in these times and know there are others struggling too.

I got PIP'd twice, passed the first and took the money the second time. Some advice from my experience.

Talk to your doc / therapist, you might be able to extend the medical leave.

Apartments may take into account your bank account balance as something that helps your approval.

If you decide to stay and do the PIP project, realize that it's really about putting a good plan together and executing to that plan, communicating when the plan has a problem etc. Try to remove ALL the ambiguities in the plan before building whatever it is and design each part at one level below where you'd normally do it to make sure you don't have things that come up that surprise you. Everything other than your PIP work doesn't matter - no CRs, no help with design specs, oncall, nothing. Make sure to get sleep and exercise - if you combine stress with lack of those two things you just make things doubly bad.

If you do pass the PIP, change orgs immediately. You need a new start without baggage (my mistake was I got re-orged under a manager that was instrumental in trying to PIP me previously, and then I stuck around to finish my current project instead of immediately leaving).

What do you mean "take the money" ? Is it some kind of payout to leave ?

In Amazon, you are intially put on Focus, i.e management start building a case against against your performance (Documentation).

Once focus period ends, you are given option to take Severance or Performance improvement plan (PiP).

That is dehumanizing.

it is, and if we ever get a software engineer union this is one of the first things we should target.

I appreciate the advice.

I've exhausted my 6 months under short-term disability and now I am trying to extend it under long-term, but it isn't looking good so far. But it doesn't matter, I need a new job ASAP to find a new apartment either way. And, as far as apartments, it will be hit-or-miss if they take my bank into account but it seems very unlikely it will be enough to satisfy them.

I'm not going to try the PIP - I know my management chain (several levels) want me to fail and to leave, and I'd rather have the extra severance than have to deal with the stress and then end up with less money after.

It's been common knowledge in the industry for years now that Amazon routinely and periodically PIPs employees to cull their herd when it's convenient for them. Point is, don't let getting a PIP get you down, just move on and focus on companies that have a healthy work culture.

What's a PIP?

Performance improvement plan

Or Paid Interview Preparation.

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