Sometimes you put someone on a PIP as a CYA to appear as if you are actually doing something as a manager.
I worked for a company about 6 years ago where I enjoyed a fair amount of success as a project manager building small custom applications. I was promoted to senior PM before my 90 day trial was complete and given a couple of direct reports to manage. Good relationships with my managers and coworkers. Projects delivered on time and within budget (which was unusual for this firm).
I forget the specific circumstances, but we had some delays on one of my projects. The client was delayed setting up some servers for us because their PM waited too long and our offshore team had a lot of bugs they couldn’t seem to resolve or whatever. I think my direct manager had left the company by this point so I had a new manager (who I also have good relations with). But my bosses boss (someone who works in a different country who I maybe met once a quarter) decides to put me on some PIP program. I worked with my direct boss on it, but I got the impression from him that he thought it was bullshit. Like these delays weren’t the results of something I did (or didn’t do) as project manager.
Some time later our HR manager, who I was friendly with, asked me whatever happened with that PIP? I’m like…uh…isn’t that kind of your job to tell me? And even during this PIP, I 'm still getting called to fix other people’s fucked up projects. Like sure, I don’t know how to do my job properly, but have me step in and help everyone else do their job.
We had three other PMs I can recall who never made it out of their 90 day trial period. I’m not really sure what they did or didn’t do. But I guess I really don’t get that mentality. You spend all that time interviewing someone (I think I maybe had 5 or 6 interviews) and you can’t figure out if someone can do the job for a couple months? As a company you should be spending the first 3-6 months making sure your new hires are successful. My friends at Microsoft tell me they don’t even get in front of a client for the first 3 months. It’s all training.
I guess it’s a product of “results-driven” management. If things go well, you look like a hero. If things go badly, management looks for someone to blame. The problem is that to get good results, you need to instill good behaviors and processes. And even then, sometimes things don’t go as expected. Like if I go to Atlantic City and win a ton of money gambling, those are great results. But it doesn’t make it a good best practice.
Wait, what is this 90 day trial thing? I’ve never heard of this, but not only does it sound unduly stressful, as you said it sounds like a worst practice for making people successful.
And they never do the one thing that might help the employee succeed, which is to move them to a different manager. I’ve seen some employees who are truly hopeless, but I’ve also seen several employees fail due to either bad management or a misfit with their manager.
It was some stupid thing the company had written into their new hire agreements.
Nearly all my jobs are “unduly stressful”. Usually not because the work is particularly difficult or anything like that. Although what makes it difficult is being constantly given conflicting objectives or lack of resources. It’s usually not even that I hate the people or the company I work for. It’s knowing that I could be fired at any time for pretty much anything without warning and usually I don’t really have a clear idea why. These companies don’t care about “making people successful”. They are consulting firms or “professional services” groups, so they basically treat their non-sales people like cogs, spending the least amount of time they can developing them. They embrace a “fail early” philosophy, which means they will get rid of someone as soon as it is apparent they aren’t working out or if it’s politically advantageous to do so.
A ninety-day “probationary period” has been standard in the last few jobs I’ve had. It’s long enough that it should be obvious if someone should not have been hired and the probationary status means the company can dismiss the employee without a serious legal challenge.
For the non- USAians in the crowd that’s really the point.
As a condition of being hired you sign a paper waiving 100% of the very few rights a worker has in the USA, but only for a limited duration. They’d make the “probationary period” the rest of your life if that wasn’t already illegal.
And, honestly, it’s never been stressful for me or, I think, anyone who is reasonably competent at their job. It’s just an out for the employer if the hiree turns out to be a real disaster.
On the flip side, I’ve had a number of jobs where within the first 90s days I’ve been like “fuck this shit”. Generally it’s being put into a situation where I’ve just started and am now expected to “lead” something I have no background in or context for. And I don’t mean “I want you to start this project next week…” I mean more like coming to a meeting or call where this is the first I’ve heard of it and have my boss be like “Please tell everyone what the plan is.”
Like was I supposed to be working 100 hours last week as a detective trying to guess what you were going to assign me to do?
Which legal rights do you believe people waive when they take a job with a probationary period? Every state except Montana has employment at will , which means in any state except Montana* you can be fired for no reason at all, or for any reason that’s not actually an illegal reason. As far as I know, you can’t waive your right to not be fired for an illegal reason - you can’t waive your right not to be fired for reporting a safety violation to OSHA or your right not to be illegally discriminated against based on your religion.
What a probationary period actually means ( except in Montana) is that the company does not have to follow either the disciplinary procedures agreed to in a contract ( normally a union contract) or its own policies during that period. For example, most people at my employer are union members. There’s a whole procedure including the right to go to arbitration that must be followed to impose any discipline ( not just firing). If someone is on probation ( which is for a year in each title if someone has been promoted), that procedure doesn’t need to be followed. I am not a union member, so I am not covered by a contract - but my employer has still obligated itself to follow a specific procedure. Except while I am still in my probationary period.
If the employer doesn’t have any policies other than:
Your employment with [employer name] is at will. This means your employment is for an indefinite period of time and it is subject to termination by you or [employer name], with or without cause, with or without notice, and at any time. Nothing in this policy or any other policy of [employer name] shall be interpreted to be in conflict with or to eliminate or modify in any way, the at will employment status of [employer name] employees.
then any “probationary period” makes no difference. You can be fired without cause and with no notice after 6 days , 6 months, or 6 years.
And even Montana law provides for a probationary period during which the “wrongful discharge” law does not apply.
This is very different from the companies where I’ve worked. I think the “90 day probation” period is really more for the benefit of the hiring manager so that they can quickly terminate a bad hire without having to go through a lengthy HR process.
That’s kind of what I’m talking about - that lengthy HR process is not something that those companies were required to follow by law. The companies were legally free to allow managers to quickly terminate anyone without a lengthy process- they chose not to for whatever reason.
Which would be why I got out of the development game after about six years; I started seeing specters and phantasms of getting pigeonholed into some obscure technology or variant, and/or being shunted into product support.
I figured analysis and then project management was where it was at, until I realized that project management isn’t for me.
Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.”
Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life." That is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as its celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.
“Struggle itself is a kind of happiness,” the newspaper Southern Daily, published by the party, said in a commentary. “Choosing to ‘lie flat’ in the face of pressure is not only unjust but also shameful.”