Performance Improvement Plan survivor

2010, 2022

I faced the dreaded Performance Improvement Plan twice in my career. A PIP is when your company gives you one last chance to get yourself together, or you’re fired. It’s a “plan” because it includes a highly detailed set of projects and tasks you need to accomplish, often down to daily granularity, in order to keep your employment. I survived one 60-day PIP and dodged the other. I know I usually like to tell you about fun things, but none of this was any fun.

PIP is such a jaunty term for such a bad thing. But this is what happens when things aren’t going well for you at your company. When you get PIPped, your friends will tell you that you’re already fired. Time to start saving your email, files, and anything else you want to keep access to (within company policies, of course). Go look for a new job. You’re being managed out.

Agent Smith says when you’re on a PIP, you’re already dead.

How did I end up on a PIP? I was a weird employee. I’ve tried to figure it out and I never have. Most of my jobs involved writing, and I’m pretty good at that. And sometimes I was very successful at work. But other times, I was distracted, or demotivated, or lazy, or something else that kept me from doing what my bosses thought I should be doing. Plus I was bad at self-evaluation, so I often struggled in jobs.

Mostly I worked for big big tech companies, with their formal, rigorous processes. Google was especially fond of its performance review rituals, causing employees and especially managers to spend massive amounts of time on evaluating people.

First PIP, 2010

When I got PIPped at Google in 2010, I was shocked. I was not expecting it at all. As I mentioned earlier, friends told me it meant I was essentially fired already; the company was just documenting it. I got ready to be out of there. I started interviewing at other companies. But I also committed to the PIP, which literally told me what I had to accomplish every day. And my bosses swore they were giving me an actual chance. Maybe Google as a company was young and idealistic enough for this to be a real shot at keeping my job? Near the end of the 60-day PIP, my great-grandmanager called me in for a meeting. She said I was going to make it through the PIP! Not only that, but they wanted me to take over the Google Developers blog and other social media. That was a great job. I felt incredibly lucky being pulled out of failure into success.

Second PIP, 2022

The first PIP was unexpected. My second PIP was not. It was the inevitable end to a long, slow decline at work. Over the course of a year or so, I couldn’t seem to get traction on what I was supposed to be doing. Part of it was that I simply had trouble doing projects that I wasn’t excited about. I started having a lot of trouble with anxiety. Work was disrupting my sleep. I even took a leave from work to try to feel better. But when I returned, nothing improved. And soon I knew another PIP was coming for me.

This PIP itself was not a surprise. But it came with a surprise twist. The company offered me the choice of a decent severance package instead of the PIP. I had 5 days to decide between door #1 – a 60-day PIP, after which I would be fired if I didn’t achieve its goals – or door #2 – a severance payment and immediate exit from the company. They were willing to pay me to go away. I really wanted to play “Beat the PIP” again. But I just didn’t feel supported this time. And the anxiety I was feeling would be sure to increase. So at the last minute, I decided to take the money and run.

As soon as I did, I instantly felt the anxiety leaving my body. Deciding to quit made me feel good for the first time in a long while. I slept better. And the universe had one final funny gift for me. The day I quit and took the severance package, a new show debuted on Apple TV+¹.

On February 18, 2022, I finished and Severance started .

1. My friend Keith suggested I put my face in the Severance balloon. Creepy, isn’t it?