If you’re a high performer, chances are you know about what a “PIP” is, but may have never been placed on one.

Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t.

But in the current era of AI + layoffs that we’re in, I have a feeling more people have recently become familiar with what a PIP includes.

What is a PIP?

A PIP is also known as a “Performance Improvement Plan.” In the event that you aren’t performing to the duties that your position requires, your manager can place you on one of these.

Much like a code yellow (or red if you’re at OpenAI), you need exit criteria and measurable data to validate progress. But that’s where things can get a bit hairy.

A PIP is really more for the company than it is for you.

Let’s get that out of the way.

No matter what your manager or HR department says, documenting all of this is essentially a way for your company to mark all the legal checkboxes to show that “yes, we did everything we could for this employee” before they simply fire you or lay you off.

If you ever were to bring a wrongful termination lawsuit to your (former) employer, they’ll have all this information to document as to why you were a problematic employee and needed to be cut loose.

The criteria for you can vary widely.

This means that RTO (return to office) can be included, an arbitrary number of lines of code committed each week, number of code reviews you do, really anything that can be measured and extrapolated in a “reasonable” manner to show your productivity can be used as conditions for your PIP.

It usually lasts for 30 days and at the end of those 30 days, you’re either removed from the PIP and gone back to good standing within your company or you’re let go. If you’re lucky, you’ll get some severance out of it.

Some companies have other names for it.

At LinkedIn, it’s been called lately an “RTS”, meaning “Return to Success” (gotta love these names). It’s much more aggressively pursued these days, and can even be used to short-circuit that 30 day window to push you out of the company sooner.

Luckily, they usually give you some kind of 12-week severance package on your way out.

Who knows how much longer that option will be available!

Why am I writing about this, anyway?

This has become quite a popular topic in my social circles, mainly because a lot of engineers seem quite dissatisfied with their workplace these days. The rise of AI, additional pressures to produce slop, unrealistic deadlines - it all leads to unhappy employees.

Turns out that being told you’re going to be training / teaching / writing code that will eventually (happily) replace you isn’t a recipe for happy engineers.

Often, all of this leads engineers to taking FMLA (Family Medical Leave of Absence) for up to 12 weeks at 80% pay to help cope with the mental burnout and other medical related issues that come from working in an environment like this.

And unfortunately, when these engineers return, they’re met with the same demands and conditions as before, often triggering the same mental state as before. Maybe even more quickly this time.

More insidiously, however, sometimes managers use the time gap of the FMLA time period to later showcase the employee wasn’t meeting standards when it comes to output. Because things change so quickly, you may suddenly not have enough of the key metric(s) needed to show that you’re being a good employee.

It’s not something that’s supposed to happen, but in reality, since a PIP / RTS is pretty freeform these days, it can definitely occur without being explicitly called out as “retaliation.”

How to turn things around a bit

In some cases, engineers I know who have wanted to leave a company have actually requested an RTS. This means that for putting in a half-assed effort a little while longer, you can leave the company in roughly a similar timeframe as giving a two week notice but also get severance out of it.

It’s not going to feel good professionally, but if you’re leaving a company anyway, it doesn’t exactly matter I suppose.

It does help to have a supportive manager throughout all of this, of course, since they’re likely going to be doing this as a favor to you, knowing your intentions.

But given the antogonistic relationship workers have with their employers here in the US, I think this is a reasonable approach to take!