I am put on a PIP. The second line manager is according to the HR message the evaluator. First line manager is supposed to support.
First line manager creates hard to achieves goals.
The normal thing would be that the second line manager gets his own opinion. However 1st says he is in charge and I have not directly reached out to 2nd line.
How others have experienced it.
@ym heehee! With who? How? Bob? AskHR? IBM is a dumpster fire of incompetent people and systems. There is no real way to fight anything at IBM. It is the Start Trek Borg combined with the Dark Side Star Wars and many other evil doers. Take you pay daily. Put 1 foot in front of the other daily/weekly/monthly like the Apple 1984 ad making fun of IBM that turned out to be epic truth. If you are too young or have not seen this epic ad here it is => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc
How come no one files an internal grievance that the pip state is being abused and misused?
PIPs are window dressing for judges and juries; they are not plans to jolt an employee back into long-term strong to superb contribution (‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”) I have over a third of a century at IBM and spent over a quarter century in IBM management. Despite what HR claims, almost no one passes a PIP. PIPs fail by design at IBM. Senior management and HR review every word of every plan. They wordsmith repeatedly until failure is the foregone conclusion of a seemingly reasonable plan.
The trap is fully set and personalized before the employee hears the news of the PIP. Management has already been penning an intricate paper trail of superficially valid but highly selective evidence for over a year at this point. This trail specifically includes a summary, but not the verbatim text, of the intermediate negative feedback the employee was given with verifiable timestamps. Argument to the jury: this paper trail shows that we warned this critter repeatedly months and months ago; he did not change; then, out of mercy, we gave one final chance in the form of a PIP. Much later when the PIP trap is sprung, it is almost impossible to contest this paper trail. One party has a fictionalized account in writing; the aggrieved has only his unverifiable recollections from a distance of months.
I know of two PIP survivors, and I have initiated or advised on far, far more PIPs than that. Within 3 years, senior management had found other ways to force the two survivors out. Life during a PIP is far from pleasant. And if one does survive, the powers on high strive to make the next stage of one’s IBM career even less pleasant.
PIPs are window dressing for judges and juries. They greatly reduce legal costs and court-ordered damages arising from disputed involuntary employee separations. This is a big cog in IBM’s financial engineering machine.
@OP is knowledge transfer the same thing as a brain (or brainless) dump ?
I noticed that some comments quickly disappear when such comments link directly the firing actions in the US to the hiring actions in India.
A large amounts of PIP are closely related to the continuous offshoring to India of US work.
@h9 yup best to have a paper trail, emails and receipts - but in end doesn’t matter. It’s over once put on PIP
@m5, I think, you might few weeks, until you finish the knowledge transfer to the Indian taking your job.
I witnessed it multiple times.
Once it has been determined that you "failed" a PIP, how long before you have to leave the company? Is it immediate?
IBM is F'd up and the way they have fallen in love with PIPs is F'd up. I heard of 1 case of a really good person and worker being put on PIP (yup white guy over 40) by his nasty FLM first line mgr with a long list of silly non selling tasks and he did them all but the FLM came back and said NOPE; you did not do the mock sales video with me I told you to. The worked said BUT I REACHED OUT 3 TIMES TO SCHED WITH YOU AND YOU NEVER REPLIED. SMH.
@OP - How much time you have on PIP ? Ask your first/second line manager if they want to see improvement in performance why they have set the goals that are hard to achieve within the time you have been given.
@bb
The moment you are asked to make such documents - it’s over. Write a sh---y bare bones pass down. Don’t tell them everything. And prepare you exit strategy
@a7 in Albany a lot of the requirements to complete the plan are to write documents on how to do your tasks and train the others
@a7 you should know that once the knowledge transfer to the Indian employee is complete, you will be shown the door and told that you failed the PIP. No severance for you, of course. IBM only throws money at it's executives, even bad ones. Your first line will tell you that you will be helped to land a new job, but that will never happen. The only jobs are for new grads and Indians.
So, start planning your exit immediately...Your US management is out to get you and they will do any and everything in their power to make this happen.
That's the IBM Way under Alvind. IBM is no longer the best company to work for on the Smarter planet.
It is ironic, when someone is put on PIP, he/she is asked to train the Indian that replaces him/her. It is called knowledge transfer. In some cases, it is a stated goal by management.
@OP
That’s unfortunate, and you likely didn’t deserve it. In practice, PIP processes are often used more as a headcount reduction or exit mechanism than as a true performance improvement tool. While it’s presented as a structured way to support underperformers, the reality in many organizations is different.
Even if someone meets all stated goals, outcomes don’t always change once they’re placed in that process.
At this point, the most practical move is to stay focused on your options and start exploring other opportunities as broadly as possible.