Tell of a manager that doesn't understand engineering, collaboration, and tradeoffs.
While there are plenty of incompetent (or just plain dickish) managers, no one who ever reported to me got a PIP for anything but being consistently ineffective or so abrasive they were causing more trouble than they were worth.
Ineffective could mean anything from couldn’t code effectively (compared to peers) to couldn’t design/figure out what to do to a decent enough quality, or wasn’t independent enough for the level they were working at, or unable to get peers to help them due to being a problem, etc.
Abrasive being picking fights with co-workers over things that didn’t matter, pointlessly antagonizing or scaring people, bullying co-workers, etc.
In all cases it needed to be a pattern of behavior (not a one off), they already had significant feedback/chance to improve and had not, and I have concrete guidance on what to do instead, why it mattered, and I would check in regularly and independently to see if there was improvement and give regular feedback.
And I made sure that the managers who reported to me (later) did the same. Which is why we had such good turn around rates. But ultimately, it wasn’t up to us - the most we could do is show a path. They had to walk it.
Anyone who didn’t think it was fair (but couldn’t articulate why in a way we could reconcile), or refused to understand and take ownership of the situation didn’t do well. Which was unfortunate. And did happen.
If they left without completing it, I would have understood and hey - better for everyone. No point trying to fit a square peg into a round hole forever.
But in all the time I was managing (over a decade, 200+ different folks, peak of a little over 60 at one time) no one ever did. Even though in some cases we offered them significant money to do so.
The case that tried to hit every button and blame/manipulate everyone else was particularly terrible, because I had to go into CYA/document everything mode while he tried to sabotage the team and anyone else he could get ahold of. Including false accusations against me, the HR rep, and several nearby managers who had nothing to do with it.
All because he got hired in to code, but near as I could tell literally couldn’t. He kept trying to make all his co-workers do it for him, which got old very fast. 3 months in, all his co-workers hated him, and that was quite a feat on that team.
He turned down a six figure ‘please stop already’ offer just to try to complete the PIP - which he didn’t, and everyone who wasn’t completely delusional knew he wouldn’t. And got fired.
So what are you talking about, specifically?
This leads to a weird situation - one wherein as soon as a manager, reporting to you,faces pressure, they use the PIP to find an escape hatch. They start creating narratives about how some failure is because of an engineer individual - and not because of poor structures, poor communication by the manager, or generally management losing track of what makes a project succeed. An example of this is merely managers who PIP people for something sliding by 2 days but reality is that those 2 days don't matter to the business - it is a mediocre system that is penalizing an individual for those 2 days - just because.
The fact that you've had to PIP over 20 people - say at a rate of 1 person per year - it is a massive signal that your structures are dysfunctional. Either you are hiring absolute dumbasses or there is something wrong about your system that causes Pippable behaviors.
Look inwards. You'll go further in life.
For example - where did you get that I PIP'd over 20 people? Because I not only never said that, it never happened.
Of the dozen I did PIP, over half were handed to me in re-orgs, and had been persistent performance issues that the prior manager never addressed. Such is corporate life.
And all of those dozen I handled directly. There were a few in time that subordinates handled as they came up later, but I forgot to count those in the total. All I would do in those cases is ensure they were doing the right things - I wouldn't ever make the call, as it wasn't mine to make. They don't meaningfully impact the overall numbers though.
And there were a lot of non-PIP performance discussions too of course. For instance, I had a manager I took over that was burnt out and performing badly due to a really legally dangerous performance issue from someone MY boss had insisted be given a chance. I didn't PIP the manager, we talked about it and I helped him find a new team where he could get some new scenery, and my boss took over the performance problem.
Regardless, only 4 of the 12 ended up being fired. Which is what, 2% of the total number of folks? Even doubling that, over 10 years that is amazing. The rest improved performance wise. Several of them even thanked me. Bizarrely, the really difficult case I talked about was one of them.
Near as I can tell, no one had ever held him accountable for his actual performance, because he had previously kept succeeding at getting people to blow up at him.
Show me a place where that is a bad stat, and I'll show you a place that is lying through their teeth or delusional.
And hey, I got PIP'd once too. Personal issues that bled over into professional life. It sucks!
My manager was right on with what the issues were though, even if he didn't do most of the actual best practices. I ended up making some major life changes personal wise to deal with my issues as well as transferring to a different team as my managers style was not a good fit for me either, and had another 3+ years of productive time in my career there (and got promoted). We still chat from time to time.
Ciao!
