I was PIPed. Absolutely crushed my PIP. Then RA'd during the following RA event. The RA cycle is a way for them to push out the PIP survivors. Unless you have a very strong network of lifelines in other parts of the company you are done at IBM.
Exactly what @jr+1m3jare07 said.
@de 100000%%% ALL THIS
I WAS PUT ON A 1-MONTH PIP - FROM NOV 3 RO DEC 4TH
I CAN ACCOMPLISH IT, AND I WILL. BUT I KNOW THEY WILL LET ME GO REGARDLESS.
I AM JUST WORRIED ABOUT MY COMMISSIONS ON DEALS I AM CLOSING IN DEC AND WORKED SO MUCH ALL YEAR, WHICH IS SO DISGUSTING.
ALMOST 10 YEARS IN THIS SURVIVAL MODE. BUT I ALREADY ACCEPTED IT'S TIME TO LET THIS STOP. I WILL FOLLOW MY CALL AND MAKE THIS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED,
YES. but I BELIEVE IN DEC.
Many on PIP from nov3 to dec4 - so termination and probably RA will be Dec 5th
Sales will be eliminated. All will become TSL
Im just worried I will not get Severance if I don't accomplish the PIP. Any lawyer could help?
@de one of the best posts on here in a long while- thank you!
@ay I want to add that it will follow you for the rest of you career at ibm and pop up all the time. We all know it’s unfair and bullsh-t so it su-ks to have this mark on your record from some random manager in your past you probably haven’t even seen 15 years prior
1 person PIP’ed in US = 6 persons hired in India
Former IBM'er here. I went through this process last year. Top performer for years, but my number came up and they manufactured a "performance" reason. They're REALLY good at this and know how to avoid lawsuits. If you're put on a PIP, don't quit. Let them fire you. PIPs (in the USA at least at the time I was let go) come with 30 days severance and a set amount of subsidized COBRA depending on your years of service. 3 months COBRA for under 5 years. 6 months for 5-25 years. After that time expires, health care under COBRA goes to full price. Dental and Vision under COBRA is not subsidized but are only slightly more expensive than what you paid out of your paycheck. When I say medical is "subsidized" I mean that you will pay out of pocket monthly (you will get an invoice) what you currently pay for medical from your paycheck (again this is in the US). You also are eligible for unemployment since they "fired" you for "performance" - which we all know is BS but IBM doesnt care. None of this is stellar, but its better than if you quit. If you quit, you get none of that. So during your PIP - unless you really believe that IBM cares about your success (they dont), fake it while you concentrate on job hunting. Use that 60 or 90 day period as pay severance time to work on leaving IBM. Have ChatGPT, Claude, or some other non-IBM AI help you with any daily/weekly updates you need to provide. Dont spend energy on it yourself if you can help it. Do what IBM does to you - pretend as if you care. Because bottom line - IBM will fire you the same day they inform you that your performance is suffering if they feel they can come up with a good backstory and justify it without being sued. If they dont fire you same day, they will more likely fire you at the end of your PIP - especially this year since your esteemed CEO stepped in his own dogsht that spewed from his mouth and exposed IBM for the fraud that it is. On your liberation day, they will force your first line manager to do their dirty work. Don't blame your FLM - they are doing this under threat of their own job. This is the sad reality of the company your work for. When it happened to me, I was shocked and upset. I struggled for several months, but Im in a better position now. I took a job with slightly less pay, but all that stress and anxiety I used to get from Sunday afternoon to 3pm Friday is gone. In fact, the first week after I was let go - when I had no job and wasn't sure yet how I was going to survive, I STILL felt like the weight of the world was just removed from my shoulders. IBM executives are toxic, terrible human beings...ALL of them. They care about one thing - their own paychecks. They do not at all care about you. You are a number on a spreadsheet and a "necessary inconvenience" to them. If you're PIP'ed and fired from that cesspool, it may not seem it at the time and you may struggle financially for awhile, but it will be one of the best things that ever happen to you and your career. Good luck to all of you, and I hope you all find something outside of that has-been joke of a tech company.
Exactly. If you were put on a PIP you are already targeted. The PIP really had not much to do with your performance if anything. It was just a way to get you to quit. Demoralize you a little bit, then give you an unattainable goal to reach. Try to frustrate you and burn you out so you would leave on your own. I’ve seen it happen on more than one occasion when I was at IBM. It happened to a good friend of mine when I was working at the company.
Moral of the story is if you get put on a PIP, start looking. You’ll be showing the door sooner or later. Probably sooner.
Good luck to all you still waiting for the next RA. I spent 18 years there. I left on my own two years ago . One of the best things I ever did . It’s really an awful company the way they treat their employees now.
People need to understand - if you somehow survive a PIP you are a marked man, if you get RA'ed and find a new role at IBM in time you are a marked man, if you get flagged with a low performance indicator during your review you are a marked man. You can dodge for awhile if you're lucky, but they are coming for you and will get you eventually. The headcount reduction targets in the western world (really the entire world outside India) are relentless.