CEO Jack Dorsey tells workers he’s making it easier to fire them — There are reportedly no more performance improvement plans at Block::Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block and founder of Twitter, reportedly told workers it will now be easier and quicker to fire them.
Aren’t performance improvement plan’s really meant to give the employee a task that’s representative of what they are failing to do, so they will fail, and then you can fire them with proof of poor performance?
Correct.
I know exactly one person who ever survived that process. I know a lot who were fired and found the whole process to be humiliating from start to finish.
I got a PIP and my boss couldn’t explain what it was for and what I needed to do to improve. So yeah, they’re bullshit and I won $10k.
Kinda hilarious given that the name “performance improvement plan” explicitly says it is a plan, so it really needs to tell you, you know, what to do.
Good job getting that bag. Fuck em for treating people like disposable equipment.
Exactly. They exist to give legal cover so that the risk of wrongful termination lawsuits is minimized for the employer
Or even worse - PIPs exist as a paper trail that that shows the employee knew they were on the chopping block
I’ve rarely seen people’s PIP fairly evaluated; they are just fired at the end of the PIP term
Depends on how shitty the company or the specific organization inside of the company is. I had several team mates put in PIPs over the years and none of them ended up being fired.
A good manager does this when needed to show the person exactly what the expectations are so there’s no ambiguity. As long as these expectations are reasonable and consistent, this should lead to the person meeting them not just through their own efforts but also through the organization specifically supporting this effort.
Termination of employment can follow but if that was the goal of management, the organization is broken (many are).
The question I have is why was the manager unable to explain all this before the PIP?
If the person was able to meet requirements during the PIP, I have to assume management just did a shit job explaining before that.
At the company I work for a PIP is the last straw. If you get put on one you’ve already been written up several times and had your failings explained to you (these writeups go through HR for approval to make sure they are clear). If you make it to the point that you’re being put on a PIP you’re probably a lost cause at that point anyway but it’s a way for a manager to stave off actually firing you if they think you might be salvageable. I’ve never seen anyone make it through one but I would have fired them long before that if it was up to me.
Double-plus-good assessment!
Yeah, honestly, PIPs are dogshit in most cases. I’m for removing them as a barrier to prevent firing.
If you’re going on a PIP, you’re going to end up fired anyhow.
The articles keep going “CEO Dorsey says”, probably because no one knows what Block is.
On that note, what is Block? They own a bunch of small companies like Square and Cashapp? If so, does this apply to those employees?
They have 12.000 employees. Like yes they do have a couple of recognizable products - mostly Square and Tidal.
But still, 12.000 people is a lot. One more case of overhiring for imaginary growth.
Did Block acquire Square?
According to the wiki, they started it as their original product. And later acquired Tidal, and some other services I’m not familiar with (Afterpay, Cashapp, Weebly)
No, Block was square. It’s the first damn sentence.
Afterpay is an installment payment plan for online purchases, cash app is a direct payment app like Venmo/Paypal, and Weebly is a website builder.
No. Square was first, created cash (or cash app), and bought a bunch of other dumb shit. Eventually cash decided it wanted to be its own company and did their own shit, and jack allowed it because he’s a fucking idiot moron.
I worked there for a decade. Quit in 2020
Blockhead renames Square to Block.
In my experience a PIP is just a nice way to say it’s not working out, go ahead and start looking elsewhere, you can stay on a while longer until you do find something else. With all of the tech layoffs over the last 18 months, they might as well just dispense with PIPs too.
In that light, is it really so malevolent? I grt the Orwellian+anti-labor angle, but, I really wish people could stsrt valuing honesty (or as close as we can get to it), even when its painful. The truth is, you’re never not better off knowing what is AKSHUALLY TheTruth™️
People need to pay rent. Honesty doesn’t pay the bills. Outside of America, there are worker protections for this stuff. Worker protections are more important than ceos deciding to raise shareholder values by firing random people.
outside America…worker protections
Right, but in the absence of those protections, what would you prefer?
paying rent
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I get it, but you probably need to pay rent for years and if someone/something zeros in on you at all on the corporate level, you need to know facts and reality before you have to pay a mortgage and the sentiment expressed by the parent comment serves unintentionally as advocacy for obfuscating that fact because its absent any discussion or notion that when a company determines you are a liabillity in any sense, it makes sense on their level to get rid of you.
Not saying its always to only the truly deserving but you have to agree that that needa to exist on not only a “worsr of The worst” level, but also when they figure out they wanna can you and I feel like you’re already aware of this at the corporate level.
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I get it, but you probably need to pay rent for years and if someone/something zeros in on you at all on the corporate level, you need to know facts and reality before you have to pay a mortgage and the sentiment expressed by the parent comment serves unintentionally as advocacy for obfuscating that fact because its absent any discussion or notion that when a company determines you are a liabillity in any sense, it makes sense on their level to get rid of you.
Not saying its always to only the truly deserving but you have to agree that that needa to exist on not only a “worsr of The worst” level, but also when they figure out they wanna can you and I feel like you’re already aware of this at the corporate level.
Yes, it’s malevolent. If they fire you “for cause”, you don’t get unemployment. You don’t get a severence package. You aren’t treated the same as if you were laid off. It also makes it harder to find new employment as interviewers want to know if you were fired “for cause” or laid off.
The answer is always “laid off”. They don’t usually verify because the former employer will only verify that you worked there and your start and end date. They don’t want to open themselves up to slander lawsuits.
Beatings will continue until morale improves. Same old bullshit.
Jack is an ass. Wow.
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Having worked at square (before it became the joke it is now), I saw some people get pipped. One person survived, and this person used it to get diagnosed with adhd, get treatment, and turn shit around. She eventually became a manager, then a director, and is up for a job as Ciso at a different company.
So it’s possible to survive a pip, just fairly rare.
I am so glad I don’t work there now, seeing what it’s become makes me really sad. If you saw the news a couple months ago about the 18h+ outage they had, it was from software I worked on. They subverted guardrails I specifically wrote to prevent them from rolling out 100k iptables rules to every host, which is what happened.
