Workplace Jiujitsu #9: How To Steady The Rope When Someone Is On a PIP

Most Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) don’t start with malice, but they often end in silence. It doesn't have to be that way.



You won’t always be told when someone is on a PIP. But if you’ve been around long enough, you start to see the signs:

They get asssigned meaningless work. They stop talking in meetings. They start over-explaining like they’re on trial.

They now avoid asking for help.

You know the look: Eyes down. Shoulders tight. Pace picked up, but confidence falling apart. They’re not just debugging code anymore. They’re debugging their worth.



Here’s the hard truth:

Most people don’t fail the PIP because they can’t improve. They fail because no one steadies the rope.



Your Role as a Senior Engineer

You’re not their manager or their savior. But you are someone with context and experience they may not know how to ask for. You can’t fix the PIP, but you can do this:

  1. Make the invisible visible. Invite them to pair on real work and not pity tasks. “Hey, I think you’d be great to tackle this with me. Want to team up?”
  2. Normalize the gap. Say what no one else is saying: “I struggled with this exact thing early on. Let me show you how I handled it.”
  3. Quietly unblock. When they spin their wheels, offer context. “We usually skip that step here. Let me save you a few hours.”
  4. Speak belief, not performance. “I’ve seen you grow a lot. I really appreciated that last code review.” One sentence like that can echo for months.
  5. Hold your line without withdrawing. Don’t coddle, but don’t vanish. Steady the rope, but don’t cut it.
  6. Recognize their contributions and strengths.

Often, some of their best work and skills are not getting noticed.



If they make it through, they’ll remember you for not flinching when things got hard. And if they don’t get out of the PIP, at least someone in that org reminded them they were still human.

You’re not responsible for the system, but you are responsible for how you show up inside it.

That’s Workplace Jiujitsu. Holding the line in quiet ways that change people, not just metrics.