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Have you ever been put on a PIP and survived?
Hey All!
I have a phone interview for a data scientist role at snowflake comming up. Any advice on how to prep?
The email indicates that the call will cover my experience, motivations, and understanding of Snowflake.
Curious if other have gone through the process and have insights to share. Or if anyone at snowflake can shed light on how I can be effective.
Snowflake Inc.
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Several offers within a week? I call bullshit.
It takes that long to get a recruiter screen scheduled.
I get it. I have recruiters messaging me me all the time when employed.
Congrats to you. Everyone needs to understand that HR doesn't work for you or represent you. The performance process has become so subjective, it has lost its value. Getting a PiP now is just to make an HR quota. If your manager is in agreement with it, then look at your performance, if your manager is advising you fell into the bell curve then just coast through and move on like you did. Congrats on waking up in time.
Also after a few years without complaints and now you're "suddenly stupid" uhh good luck with that strategy.
What year is this post from? Feels like a relic from when we had a functioning job market. In 2026 this honestly feels like a joke. zero people in any industry are getting any offers at all, so the fact that you had 3 right away… it’s not a believable lie.
I am also getting significant recruiter interest, multiple interviews and job offers. Maybe this is tech stack and skill specific?
Nice, mind sharing the job you got ? And the role for several offers in a week ?
I dont want to give too much info to remain more or less anonymous
I only got a PIP once in my career. This was almost a decade ago and I had been at the company for a decade. I was shocked. I redoubled my efforts to ensure management was satisfied with my performance. Then, seven months later I was in the first round of layoffs due to a downturn in the original core business of the company (which is what I was still working on). Again, I was shocked and devastated, especially after working hard to show people I still had value.
A year later I had changed programming languages (teaching myself with an attempt at a start-up idea) and was at a new job I loved. I was much, much happier. I came to realize that I had been deluding myself for years about that job. I should have changed jobs way earlier. Also around that time, the original CEO came to town and organized a dinner with several of the early tech staff (I was employee 11 there). I was surprised to find that only 1 guy at that dinner (out of around 8 people) was still at the company. Once that first round of layoffs happened people abandoned ship like crazy. I think there were more rounds of layoffs too. The former CTO took me aside at the bar we went to after dinner and apologized for laying me off. It was clear that this had been really hard on him. I assured him it turned out well for me. Anyway, the punchline here is that I eventually realized that the PIP was the first step in layoffs. If they got people to resign, they could reduce staff without paying severance. Instead of falling for that, I stuck it out until I got shown the door, but with a very comfortable severance for my 11 years of service. I still think I should have changed jobs as soon as my options had fully paid out.
I think high level tech folks should begin to give PIPs to managers once the tech job market improves. You know a "get better at being a good manager, or practice on someone new. I'll just get a better paying/higher level job somewhere better. When they ask why in my exit interview it'll be because management is worthless".
PIP - Personal Improvement Plan, or as I like to call "Your face doesn't fit anymore". In my case a new manager came in, wanted to centralise the team around him. I was the highest earner in the team and did the majority of the heavy lifting work wise. He put me on PIP with unrealistic expectations,, which I brought up in every meeting. They ended up getting rid of me. Last laugh for me was that I took them to a tribunal and won. Ended up with a better job. The manager even had the audacity to ask me to help them out with things that I had written in my handover that no one understood. I said that it would cost them a very large hourly contract. He even got one of my former colleagues and a good friend to ask me how to do the job. I gave all this evidence to the tribunal and they found in my favour with an offer to either go back or accept a large pay off. As I was already in another role that I enjoyed, I took the very large pay off! Moral is that PIPs are not about performance, but a way to get rid of people they don't want.
Good for you!! Congrats!!
And this is why a sharp intuition should be used at all times, including and especially in situations like this. I have no idea what a PIP is, but I can only assume getting one after having no complaints is pretty shady. Not to mention, your luck came in at the right time with those job offers. God was definitely watching you.
PIP is an HR lie that your performance isn't good enough and they put a plan together to help you work yourself to death for a month or so in desperation before the tell you you failed the plan and they fire you. Usually they decided before its given that you will be fired but legally they want it to look like they made an honest effort to improve things. Usually its a cost cutting game, or sometimes a way to hide a discriminatory activity (e.g. you turn 58 or something and just supposedly can't do the job anymore). In my case they made a mistake because I didn't want to keep the job and was looking for an excuse to quit.
in THIS job market? Unless you're some hyper specialized niche that no one else can do, I highly doubt this is even remotely true in today's climate
OK, that shows what you know I guess. I don't honestly care if its believable or not. Also, if you want a big shock...I'm >60yo. Another impossibility huh? But I should mention I'm really smart and have been a long time. I bet on myself, so this PIP bs was honestly mildly amusing. They should've been more worried about keeping me.
A Director would randomly take a dislike to people and get rid of them, and when his attention turned to me I used my PIP time to look for another job. Then I got PILON and happily started my new job with three months' salary in the bank. Going on a PIP was the best thing to happen to me at work.
Culturals dependent on 'certain social' dynamic usually toxic seem to operate like that. Good for you!
As an ASIC designer you may have had these solid offers within a week. You are an outlier though in the current state of affairs
It could be, I honestly don't know. I've always been a hardware/chip guy and a few headhunters told me such folks are "in demand"...maybe they always are? Dunno. I did know that salaries are lower in the EU (on average) so many engineers come to the US for $$. So to me an obvious place to look first was where demand was reasonable but supply was low. The odd thing for me is after the first offer its easy to get more...its just that first one. I also did the thing I did out of grad school...I looked at who was getting venture deals. In other words, find who is getting funded...they might be looking to grow. But, in the end I ended up working for a US employer that reached out to me because my resume was online. So far the new job is going pretty well but being "new" anywhere is always a bit weird.