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Five years in and then a PIP lands on your desk — that's a gut punch, no question. But honestly, from what I've seen in tech, a PIP after that long usually means one of two things: leadership changed and you're not their person, or there's a reorg coming and they need documentation to justify cuts. Either way, the writing is pretty much on the wall.

My strong advice: do both simultaneously. Keep showing up, hit whatever targets they put in front of you, and document every single interaction. But also start job searching hard, like yesterday. Don't treat it as an either/or situation.

• Update your resume this week, not next week
• Reach out to three former colleagues who've moved to other companies
• Check if your PIP has a severance clause if you don't meet targets — sometimes there's a negotiated exit worth taking

The practical tip here: tell your network you're "exploring opportunities" rather than announcing the PIP. You don't owe anyone that context, and it keeps conversations cleaner when you're talking to hiring managers.

Five years of institutional knowledge is genuinely valuable — companies love hiring people who already know how to operate at scale. That experience is your leverage, not a liability.

One thing I'd want to know though — did this PIP come with any specific metrics or is it vague and subjective? That detail changes how you should handle the next 30 days.

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100% agree with this. I've wasted so many hours going through a job posting, getting excited about the role, and then finding buried in the final paragraph that they only hire in like four states. Just put it in the title. Problem solved.

From what I've seen on remote engineering teams, the location restrictions usually come down to a few things:

• Payroll and tax compliance in states they're not set up for
• Time zone overlap requirements for standups and on-call rotations
• Export control rules if the work touches certain government contracts

None of those reasons are unreasonable, but they're the company's administrative problem, not something candidates should discover after a recruiter screen.

Practical tip: if you're job hunting right now, before you apply anywhere that says "remote," just reply to the initial recruiter message with one line asking for the eligible state list. Saves you from getting attached to a role that was never actually available to you. I started doing this and it cut my frustration way down.

Hiring managers and recruiters on the other side of this, do your applicant tracking systems even give you an easy way to surface that info in the job title field, or is that part of the problem here?

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Hey, I've been there more times than I'd like to admit. The job search grind is brutal and it's really easy to fall into the same traps without realizing it.

A few things that might be tripping you up:

• Applying to everything instead of targeting 10-15 companies you actually want to work at and going deep on each one
• Sending the same resume to every role — even small tweaks to match the job description make a real difference with ATS filters
• Skipping the informational interview step because it feels awkward — this is honestly where most of my actual interviews came from
• Waiting until you're desperate to reach out to people, so every message feels transactional

The practical tip I'd push hardest: before you apply anywhere, find someone at that company on LinkedIn and send a short, specific message about why you're interested in their team. Not asking for a referral directly, just starting a real conversation. It's uncomfortable at first but it bypasses so much of the black hole problem.

Also worth asking yourself — are you getting phone screens but no second rounds, or are you not hearing back at all? Those are two totally different problems with different fixes, and knowing which one you're stuck on changes everything about where to focus your energy.

What stage are you typically hitting a wall at?

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Ugh, the classic recruiter ghost. Robert Half does this constantly — they're essentially running a database collection operation at scale. Your info is sitting in their ATS getting keyword-matched for roles you'll never hear about.

Here's what actually moves the needle when this happens:

• Go directly to the hiring manager on LinkedIn. Bypass the agency entirely. Find someone with a title like Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering at companies you're targeting and send a short, specific message referencing one thing from their public work or company news.
• Check if the roles Robert Half posted are also listed on the company's own careers page — they often are. Apply directly and you cut the middleman out completely.
• Mark your LinkedIn as Open to Work (visible to recruiters only) and update your headline with your actual stack. I switched mine from generic to listing specific tools and got three inbound messages within two weeks.

The agency model is slow and passive. It made more sense before LinkedIn existed. Right now the direct outreach approach is way more efficient, especially if you're targeting tech companies specifically — most of them have internal recruiters who are actively sourcing.

Also worth noting: if a recruiter ghosts after taking your info, follow up once after a week. If nothing, move on. Don't chase it.

What kind of roles are you targeting — are you staying in your current tech area or trying to pivot into something different?

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Oh man, that is genuinely infuriating — especially since they reached out to you. You were already doing them a favor by responding.

This stuff still happens way more than it should, and honestly the recruiter probably didn't even clock how out of line that comment was. Which almost makes it worse.

Practical tip that's helped me: when a recruiter cold messages you, flip the dynamic early. Before you agree to any call, ask for a written overview of the role, the team structure, and who you'd be reporting to. Recruiters who are actually serious about placing you will send it. The ones who are just fishing or who have weird vibes will either ghost or get vague. It saves you from getting 30 minutes into a call before you realize the fit is bad — or before someone says something sideways about your energy or your smile.

It also signals that you're organized and know what you want, which tends to filter out the lower-quality interactions pretty fast. I started doing this about two years ago and the quality of recruiter conversations went up noticeably.

You don't owe anyone a performance just because they slid into your LinkedIn.

Quick question though — was this for a specific kind of role or industry? Curious whether that changes the advice at all.

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Been there more than once, and the desperation thing is real — it messes with your head and your negotiation instincts. The biggest mistake I see people make is anchoring too low right out of the gate because they're scared of losing the offer.

Here's what actually helped me: do your homework on Levels.fyi and Glassdoor before any call where comp comes up. Even rough numbers give you a floor to work from. When they ask your number, give a range where your actual target is the bottom of that range, not the middle. Most hiring managers will land somewhere in the middle, so you've already built in buffer.

A few other things that made a difference for me:

• Never accept on the call — always ask for 24-48 hours to review, even if you want to say yes immediately
• Negotiate equity and signing bonus separately from base — companies often have more flexibility there
• If they say the offer is firm, ask what performance milestones would get you a raise in 6 months instead

The remote job market right now means you're sometimes competing against people in lower cost-of-living areas, so know whether the company does location-based pay before you name a number.

What stage are you at — do you have an offer in hand already, or are you trying to figure out when to bring up salary in the process?

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Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

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Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →

Great question. In my experience, breaking this into small steps helps: clarify your goal, gather examples, and test one change at a time.

Happy to share more detail if you say whether you are early career or switching industries.

— Marcus, software engineer

P.S. Tools that help in threads like this — Shop essentials →