You put the people leaving or who have left down as the low performers over the quarter. You have your quota of low performers. No pip show required.

Yes. In the story it sounds like they talked their manager out of putting them on Pivot (aka PIP):

> I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me

So the manager probably put someone else on Pivot to meet their quota and when the author left now they are down two people. If they knew the author was leaving they would have ranked them dead last, put on PIP, and then part of their quota is met.

Also this quote shows the farce that Pivot is. It sounds like the manager did a PIP-before-the-PIP because they actually wanted them to stay and Pivot is just CYA performance for someone on the way out.

I've never worked at Amazon but people talk about Pivot coming with severance, but the author chose to leave for free. Maybe there's some disadvantage to accepting the severance? Not eligible for future rehire if you accept? Maybe it's just too hard to time getting a new job right at the conclusion of the PIP?

I refused to resign when I got put on pivot. But I did prepare. Why walk away from in my case an additional vesting event and 3+ months salary as severance and getting reimbursed for my unused paid time off?