| People don't appreciate what a total mindfuck it is to go through this. - You aren't told you're being targeted to be managed out when it starts. Managers often do not tell you that you're beginning phase 1 of getting managed out, whatever it's called. - You've always known this could happen to you or anyone else, so you are always guessing if that email from your boss is just a normal email or was it the beginning of a paper trail? You sense something different, but is that just in your head? - You might think you'd realize you're being managed out, reading the room, but that assumes there's a rational foreseeable reason to PIP you. Often there is not. Management gets PIP targets and someone has to get PIPed. It can be you for political reasons above your head that you are oblivious to. - You are subtlely being setup to fail, and even if you don't explicitly fail, finding a reason to frame your performance as deficient is always possible. - There is always something you could have done better, and nothing ever goes 100% perfectly. Those things will be magnified 100x. Are they being over magnified? Or were you delusional to minimize them? - To be on the receiving end of this is totally disorienting. It's basically gas lighting. Suddenly everything you do is somehow deficient in some way, even when you thought you were doing well. How could you have not realized this? Is this proof you can't trust your own judgment? That you're incompetent? - Your paper trails are useless. You can always be criticized for subjective reasons, like your style of communication, some 20/20 hindsight way you arguably could have done things even better, you're "not showing enough leadership", yes you're doing your core job but at your level we also expect XYZ, etc. - This can go on for months, working 60-80 hour weeks, on little sleep, with constant stress. You start to question your ability to assess reality. What else are you missing if you didnt realize you were screwing up so badly? Are you doing this outside of work too? - You think, wait, this has never happened to me before, but maybe it was just luck until now. Was imposter syndrome not a syndrome this whole time? Was I actually an imposter and this is what it feels like to be found out? At the end of this gas lighting psychological manipulation marathon, you have a hard time knowing up from down and you're fired. Who do you talk to about this to get your bearings back? You are ashamed this happened, and yet you're also not because bullshit PIPing is famous. It's not your fault. Or is it? Anyway you probably should find a way to process this right? Or maybe it's best to shove it deep into your subconscious and move on. Isn't this what therapists are for? Sure, go explain that your mind is vaguely screwed up from getting fired from a $300k/year job for...reasons? Did you screw up? Well no, but technically yes, but in reality no? Maybe? How the hell do you even articulate this without sounding like an incoherent spoiled brat? |
$175k/year starting salary for new grads, which is INSANE. Keep in mind that for the first year, at Amazon, you also get this in cash.
If you took a young, competent, blue collar worker that makes $65k a year with honest work, and said, hey would you like to do your job at 3 times the salary, but there may be some stressful weeks, and you may have to deal with some managerial bullshit that may get you laid off, he would be head over heels excited. He would take the job, save every extra penny he could get, ride it out for as long as he can, and if shit got too rough, he would just walk away with a nice downpayment for a house and a smile on his face.
But modern software engineers seem to think that they not only MUST make that money, but continue making it, all for being able to write some extremely simple OOP code, pass some leetcode questions that one can memorize, and know the difference between relational and non relational database.
Bottom line is, if you can't manage your money/expenses to the point where you have enough runway to walk away at your job at any time because of stress, or you can't figure out what is going on with your role and manager and be able to navigate around that, then you simply don't deserve these high salaries. Plenty of lower paying jobs around.