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by samaltmanfried
732 days ago
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I got put on a PIP once. It happened because a project I was leading suffered from a huge scope blowout in the 11th hour, and I missed the deadline. To be honest, it actually really hurt my self-esteem. I had a pretty hard time dealing with it at the time. I now look back and realize that the project couldn't possibly have succeeded even if they had two of me working overtime. I ended up moving on from that position a few weeks after. |
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I had been working on two related projects and was really struggling because the company wanted "something different" than the industry norm. I could please one stakeholder but not another, and it went on like that for awhile. To this day I can't fathom why the various managers involved couldn't meet with _one another_ to sort out their creative differences, but they didn't. I was stuck trying to implement for competing aims that seemed more and more incompatible.
I couldn't see the forest for the trees because all of that was additional to my core work.
So, I didn't see a PIP coming. Got called into an unscheduled meeting one Friday. My boss says "hey didn't we have a meeting this afternoon? Let's hop on Zoom." It was like 4:30 PM and we absolutely didn't have a meeting scheduled. I got told I was being put on a PIP because my project wasn't delivering.
Created a game plan and was told we'd do check-ins in writing (via email) and a Zoom each week until "things were back on track." I busted my ass afresh and I sent a start-of-week email with my agenda for the week, an end-of-week check-in to compare my agenda to work completed, and to schedule a call.
What I absolutely should have seen coming was that I was going to be terminated. I should have seen that coming because I got not a single reply to the check-in emails I sent. I thought the Zoom calls sufficed. Each week I was told "hey, yeah, I saw that, great work! No notes!" But any time I tried to record the call I was admonished; it was clear I could either record the call or we could have the status meeting.
And then they laid a bunch of my team off, and reposted what I'd been doing as a new role. I didn't see it coming at all. Maybe I should have. My boss even said "some people see this coming," and told me it wasn't about performance. I was left hurt and confused. I had just gotten acknowledged for delivering very well on my core KPIs at an all-hands meeting the month prior.
Never meet your heroes, they say.