I was peripherally involved in a project that was going sideways and I was an easy target. In hindsight, while the reason for me to put “on focus”, I honestly admit was maybe 70% my fault. I could have handled a horrible customer better.
On the other hand, the PIP itself was a setup. During the focus period, I met all of the criteria and had perfect CSAT scores on two customer projects I led (Professional Services) and the projects were both done on time, on budget and met requirements
Honestly, I didn’t look at the reasons why I was put on PIP on the remedies to stay until after I had another job. I didn’t even realize it was part of the paperwork.
As soon as my manager starting discussing them, I interrupted them and asked how much was my severance. After they told me 40K+ and paid out vacation, I asked where do I sign?
I knew someone would hire me. By the time the conversation came up, I already had a side contract with a former manager/CTO waiting in the wings for $135/hour. I also knew the director of a major non tech company who was willing to create a position paying more in cash than I was making in all at Amazon to lead the cloud transition and architecture.
We had worked together at AWS and he was the one that suggested I wait for the PIP. I ended up not taking his offer because I didn’t want the stress of the job even though I would have loved working with him again.
My compensation now is somewhere on the high side between CRUD developer and BigTech software dev. I can easily go up after a couple of years if I care too.
I’m working full time at a consulting company because I really don’t want the hassle of going independent.
I also just signed as soon as I knew what they were after. I just asked how much I was getting. No need to put yourself through this. I was a high performer and had been juggling up to 4 jobs by that time and was about to go on my first vacation after 14 months. They said "I looked a bit tired."
Obviously my vacation became an extended vacation instead.
I got a text a few months afterwards where they asked how I had made it look so easy. I'm still perplexed by the whole ordeal. But it was probably for the best anyways.
I don't know if this feels like I'm diminishing your accomplishments, but it's nice to hear your advancement out of CRUD development in your 40s. I'm mid 30s now and have always struggled to get out of this web development rut and jobs that pay $100k despite having 8+ years experience (which is admittedly lackluster) and multiple senior titles.
Thanks for link - it sounds like you had some good non-CRUD experience to be able to discuss that intelligently with him.
Honestly I wish I could find a place to work where I felt like I was friends with people there. I've never had a coworker that was a friend :( But I also work at pretty small companies and they've tended to not have great culture. I'd take a $100k coding job there
> I was peripherally involved in a project that was going sideways and I was an easy target. In hindsight, while the reason for me to put “on focus”, I honestly admit was maybe 70% my fault. I could have handled a horrible customer better.
Quite similar for me at Red Hat, as a Product Manager in what the company loves to tout as being an Engineering-led company.
Engineering had an idea for a smaller product that would be a part of our platform. They created some requirements docs, did a little planning and got approval from Engineering leadership to allocate some resources for a 3 month development of a prototype/POC. At this point, PM did not even know of the existence of this project.
At the end of the three months, it was decided to continue exploring it for another three months. That was when PM was introduced. I was told to do all the research and prep work, product/market fit, customers, even identify potential stakeholders the product could use (there had been none until then). I expressed concern about shoehorning things into what they'd already been building, versus actually doing objective research and planning. I was told that I needed to be a "passionate advocate" for my products.
So I went through the process as best I could, and I saw some potential for it starting to emerge. But not enough to continue beyond the six months. When that was agreed, I was then talked to about how I'd "wasted" six months of engineering resources on a product that "should never have been started". There were a lot of references to "I" over things and decisions that I'd never been a part of.
This was common at Red Hat, in my area. It even happened to me another time. During an Engineering reprioritization/resource allocation, it was decided by Engineering leadership that they had no resources to allocate to a feature a small team had previously been working on. I shopped around, tried to find a new home for it (the feature) but without success.
So I as the PM made an announcement that we were discontinuing our support of this feature. After all, an engineering product with no engineers is not a viable product. That at least got some people interested, and some fired up. "We didn't know this would be the result!" (How didn't you know? You decided to allocate zero resources to it).
And then I got told by PM leadership "You incorrectly decided to cancel this product, leading to the BU having to scramble to find resources to undo your decision."
Bet your ass PM leadership received a flurry of forwarded emails where it was made very clear that Eng had removed resources, and that that had caused the cancelation, not the other way around. And that they had not consulted Product prior to doing so. But still, these things also then lead to my PIP.
> On the other hand, the PIP itself was a setup. During the focus period, I met all of the criteria and had perfect CSAT scores on two customer projects I led (Professional Services) and the projects were both done on time, on budget and met requirements
My PIP, which was also a setup. Documented by me elsewhere here, but essentially, my manager actively lied to me and HR that he'd reviewed all my work products through the PIP process, when Maury voice GDocs access review determined that was a lie (most of them had a "Never viewed" next to his name).
On the other hand, the PIP itself was a setup. During the focus period, I met all of the criteria and had perfect CSAT scores on two customer projects I led (Professional Services) and the projects were both done on time, on budget and met requirements
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963737
Honestly, I didn’t look at the reasons why I was put on PIP on the remedies to stay until after I had another job. I didn’t even realize it was part of the paperwork.
As soon as my manager starting discussing them, I interrupted them and asked how much was my severance. After they told me 40K+ and paid out vacation, I asked where do I sign?
I knew someone would hire me. By the time the conversation came up, I already had a side contract with a former manager/CTO waiting in the wings for $135/hour. I also knew the director of a major non tech company who was willing to create a position paying more in cash than I was making in all at Amazon to lead the cloud transition and architecture.
We had worked together at AWS and he was the one that suggested I wait for the PIP. I ended up not taking his offer because I didn’t want the stress of the job even though I would have loved working with him again.
My compensation now is somewhere on the high side between CRUD developer and BigTech software dev. I can easily go up after a couple of years if I care too.
I’m working full time at a consulting company because I really don’t want the hassle of going independent.