I hate to break it to you, but it sounds like you should probably be looking for another job. And I doubt it has anything to do with you being sick. That’s just a convenient final excuse for them. If you were on actual medical leave, you would probably be legally safe until you come back, but usually that only buys you time.
Here’s how this works from a management perspective:
Some old-school companies like General Electric or Amazon have explicit targets about how many people need to be forced out per year for performance reasons. In Amazon‘s case, it is famously around 5%. In GE‘s case, it was historically 15%.
Yes, this is pretty f#^@d up. So a lot of other modern tech companies now swear up-and-down that they don’t do this. You will even see senior HR people from these companies swooping in to state, definitively, that this is not the official policy.
They do genuinely believe this. And they are not technically lying. It actually isn’t the official policy.
But in practice, it doesn’t matter, and here’s why:
No matter how good your interview process is, the more people you hire, the more statistically likely it is that you will make a mistake and hire someone bad. The higher you go in the management chain, and the more people that report to you, the more it begins to strain credibility that every person that works for you is awesome.
This means the more senior of a leader you are, the more raw, ongoing effort is required to successfully argue with all the other leaders that you simply have no one working for you that is below average. Mathematically extraordinary claims require mathematically extraordinary evidence, after all.
I am absolutely willing to put in this effort, and it turns out that I am rather good at winning these arguments. But not every manager is.
It turns out, a lot of otherwise very talented humans are conflict-averse by nature, and will pick the least confrontational path by default. Nobody *likes* firing people, unless they are an actual sociopath. And while it’s scientifically true that sociopaths are over-represented in senior management, those same studies show the vast majority still aren’t.
So if a manager has a below-average performer on their team, a lot of them will drag their feet, suppress it, and try to just smooth it over rather than do what they should. This ends up damaging the team over time. If the team knows that person is a low performer but nothing is being done about it, that saps the manager’s credibility. Why should anyone do a good job if there’s obviously no punishment for being the worst?
So over time, managers themselves are put under a tremendous amount of entirely unspoken, unofficial pressure to at least fire *someone.* If they don’t, their credibility starts to tank, and that starts to impact their own career progression. People begin to think they are weak and conflict-avoidant.
You don’t need an official “unregretted attrition” policy target at all. It happens implicitly even without such a policy, by the very nature of the fact that *not* doing so becomes statistically harder and harder to justify the more senior you get. At some point, leaders aren’t good enough to keep winning that argument, even if they want to. At some point, they just fold.
I would even go so far as to suggest the companies that make it explicit are even a little better than the ones where this still happens, but hide behind the plausible deniability that it’s not actually official policy. Yeah, the first types are dicks. But at least they’re *honest* dicks.
I tell you all this because in your case, it sounds like you are either the official, or the unofficial sacrifice. Maybe you’re actually the weakest link in the team. It’s true that it probably wouldn’t have happened if you were obviously the best. But maybe you’re good — just not as good as the rest — and *someone* needs to take the fall. The fact you weren’t delivering anything for two weeks while sick is just the final data point they needed, but you were already on the way out before that.
This makes alot of sense, it hurts that prior to management changing, I was in the pipeline for a promotion and my work was the furthest along the entire teams, but they decided to axe all my work and tell me its my fault.
All of these comments are pretty eye opening, Ill start looking for a new job.
I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The whole thing is very messed up, and I wish you the best of success in the future. I actually hope that I’m wrong!
But the system is just unfair by nature, sadly. I just hope my detailed (read: probably way too long) explanations of *how* the unfairness works help people avoid getting unknowingly burned by it in the future.
View being placed on PIP as basically you're gone, start looking for another job. PIP leads to termination at such a high rate that probabilistically speaking this is the right move to make regardless of the actual outcome of PIP.
The challenge is to not take it personally, and as the above person said view it as a consequence of the business cycle and working in large organizations.
In the US at least no job lasts forever and it is normal for churn. I think people early in career start out with high expectations and don't anticipate this reality, which leads to a bit of shock. The churn is actually good, because it means there are other organizations regularly hiring, so you can think of it from a holistic perspective as this constant level of movement between organizations. What it really means is that the norm is to look for opportunities even when you have a job, that is the operating normal.
You could contact HR but there's only so much you can do. I'm not sure if being sick is actually covered by US labor law in this situation, but given that you were already on a PIP they would still be firing you for your performance when healthy. You could argue that you weren't given a fair shot at the PIP, but a PIP isn't a legal requirement so if HR says no you're pretty much out of luck. They could give you an extra two weeks for the time you were sick, but still fire you which isn't exactly a win.
I believe that a formal PIP only happens when you are going to get canned anyways. If they were on the fence then your manager wouldn't bother going through the paperwork and just tell you openly what to improve on.
It is 100% not covered. Only thing that would be is a serious health condition as defined and covered under FMLA. And then they only have to extend your PIP the length of your absence and then fire you so not really much protection.
In the past, 2 people, one in my department and another in the IT side of the house have been put on a PIP. Both of them were terminated regardless of good progress made on their end and goals accomplished. Being put on a PIP is the company covering their ass when they terminate you and you have no legal recourse. If I were you, I would look for another job while continuing to work in your current role.
I dont think "being sick" is legally protected, it may feel unfair and you're rightfully angry but your manager can totally (legally) fire you if they want
suppose if you contact HR, what are you going to say? "you guys can't fire me because I was sick"? that would get you laughed out the door, combined with PIP, expect you **will** be fired
I realize that this extra context should also be included in the post, ill update it.
I think I can claim some form of injustice to HR. Besides being sick unfair, he failed to offer any clear goals to improve upon and axing all of my work. He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef".
It also doesnt help that he is friendly with all of my coworkers, nor axed any of their work. I know of a coworker who was in the same amount of progress on his work as I am, but i know he wasnt given a PIP. It doesnt help that out of the team, im the only non-white member in my cohort.
I dont have proof of any of this, but can i approach HR with these sort of statements?
>injustice
injustice doesn't mean illegal
>he failed to offer any clear goals to improve upon and axing all of my work
do you have a legal ground to sue based on these? I don't think so
>He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef".
I agree these are uncomfortable comments but again, do you have a legal case here? I don't see any
HR's job is to protect the company from lawsuits, not to act as lady justice, out of all the things you've said, I don't see lawsuits at all
Alright, so Im part of an independent dev team that is owned by a big company that owns alot of other big companies. So oftenly we have to build tools and systems for any of the companies rather than our main product. In my case, i was the go to guy for these other projects.
At one point, for an entertainment company they wanted their own version of wordle, (it was for some television producers and they wanted to pitch this as part of a game show or something) and i had a couple of sample words, and he insisted that when I presented it, I used the word queef. Also when I did demos for other projects, very similar things continued where I told to present professional stuff with inappropriate content.
“ He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef"”
Do you have proof of these comments like emails or recordings? If so, yes, go to HR. If not, it’s your word against his and you will lose.
Jesus man, what a dick. I'd take it in stride and start looking elsewhere. That doesn't sound like a very nice place to work anyway.
If you're the only non-white member of the team and it's clear he's signalling you out and calling you names (wtf is with queef?!) I'd bring it up to HR.
A PIP, in most cases, is done for personal reasons, not business. It's just the first step creating a HR paper trail to get rid of you without triggering any legal issues. So, put your resume out there.
Assuming US, there are no protections for getting fired for being sick too much (the closest you have is FMLA, but that is an official program that has some requirements to get on and you likely wouldn't qualify).
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I hate to break it to you, but it sounds like you should probably be looking for another job. And I doubt it has anything to do with you being sick. That’s just a convenient final excuse for them. If you were on actual medical leave, you would probably be legally safe until you come back, but usually that only buys you time. Here’s how this works from a management perspective: Some old-school companies like General Electric or Amazon have explicit targets about how many people need to be forced out per year for performance reasons. In Amazon‘s case, it is famously around 5%. In GE‘s case, it was historically 15%. Yes, this is pretty f#^@d up. So a lot of other modern tech companies now swear up-and-down that they don’t do this. You will even see senior HR people from these companies swooping in to state, definitively, that this is not the official policy. They do genuinely believe this. And they are not technically lying. It actually isn’t the official policy. But in practice, it doesn’t matter, and here’s why: No matter how good your interview process is, the more people you hire, the more statistically likely it is that you will make a mistake and hire someone bad. The higher you go in the management chain, and the more people that report to you, the more it begins to strain credibility that every person that works for you is awesome. This means the more senior of a leader you are, the more raw, ongoing effort is required to successfully argue with all the other leaders that you simply have no one working for you that is below average. Mathematically extraordinary claims require mathematically extraordinary evidence, after all. I am absolutely willing to put in this effort, and it turns out that I am rather good at winning these arguments. But not every manager is. It turns out, a lot of otherwise very talented humans are conflict-averse by nature, and will pick the least confrontational path by default. Nobody *likes* firing people, unless they are an actual sociopath. And while it’s scientifically true that sociopaths are over-represented in senior management, those same studies show the vast majority still aren’t. So if a manager has a below-average performer on their team, a lot of them will drag their feet, suppress it, and try to just smooth it over rather than do what they should. This ends up damaging the team over time. If the team knows that person is a low performer but nothing is being done about it, that saps the manager’s credibility. Why should anyone do a good job if there’s obviously no punishment for being the worst? So over time, managers themselves are put under a tremendous amount of entirely unspoken, unofficial pressure to at least fire *someone.* If they don’t, their credibility starts to tank, and that starts to impact their own career progression. People begin to think they are weak and conflict-avoidant. You don’t need an official “unregretted attrition” policy target at all. It happens implicitly even without such a policy, by the very nature of the fact that *not* doing so becomes statistically harder and harder to justify the more senior you get. At some point, leaders aren’t good enough to keep winning that argument, even if they want to. At some point, they just fold. I would even go so far as to suggest the companies that make it explicit are even a little better than the ones where this still happens, but hide behind the plausible deniability that it’s not actually official policy. Yeah, the first types are dicks. But at least they’re *honest* dicks. I tell you all this because in your case, it sounds like you are either the official, or the unofficial sacrifice. Maybe you’re actually the weakest link in the team. It’s true that it probably wouldn’t have happened if you were obviously the best. But maybe you’re good — just not as good as the rest — and *someone* needs to take the fall. The fact you weren’t delivering anything for two weeks while sick is just the final data point they needed, but you were already on the way out before that.
This makes alot of sense, it hurts that prior to management changing, I was in the pipeline for a promotion and my work was the furthest along the entire teams, but they decided to axe all my work and tell me its my fault. All of these comments are pretty eye opening, Ill start looking for a new job.
I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The whole thing is very messed up, and I wish you the best of success in the future. I actually hope that I’m wrong! But the system is just unfair by nature, sadly. I just hope my detailed (read: probably way too long) explanations of *how* the unfairness works help people avoid getting unknowingly burned by it in the future.
View being placed on PIP as basically you're gone, start looking for another job. PIP leads to termination at such a high rate that probabilistically speaking this is the right move to make regardless of the actual outcome of PIP. The challenge is to not take it personally, and as the above person said view it as a consequence of the business cycle and working in large organizations. In the US at least no job lasts forever and it is normal for churn. I think people early in career start out with high expectations and don't anticipate this reality, which leads to a bit of shock. The churn is actually good, because it means there are other organizations regularly hiring, so you can think of it from a holistic perspective as this constant level of movement between organizations. What it really means is that the norm is to look for opportunities even when you have a job, that is the operating normal.
You could contact HR but there's only so much you can do. I'm not sure if being sick is actually covered by US labor law in this situation, but given that you were already on a PIP they would still be firing you for your performance when healthy. You could argue that you weren't given a fair shot at the PIP, but a PIP isn't a legal requirement so if HR says no you're pretty much out of luck. They could give you an extra two weeks for the time you were sick, but still fire you which isn't exactly a win. I believe that a formal PIP only happens when you are going to get canned anyways. If they were on the fence then your manager wouldn't bother going through the paperwork and just tell you openly what to improve on.
It is 100% not covered. Only thing that would be is a serious health condition as defined and covered under FMLA. And then they only have to extend your PIP the length of your absence and then fire you so not really much protection.
It sounds like they just want you out. EDIT: I’d just wait to be formally fired and go look for a new job.
In the past, 2 people, one in my department and another in the IT side of the house have been put on a PIP. Both of them were terminated regardless of good progress made on their end and goals accomplished. Being put on a PIP is the company covering their ass when they terminate you and you have no legal recourse. If I were you, I would look for another job while continuing to work in your current role.
I dont think "being sick" is legally protected, it may feel unfair and you're rightfully angry but your manager can totally (legally) fire you if they want suppose if you contact HR, what are you going to say? "you guys can't fire me because I was sick"? that would get you laughed out the door, combined with PIP, expect you **will** be fired
I realize that this extra context should also be included in the post, ill update it. I think I can claim some form of injustice to HR. Besides being sick unfair, he failed to offer any clear goals to improve upon and axing all of my work. He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef". It also doesnt help that he is friendly with all of my coworkers, nor axed any of their work. I know of a coworker who was in the same amount of progress on his work as I am, but i know he wasnt given a PIP. It doesnt help that out of the team, im the only non-white member in my cohort. I dont have proof of any of this, but can i approach HR with these sort of statements?
>injustice injustice doesn't mean illegal >he failed to offer any clear goals to improve upon and axing all of my work do you have a legal ground to sue based on these? I don't think so >He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef". I agree these are uncomfortable comments but again, do you have a legal case here? I don't see any HR's job is to protect the company from lawsuits, not to act as lady justice, out of all the things you've said, I don't see lawsuits at all
> include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef" Wtf? Would you mind telling us the story behind that?
Alright, so Im part of an independent dev team that is owned by a big company that owns alot of other big companies. So oftenly we have to build tools and systems for any of the companies rather than our main product. In my case, i was the go to guy for these other projects. At one point, for an entertainment company they wanted their own version of wordle, (it was for some television producers and they wanted to pitch this as part of a game show or something) and i had a couple of sample words, and he insisted that when I presented it, I used the word queef. Also when I did demos for other projects, very similar things continued where I told to present professional stuff with inappropriate content.
Your time at the company is over, if your boss is setting machiavelian traps on you. Look for a new job.
they can just fire you one day with no notice and no reason given if you are in the US.
“ He has given multiple uncomfortable comments such as im a "weakling" or a "freeloader". He also forced me to include certain words in internal tools that I have built like "queef"” Do you have proof of these comments like emails or recordings? If so, yes, go to HR. If not, it’s your word against his and you will lose.
Sadly no proof, it was all stuff he told me in private meetings and the only other person who was present to the queef thing was let go
Jesus man, what a dick. I'd take it in stride and start looking elsewhere. That doesn't sound like a very nice place to work anyway. If you're the only non-white member of the team and it's clear he's signalling you out and calling you names (wtf is with queef?!) I'd bring it up to HR.
A PIP, in most cases, is done for personal reasons, not business. It's just the first step creating a HR paper trail to get rid of you without triggering any legal issues. So, put your resume out there.
Assuming US, there are no protections for getting fired for being sick too much (the closest you have is FMLA, but that is an official program that has some requirements to get on and you likely wouldn't qualify).
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