A reader writes:
I recently went back to work at my large company after a two-week vacation, the first in five years. During a routine 1-1 meeting with my boss, he said that what he had feared had come to pass: he had mentioned to me several months earlier that due to a recent reorg, the new superboss what’s going to look at people’s entire company history, look for any problems, and then have those problems addressed.
Two years ago, I got a not-so-great evaluation. We had temporarily lost 40% of our team to another big project, so it was just me and one other person doing the jobs of five people, and I started to feel burned out after six weeks of this. I told my boss that I was getting really tired and asked if we could switch around duties and that I was going to take a few days off in the meantime. I got reprimanded for not recognizing that I was getting burned out earlier, and my boss said he “forgot” about switching us after a few weeks.
Three years ago, in my first year of this job, I got ill after traveling for work (not Covid) and was out for almost two months. I kept my boss apprised of my status and went to many doctors trying to see what was going on. I never got a diagnosis. My boss never told me I should have talked with HR about short-term disability or the like. And as a result I got a bad evaluation for not meeting all my goals that semester.
I have had three semesters of good evaluations since then. But since this new superboss looked far enough back and saw these things, I am now being given an option to either go on a PIP or take a voluntary separation. My manager also listed a few deficiencies that aren’t really accurate, like pointing out it took me two semesters to do a project when I had to take extended medical leave in the middle of it (which HR approved and I was on short-term disability). I had talked to him about not finishing it in time and he told me not to worry about it, and that I would get it done the next semester.
In general, though, the PIP says that I haven’t been working hard or fast enough. It’s confusing to me that even though I had a good evaluation for last semester, he was still able to list problems.
The benefits are really good at this company, and I still have health issues that I use our medical insurance for. I just maxed out my yearly out-of-pocket expenses for it. So I was looking forward to not having to pay anything the rest of the year. But I’m also not sure if doing the PIP is the best option for me or if I should take the voluntary separation. With the separation, I wouldn’t be allowed to reapply for a few years, but that time away would remove those bad evaluations, which I think have hindered my attempts to move to another team.
But also, if I agree to the PIP and then don’t end up meeting it, I will be fired for performance, which I think exempts me from unemployment benefits.
If I take the voluntary separation, they will pay me four months of my salary. if I go the PIP route and it is unsuccessful, I do not get any money.
If I take the PIP and I am successful at it, my boss says no one has to know I was ever on it. But that also means that those bad evaluations are still there and could show me first for when layoffs happen.
I don’t think it’s a good time to try to find another job, and I don’t think another company will have the same incredible benefits this one does.
I am unsure what to do. I’ve already done a pros and cons list of both. I wrote out my long-term goals and how each option could impact them. I’ve written HR with some questions and am taking a few days to think it through.
It’s really hard to know what’s best for me in the long-term since I don’t know if the PIP is sincerely offered, nor how hard it will be to get another job — I’m a woman in cybersecurity in my mid-40s. What are your thoughts, what looks best to you as an outsider, and what other considerations should I be thinking about?
You should talk to a lawyer.
Something here doesn’t smell right. Managers don’t come in and go digging through people’s history from years earlier to find problems if they’re currently doing well, let alone put them on PIPs for years-ago issues or ask them to choose between that or voluntary separation. That makes zero sense if your work the last year and a half has been good.
But you know when they do do that? When they’re looking for ways to get people to leave. And maybe that’s something that’s happening throughout your company or division because they’re trying to reduce their headcount. But maybe it’s happening because of the health issues and health-related absences you’ve mentioned. The details in your letter are frankly screaming that.
Moreover, there’s a good chance your company has already violated the law in how they’ve dealt with your health issues previously — like that bad evaluation for not meeting your goals when you were out sick for two months, or penalizing you for a project that didn’t get done when you were out on short-term disability. A lawyer could look at all the facts and tell you for sure. And if that is the case, they could use it to get you a much better separation package now (or potentially to protect your job, although this company doesn’t sound like a secure option long-term).
There are some other possibilities that could explain what’s happening, like that your performance genuinely hasn’t been good enough, your manager wasn’t addressing it forthrightly, and the new boss is pushing him to address it now (and that could be legitimate, especially since your manager sounds pretty problematic himself). Even if that’s true, though, violating the law in how they handled your sick leave means a lawyer could likely use that to get you better exit terms now.
It’s also worth noting that if you’re fired for performance, you’ll still generally be eligible for unemployment benefits (unemployment is denied for things like misconduct or clear rules violations, not for “tried but couldn’t perform at the level needed”).
But there’s enough here that sounds really off that you should talk to a lawyer about what’s really going on.
