How tell the difference between a retention pay raise and temporary golden handcuffs?
So here is the deal, I resigned from my job. Employer comes back and asserts they want me to carefully consider a 25% pay raise to stay. I decide to stay, and promptly am given a series of impossible deliverables and fast forward a year am on a performance improvement plan because I’ve failed to deliver. 90 days later I’m terminated from the organization. I’ve heard of others with similar circumstances, and can only conclude the following. It looks bad on your manager if you depart on your terms. They have a reserve of funds for just these sorts of situations where the keep you on, but now setup to terminate you with cause for performance issues, which makes your manager look great in the eyes of HR. Would anyone agree there is a thread of truth in this conclusion?
Sounds like a toxic, shitty place to work at
It sure does sound like some IBM teams...
They gave you the raise to keep shit running while they hired your replacement and maximized their investment by giving you more work. Then fired you when it was convenient.
It would look terrible for a manager to give a 25% raise to someone they had to fire the following year. Bad bet, bad judgement. I don't think a manager would intentionally create that situation just to avoid someone leaving.
Exactly. Managers are penalized for their ICs leaving at least where I’m from. Managers are supposed to grow their people and that’s how they are evaluated. People leaving is the biggest testament of failure in that respect. I’ve had multiple managers beg me not to leave and at least consider changes my teams instead of leaving the company. I’ve also had friends managers admit that in many cases people leaving works against them come perf time. If that doesn’t make sense to some people, perhaps their company operates differently or perhaps they are not aware how people managers are evaluated.
Yeah, it looks bad when people leave. I get that. But a manager does not look “great” when someone is fired for poor performance.
People change jobs all the time, for all kinds of reasons. I think most execs/HR get that. It’s only a problem if the attrition rate for one manager is especially high compared to other similar teams.
Maybe they paid you more expecting you to deliver in (prev level + 1) and you failed that?
Never take the counter obviously
Resigning/quitting from a company is liking break up with a partner. Never look back. Move forward to greener pastures! You could have gotten a 30%+ boost in salary by negotiating an offer with a different company.
No... managers who terminate employees for performance don’t look great in the eyes of HR. Great managers inspire and mentor employees to improve their performance. What happened to you sounds shitty, but your conclusion makes no sense.
Except for "the curve". You're only allowed to "inspire and mentor" 90% of your employees. If a manager cannot come up with a head to cut - HR doesn't like it.
Not all companies have a curve like that. We don’t know if OP’s did.