Long story short, I was line-managing a team of 8 devs and the company added four more members to my team following their purchase of a mid-sized startup. One of those team members is my dad, who is 63 years old. He's always been a C/ASM developer, having worked on database engines, RTOS systems, a device drivers for network devices. His Github includes mini operating systems, language compilers, and encryption programs. I get along great with my dad, and so we tended to laugh about the weirdness of the situation. I never really delved much into his work since I've always been a Java/C# developer and besides, his work didn't intersect much with the business side of our core product. I can't get into specifics of what he works on, because that'll make it too easy to guess the company I work for. He hasn't been here long enough for an annual review or anything, so thankfully I haven't had to deal with that. I always approved his vacation requests online without question and although I did schedule bi-weekly 1-1 meetings as we're encouraged to do, we'd talk about almost anything but work. So now, the company has a bit of a downturn in the business AND I got a new manager they hired from the outside. I have no idea who this guy's father-in-law is, but he's brutally incompetent. The thing is, he manages to sound intelligent in the manner that he speaks, but he's pretty ignorant. So one of his first orders of business is to put x number of people on PIP. He asked us to provide him a list of people to PIP and he's get back to us. Well, he sends me back a modified version of the list which removed people I had on there previously (I have no idea why) and he adds my dad on the list. I go to speak to him and ask him for the reasoning behind the changes. I made sure not to only ask about my dad. But when it came to my dad, he explained that he was too expensive and given the climate, they need to find someone cheaper. He went on to say that because C has been around for decades and fewer and fewer applications are being built in C, it's relatively easy to find C devs, and also at 63 years old, my dad is probably thinking about retirement (he never said he was) and they need to get someone in to learn the system. He offered to move my dad to another team so I don't PIP him myself -- but he never did. And now it's PIP time. I of course told my dad what was going on, and he told me to go ahead with the PIP. He's trying to assure me that he really doesn't give a shit about the job or the PIP. He's urging me to not fuck up my career by refusing -- if I don't PIP him someone else will. My mom, on the other hand, Is absolutely horrified that I would ever even consider going along with it. I'm confused at this point. Any thoughts from the braintrust here at Blind? TC: 275K + ~120K #layoffs #career
Cool story bro
In theory your dad should have a pretty buff retirement by now, I would imagine he should be in a position where he can retire. Sounds like he's cool with it, do what you gotta do.
He does. I genuinely think he doesn't care that much. For practical purposes, it means nothing. It's just the principle of it that bothers me.
He probably wants whatever the severance payment is going to be. Always better to retire with a little extra change in your pocket.
Don't pip your dad. Don't hurt your family in any situation or you'll regret it for years to come. Good story tho.
If this story is even true, this was fucked up the day you were in your dad's reporting chain. There's a reason companies don't allow such conflict of interest. It's your HR that needs to be pipped.
It was a huge conflict of interests to be put on the same team as a relative in the first place. What kind of a f*ked up company does that??? You must have been on separate teams!
Yes, that was supposed to happen. First of all, it took HR almost two months to acknowledge that we were related despite my informing them via email twice. They kept promising they would move him to another team, but they never did.
I would quit before doing that. I would tell my dad to quit too because let’s be real he’s going to get fired anyway whether you like it or not. But if you respect your father at all you would quit before doing anything like that. Have some morals over a little bit of pocket change. This isn’t even really big money.
In fact you don’t need to do it. Just refuse to do it and they’ll PIP you with severance. Then your dad will also get severance
Choose death over disrespect. That man raised you into who you are today. Fuck these other clowns.
Push to offer a nice package as an alternative at the beginning of the PIP. Dad gets money out the door to kickstart retirement, you both avoid the PIP, and you come out looking great for avoiding a lengthy process to boot. Also the story of how he retired will be hilarious for years to come "those idiots tried to PIP me, my son and I took them for a ride instead". Then leave for another job ASAP. If this story is even remotely true you need to GTFO, that place sounds woefully mismanaged, more bullshit will surely follow.
It is. They actually had a worse case last year. The finance director's wife was working in finance. She wasn't reporting directly to him, but he was at least her skip. At some point, he filed for divorce while she was working there. HR didn't do anything about it for months despite the drama that ensued. She left the company, but I think they pressured to get her out or paid her off .. I don't have the full story. So yeah, they're completely fucked up.
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