I am in a work related quagmire. I have an open offer to join another team within the company. It’s local, I would be managing a bigger team and my scope would increase. The downside being it’s an internal only facing team with no revenue and only builds folds for internal employees – which means it’s a dispensable org for all good purposes. And anytime layoffs have happened in past this org is first target coz honestly everyone can live without the tools it builds.

On the other hand in my own team I am being handcuffed into putting a report of mine into performance improvement plan with specific intention of laying him off no matter what. My manager basically said i don’t care if he improves 10x, he needs to go. I am at a losing end of this convo because I really don’t feel it’s the right thing to do to a person who is not really bad. He is showing all the right indicators and should have never been in this situation but is now thanks to “the management”. I also don’t like my boss much anyway (have posted about him enough here). That said the team I manage is amazing and my extended team mates are also good. I am well established and the risk of org shutting down is lower even though we may not be making much money, yet.

I feel like I am stuck between a rock and hard place. I don’t want to keep working here but the option I have is not great either. And I need to wrap up this performance plan by March end so I don’t have too much time either. This is the part of management job I truly hate.