I've been working with this Illinois company for 5 years. I was recently put on a performance improvement plan in the summer.
I was unhappy and stressed with the initiative I was forced to take part in where I had to abandon working with my local coworkers and work with others on the other side of the world with short time zone overlaps. I had to learn a completely new coding language, product, and working style on the job and compete with people who have had more than a year experience with the software and product to deliver a functional product to the client. This was without proper training due to lack of resources.
I was put on a PIP but I was left unassigned without any projects. So, essentially I had no way to improve my performance as there were no projects for me to work on and there were no regular check ups with me that were promised on the PIP agreement. This was back in June. I was also given several verbal nudges to start looking for another job and frequent “have you found something yet?”.
This PIP was just recently extended to the end of this month, and I've been given “busy work” to “improve my performance goals on.” I'm aware that a PIP is a formal way of the company starting a firing process. Before signing any sort of agreement at the end of this PIP, is leaving an employee unassigned like this something that I should consider reaching out to a legal expert on, or should I move on and negotiate a package instead?