Howdy folks, long post incoming
Currently employed as a web engineer. I live in Ohio but telecommute to California where the rest of my colleagues are (I was very early when the company was just a start-up). We had offices set up in both IL and CA recently and they've been hiring people like crazy, now exclusively as in-person candidates only. There's maybe a small handful of us that are still 100% remote.
In the last few years, we've hired a lead for our small team (we'll call him Frank). In Franks first year of employment, he really didn't contribute much at all and could often be found with his feet up on his desk. More recently, he has successfully brown-nosed his way to managing the engineering team through another newer member of the executive team. So Frank is now my manager officially, and that's where things become complicated.
I'm well known for being very on top of things around both offices. The people who's job it is to assign me work have been very happy with me and my performance, co-workers find me pleasant to work with, and I genuinely enjoy what I do day to day. To be perfectly clear, I love my job and would do anything to keep it.
Frank and I do not see eye to eye. He is the one person I do not 100% fully get along with, we've had our arguments in the past. There were times I was wrong and I owned up to it publicly. There were also times were Frank was wrong and we shipped things the way I had originally visioned after further review. He's been incredibly careful with what he says (and often vaguely mentions our “disagreements” in the past) but I feel he has kept a grudge.
As you might imagine, the expectations of being online constantly when CA offices are during normal work hours make things difficult (I also have 3 young kids). Since Frank has become my manager, he's become aggressively overbearing, constantly “checking in” and demanding responses when he knows I'm with my kids, and changing rules/guidelines when he sees fit and expecting us to immediately follow suit.
I'm aware things have changed dramatically since we were just a start-up, but some of these demands and expectations are impossible to meet given my home life. I'm expected to work on CA time and only get to see my kids during dinner (assuming he has not scheduled a meeting through it) and bedtime. I'm burnt out. I miss my family and I feel like a bad father.
Fast forward to yesterday, Frank placed me on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) that outlines single occurrences where Frank immediately made up a new rule for what not to do, and listed those occurrences on my PIP as well as other vague “BungusWorkDrama has not been available during work hours” items. I now have 6 weeks to comply and “improve” on these vague demands otherwise I could face termination.
I've spoken with a co-founder of the company I work at that I have a strong connection to and he is encouraging me to implicate Frank in a libel case and passing legal documentation from a lawyer to the CEO directly, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable doing so. There is certainly a case that could be made given some of the items listed for my PIP are plain false but the others are so vague that they could be interpreted as objectively true if you remove the human element of my implications (ie. not being responsive during office hours). This combined with not wanting to be “lawsuit guy” (especially as I've never had to contact one before) makes me hesitant.
I'm just at a total loss, Frank has me by the balls here and HR has been of no help (go figure). Finding this kind of job again in Ohio is impossible, remote jobs have all but completely gone away, and I love where I'm at and the people I work with. Is there anything I can do that doesn't involve getting lawyers involved or being forced to comply? If formally getting lawyers and paperwork involved is truly what I have to do, does anyone have experience where that has actually benefited them?
Obviously keeping things as vague as possible while I still work here. If there are clarifications I can make I'll be sure to edit.