this seems pretty normal to me. not that i've ever experienced it directly, but it just doesn't seem out of the ordinary or 'incredible' or 'so weird' at all f

this seems pretty normal to me. not that i've ever experienced it directly, but it just doesn't seem out of the ordinary or 'incredible' or 'so weird' at all for a large-ish company trying to be overly aggressive about getting rid of people that they perceive to be not productive enough. maybe i'd stipulate that this was 'weird' or 'a bit weird'. maybe. as another commenter suggested -- prob someone is doing some type of cya operation. or a company is adopting the 'cull the herd no matter what' operation that amazon or whoever has -- so that even good performers have to get fired so managers can meet their '20% per year fired' quota. i don't think it's fair, or decent, or necessarily good for the company's bottom line, but it _could_ be decent/good/great for the company's bottom line -- it certainly seems to be working for amazon/their shareholders and the top performers who have not killed themselves or been killed. if a company manages to scare the shit out of devs, and those devs respond by being the scared, obedient people they've been all their lives, and they start working more and harder, and/or maybe they really need healthcare (for Americans), then it could be to the company's long term benefit. eg/ie people will work hard if their lives depend on it -- need those expensive cancer drugs, etc. since you seem more threatened/scared than pissed, you're prob not a senior dev, or you're tied down b/c of h1-b visa or similar, or maybe you're not in america or some other geography where you could just bounce to the next job - ideally a job that wasn't as horrible. feel bad for you. i'd set up a 30-minute meeting with manager stat. i would tell the truth -- you were surprised, you didn't know this person, what was going on?, etc. i would put it on the table since you're already on the way out, whether you know it not -- you should be direct, imo -- "am I going to be fired?" ask the manager, "why did you not tell me i was in danger of being PIPd?" or "is this normal here at 'x'? if someone gets PIPd, then someone they do not know, obviously not their manager, just schedules a call with them out of the blue, no warnings, no nothing?" you _could_ act aggrieved/pissed/etc., but i feel like at this point you're done there, they would only have kept you if you were truly a superstar, and even then they prob still would have fired you to make their quota -- you're the new fish -- that's the way the world turns. go get a job at a company that is not quite as horrible. sorry this happened to you. life goes on. you'll have a good story to tell your kids (assuming the world lasts that long), and you're learning first-hand the importance of unions, worker co-ops, etc.