If nepotism, cronyism, and gaslighting were Olympic sports, ETC would win the gold.
Great until it’s not, at least in the Project Management world at ETC. Turnover in this department has been horrendous and 95% of the PMs have been there for only about 2-3 years, which seems to be the point where people either burnout or fall out of favor and get constructively dismissed through a false PIP.
In my roughly 3 year tenure there I’ve watched the same pattern unfold to two previously well performing colleagues only to became a victim of it myself. I’ve heard stories about others as well.
I was always given stellar annual performance reviews where I was deemed to be exceeding expectations and performing the functions of my job well only to then apparently fall out of favor suddenly where I was then accused of having never performed my job well in the first place and then I was placed on a PIP.
The initial reason I was given for being placed on the PIP was for a vague customer complaint that I was apparently not allowed to know any details of. This was followed by a list of supposed examples of poor performance as related to the projects I managed. When I presented the full summaries of evidence including emails, screenshots, and other documents all of which completely contradicted their accusations, the info was ignored, I was accused of being argumentative, and with every week that followed new and made up accusations were made by my manager and HR to keep my PIP a moving target.
The PIP was obviously never intended to improve performance because my performance had been satisfactory anyway and all my projects were in good standing. The PIP was obviously used primarily as a paper trail to try and justify dismissing me without me being entitled to my unemployment benefits. This was also used as a personal attack on me meant to defame my professional reputation.
I hold a bachelor’s of science in Business Management and have been a PMP certified project manager working in the world of lighting and controls for over a decade.
I recommend that if you work at ETC that you document every aspect of your work including your daily tasks and communications, all performance reviews, all conversations and notes from meetings with management, and video and audio record all meetings with management as the law allows. Backup all this information and save it for a rainy day.
Benefits aren’t great and compensation could be better.
If you seek diversity look anywhere else.
Nice place to work if you’re married to, related to, went to the same school as, or play golf with members of management.
