mushakesa
- Akouto Vonwogbe was a junior project manager who was fired after being placed on a PIP.
- She says her depression worsened after being fired.
- Vonwogbe doesn't measure success by how high she climbs the corporate ladder anymore.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Akuto Vonwogbe, a content creator in Los Angeles. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I was fired from my job, and I'm so thankful that I was. Ultimately, I deserved to get fired and am much happier now.
From the start, it didn't feel right
I was a junior project manager and was originally attracted to the job because it was at a tech company with many creative aspects. I was supervising people doing video editing for $62,000 a year.
After I got the job in November 2021, I felt this weird sensation, like "Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?" I didn't have much experience in project management, but the company was on a hiring spree that year, and I had worked alongside project managers in previous roles.
To succeed in the position, you had to have organizational and management skills, good attention to detail, and the ability to clearly communicate with as little back and forth as possible. For example, you have to give all the details you can in one to two emails to the client or the creator so that they know exactly what should be done.
I simply don't have these kinds of skills and I made mistakes at work:
We were supposed to use certain verbiage with clients, and I wasn't using them properly.
Sometimes, certain clips had to be in a video, and I should have checked they were included — and I would miss something.
My grammar sucks, and there was a time when I sent the wrong pricing information.
I'm not very good at leading people. I don't have an alpha personality.
My mistakes kept adding up, and the job ultimately wasn't a good fit for me or what I wanted.
It took me time to learn the terms
I'm also a very slow learner. It takes me time to grasp things, so I put in a lot of work to get myself up to speed.
At the beginning of my job, I went to meetings where people used a lot of marketing jargon I didn't understand. It was confusing and made me feel dumb. I felt out of my element and took notes to study them afterward.
I asked my coworkers questions and they helped me, and I asked my manager clarifying questions and she would help me, too. It was really frustrating for me at first. But I finally caught up, and my manager even said I was doing a good job.
I was surprised by my performance review
I was in my role for about 10 months when it was time for a companywide performance review. I also submitted a self-review and went into the review thinking I did pretty well the last few months — I had worked so hard to get up to speed.
To my surprise, my manager said I wasn't meeting expectations in my new role. I was on a team that worked on more challenging projects, and I expressed that I thought I should have been placed on a different team.
So, they transitioned me to a different team and put me on a 30-day PIP, or performance improvement plan.
I was shocked. I didn't expect it. I knew I wasn't doing the best job, but I didn't think I was that bad to the point where I needed to be put on a PIP, especially because I thought I had already been improving.
I thought my PIP was designed to help me succeed
My PIP actually reinvigorated me. I genuinely believed leadership wanted me to get better and stay.
I thought this was good — they wouldn't have done this if they thought I was horrible and just wanted me gone.
I had weekly check-ins with my manager during the four weeks of my PIP. She seemed genuine about helping me become successful, or that's what I thought.
I should have known something was off
At the end of the month, I had to give a presentation. I left the meeting feeling really good, like I was about to get off PIP.
A few days later, my weekly 1-on-1 meeting with my manager suddenly switched from Tuesday to 9:30 a.m. on a Friday. That should have been a red flag that something was off.
The Friday meeting rolled around, and I thought I was getting off PIP. I thought we could move forward and that maybe I'd even get a little raise.
Then, literally a second after my manager logged onto our Zoom call, an HR person joined. I knew then that it was over.
My anxiety went through the roof, and there was even a point where I was sort of begging them to stay. But I knew they had already made this decision and that it couldn't be undone.
I asked my manager, "You said I was doing really well. What happened?" I'll never forget when she said it was a little too late and that she was sorry. I replied, "No, you're not." And then I hung up very dramatically.
I was really depressed
I was angry for the first few days, and then I fell into a depression because I didn't know what to do about money. What am I going to do now? Are people still going to hire me now that I've been fired? Am I going to end up homeless? Will I be unable to feed my cat?
I had a lot of suicidal thoughts because I didn't know what to do. I've always had depression, but being fired made it much worse. I didn't have much savings and was only given severance for about 2 weeks. Unemployment kicked in, and I signed up for food stamps.
Luckily, I found another job right away
I got super lucky. I posted that I got fired on LinkedIn, and while it was scary to post, it didn't feel like a big deal to share since so many others were also being laid off across industries — plus, I like to be open.
A recruiter saw that post and contacted me for a game show production job that started almost immediately. It was a six-month contract role with no benefits and a pay cut of about $25 an hour. I loved it — I was way happier and more comfortable at work.
I learned that how a job makes you feel is really important
My previous job was more glamorous and came with perks like trips to New York and free food. But I never felt comfortable there because it wasn't the right fit. I didn't want to manage creators, I wanted to create.
Looking back, I feel like I deserved to get fired because I just wasn't good at the job — it wasn't right for me, and, honestly, I should've been fired well before my PIP.
I know that there are other legitimate reasons the job wasn't a good fit (like, I didn't get sufficient training and I felt I was on the wrong team), but it doesn't change the fact that I wasn't very good at the job for the first six months.
I'm no longer trying to climb the corporate ladder
I don't measure success in that way anymore. My health is more important than having a really good job, and companies don't care that much about you. They care about profit and money, and that's just not a part of my life goals anymore.
I don't think I'll return to working a corporate job soon because I'll just be a number there. The great thing about my current job as a content creator is I don't have anybody to report to. I'm not worried about getting fired.