I've shared parts of this before but it seems apropos of the topic at hand.

I was working a Fortune 500 corporation. Been there 5 or 6 years. Pay was ok. Culture was meh. Technology was open source. I was happy enough but figured it was time to start looking around for other opportunities. Coincidentally, just about this time I get promoted to senior and the senior gets promoted between me and my current boss to be my new boss. He was not really prepared to manage people, was not given any training or preparation for the new role, was still expected to mainly write code, and probably preferred it that way. Because I'm pretty good at expressing myself and he wasn't so much, I think he also felt threatened by me.

We had had a perfectly fine working relationship before this. But I started to hear from other team members that new boss was badmouthing me behind my back. Didn't make me feel good, but shit I'm doing my job and, you know, you can count up my story points at the end of the sprint if anyone's worried.

Things came to head during my first annual review under new boss when boss gives me a mediocre review. Tells me I ask too many questions, and says I don't have adequate knowledge of our applications. I'm kinda dumbfounded. I point out to him that, besides having worked on most the applications for several years, I'm the one who set up the wiki and has written most the application documentation found therein. His reply: "That's not knowledge. Knowledge is what's in your head." I'm at a loss. I felt like I was being gaslighted before that word had entered the popular vernacular and provided me just the word I was looking for to explain the strange feelings I was feeling.

I made the mistake of challenging the review with HR. It immediately became a shitshow and I quickly learned what people mean when they say HR is not your friend. Put on a PIP. Everyone I knew told me to put my head down and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. So that's what I planned to do. Problem was every other company I interviewed with seemed like it was the subject of another post in this thread. Besides, my commute was only 10 minutes with no freeways involved at current employer and I was being kinda picky on that point.

Six months drag on. About everything that could go wrong while I was looking for a job seemed to go wrong. At one point I had a couple decent offers in hand I was ready to accept and then fumbled them both by trying to play one against the other. Meanwhile, I am keeping my head down and doing my job. I mean, my take on things is probably a little biased, but I'm pretty sure I was the most productive and reliable member of the team and the objective data, if management could have been bothered to try to collect any, would have backed me up. After all, in the not so distant past, they had promoted me to senior.

So the period assigned to the original PIP expires. I'm ashamed to still be there. But at least I figure they'll let that go. Nope. Boss comes back with new PIP. Totally fabricated stuff. Like "On project X, Klenwell did work to which he was not assigned." I point out that I was updating everyone on the project every morning on what I was doing in the daily daily standup. Including my boss. "You were standing right there!?" I'm furious, demoralized, ready to quit. On advice of a family member, I talk to an employment lawyer.

Best $300 I may have ever spent. "Yeah," he tells me. "You're fucked. They're papering your file. But don't quit. You'll sacrifice any benefits, including unemployment." I learned something that day. And the screw turned. That point forward, I'm not taking shit from anyone or anything. My boss. My boss's boss. Fire me? Cool! I'll take my unemployment checks and have my new best friend lawyer be in contact with you!

It was a very satisfying two weeks. I was like a kid peddling around on over-inflated bicycle wheels. But all good things must come to an end and the final straw came in a sit-down with my boss when boss said boss's boss (my old boss) was questioning why I was writing tests for a critical piece of ancient real-money-processing infrastructure that we needed to upgrade. My response: hey, is Boss's Boss writing code again for us? Great. Let him take over this story and I'll move on to something else.

I was fired the next morning. Walked out of the building with my belongings in a garbage bag. And a shadow was lifted off my little world.

Lawyer never returned my call. Took me exactly 6 months to find a new job. Things have been much better since then.