How to negotiate a mutual separation
Some context: I am at US a Fortune 1000 company at a manger-level. I started less than a year ago. I signed a singing bonus with an 18 month cliff.
I asked while I was interviewing what weekend work looked like and was told it was possible but limited to one or two times per year.
In my first performance review I got an average job rating which felt correct.
I didn’t click with the job or team at first but felt like things have been on an upswing. There have been a lot of outside things happening that have caused stress including a seizure I had. I had to go off my antidepressants and that caused a lot of emotional volatility but I’m on new meds now that work great!
Anyways, because of the seizure and the fact I couldn’t drive, I got a waiver to go into the office only one day per week and work remotely otherwise.
———
I was assigned to work on two projects. One very high visibility but I would be the support role and one much smaller one where I was on the main role. I was asked to prioritize the smaller one but offer to help out on the bigger one when I could.
I felt like I did a good job communicating of when I was free and that was documented well and Teams and email. I did not do much for that project because when I asked, I was told there really wasn’t anything I could easily jump in on even though the project was super crazy and all consuming for the team. I also was doing a lot of weekend work for the smaller project and it was taking up a lot of my time and so I was tied up and could not offer more time to the main project.
Anyways, I got feedback via my manager from the leaders (an EVP and VP) of the high-visibility project who said I was uncommunicative and lacked the situational awareness (eg when the team was spending late nights at the office, I also should have been).
Also, I got feedback that as I was working on something for this project, I told them I vomited and then didn’t reply back for 24 hours.
With this, I had already told folks my son had norovirus, I sent what I had and told them I was vomiting, another team member said they would finish it, and I was already off the next day on PTO (also communicated), and so didn’t feel the need to share that I would be unavailable until the next day anyways.
I was not given this feedback during the project and I was very surprised and insulted by it. Also I feel like it validated my original feeling that I did not click with the team or the job.
I have decided this job and work environment are the wrong fits and I should look for other jobs.
My question is how I can approach HR and my manager about a mutual separation. It’s clear there is misalignment and I would obviously rather not forfeit the signing bonus. How should I go about this and negotiate?