IC just wondering what went wrong
I’m an IC. Been with a company for 3 years and have gotten raises every single performance cycle. I’m trying to understand what went wrong. I have the highest metrics out of anyone on my team. Got a new manager a couple months back. Manager told me I’m on track for a promotion next cycle. We didn’t have very many 1:1s and he would take weeks to respond to my slack messages. Said he was very busy. I thought everything was going well, as I was working hard and even got recognized positively by other members of my team and adjacent teams. Performance reviews then came. Manager gave me a very low rating in my performance review over something that was never communicated to me. Something that I verified was an unclear standard and other people were doing as well (documentation issue). Created a narrative out of it to justify a “needs improvement” on almost all sections. A week later he schedules a 1:1 with me, where HR told me I was being terminated. I’d like some perspective from managers on this sub about what may have happened and how I can better protect myself in the future.