Informal PIP during probation

I would take the downlevel.

Fighting a PIP is stressful and finding another job in this current job climate will be equally stressful at best. Taking a downlevel will lower your compensation and you will have to fight to get promoted back to a senior engineer, but you don't have to worry about the company actively trying to get rid of you. Lower expectations will mean that it's easier (in terms of impact and time needed to create it) to meet the "do not fire" bar. Especially if you have responsibilities outside of work, you won't have the time to simply "grind" until your baseline is at the expectations for senior level. Use the extra time and mental space from the downlevel on your personal life, without the stresses of impending doom at work.

If you want to stretch yourself to see if you can meet senior level: feel free to put up to an hour on my calendar & we can look to dig into nuances of the feedback.

Since it seems like this pseudo-PIP isn't going so well, I would take the down-level if it's on the table as Jonathan mentioned. Canva is one of the hottest and best tech companies in the world right now so retaining that brand is quite valuable. I'm optimistic about the market in 2024, but it's still going to be bad and we literally just went through another massive wave of layoffs. It will be a while until the market is considered good again.

When it comes to improvement, it seems like your manager is mostly concerned with technical excellence. There are 2 components for this as a senior engineer:

1. The quality of your own contribution - This is relevant as soon as you become a software engineer, even at junior. My favorite resource to show senior engineer depth here is this: System Design Masterclass: Taro Playlists
2. Your technical contributions to your teammates' work - This is what really changes when you get to senior. A junior/mid-level engineer isn't expected to drop deep insights in tech review meetings, but a senior engineer will be, especially after 6 months. I recommend this: "How can I be more active in meetings and earn the respect of senior engineers?"

With a PIP-like project, sacrifices are going to be have to be made, primarily with any free/fun/procrastination time you currently have. However, I do not recommend sacrificing the following if you're able to preserve them:

1. Consistent sleep - Even if it's just a few hours, try to go to sleep and wake up at the exact same time.
2. Exercise - It doesn't need to be a gym visit, it can just be a walk around your neighborhood. Try to have 15 minutes 5-7 times a week where you just go out and clear your mind.

Happy to talk through this as well - Just DM me in the Taro Slack.

Sorry you're going through this. Can you switch teams? That would be my top recommendation, especially if you can provide an argument that you have a lot more familiarity with another tech stack, problem area, or there's a business need elsewhere.

It doesn't feel like your manager is very supportive, but you have supportive colleagues. So the window of opportunity to switch teams may still exist, where you can have a clean start. (It's almost impossible to switch teams on a PIP.)

I'm so sorry for everything happening. Taking a down-level might be the easiest approach. My last job I knew I wanted switched out in 2 months and even though I explicitly told the manager, they never really made time for me and no one particularly cared.

If you like the organization enough, this can be a good time to center and re-balance on what you need to be successful.

I'll also provide a sense of counterbalance of how in-depth to go. Don't go into a business and tell them their processes need redone from scratch. I hit this time and time again and it's just a matter of not coming off harshly.

There'll be appropriate folks to discuss tech debt or also do business ventures with, but just make sure to really know the audience and adjust your messaging.