Thomas Sankara, political leader of Burkina Faso in the 1980s, was born on December 21, 1949 in Yako, a northern town in the Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) of French West Africa. He was the son of a Mossi mother and a Peul father, and personified the diversity of the Burkinabè people of the area. In his adolescence, Sankara witnessed the country’s independence from France in 1960 and the repressive and volatile nature of the regimes that ruled throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
From 1970 to 1973, Sankara attended the military academy of Antsirabe in Madagascar where he trained to be an army officer. In 1974, as a young lieutenant in the Upper Volta army, he fought in a border war with Mali and returned home a hero. Sankara then studied in France and later in Morocco, where he met Blaise Compaoré and other civilian students from Upper Volta who later organized leftist organizations in the country. While commanding the Commando Training Center in the city of Pô in 1976, Thomas Sankara grew in popularity by urging his soldiers to help civilians with their work tasks. He additionally played guitar at community gatherings with a local band, Pô Missiles.
Throughout the 1970s, Sankara increasingly adopted leftist politics. He organized the Communist Officers Group in the army and attended meetings of various leftist parties, unions, and student groups, usually in civilian clothes.
In 1981, Sankara briefly served as the Secretary of State for Information under the newly formed Military Committee for Reform and Military Progress (CMRPN). This was a group of officers who had recently seized power. In April 1982, he resigned his post and denounced the CMRPM. When another military coup placed the Council for the People’s Safety in power, Sankara was subsequently appointed prime minister in 1983 but was quickly dismissed and placed under house arrest, causing a popular uprising.
On August 4, 1983, Blaise Compaoré orchestrated the “August Revolution,” or a coup d’état against the Council for the People’s Safety. The new regime which called itself the National Council for the Revolution (CNR) made 34-year-old Thomas Sankara president. As president, Sankara sought to end corruption, promote reforestation, avert famine, support women’s rights, develop rural areas, and prioritize education and healthcare. He renamed the country ‘Burkina Faso,’ meaning, “the republic of honorable people.”
On October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara was killed with twelve other officials in a coup d’état instigated by Blaise Compaoré, his former political ally. He was 37 at the time of his death.
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I’m mad. I got a PIP at work because I wasn’t talking enough in slack and I didn’t close enough tickets in Jira. except my team had barely started using jira in the time period they considered - a convenient cutoff because a couple of days later I started filing my own tickets to assign to other people on my team and started opening and closing smaller tickets myself. over the time period they were looking at, I closed a comparable number of tickets with everyone else on my team. at no point did anyone communicate these metrics to either me or my team - it feels like the metrics were derived posthoc.
my manager’s manager’s reply is that I’ll have no trouble meeting these expectations because I was well clear of them in the month that followed the time period they looked at. but they’re punishing me for things I had no way of knowing they wanted specific benchmarks on. what was communicated to me was that they cared about the work I was reporting on a status tracking tool and I reported everything there! my deliverables aren’t even in question - everyone agrees I did extremely important work at a very high level of thoroughness and quality.
they’re trying to punish me for taking too much sick leave due to migraines but they can’t say that because we have unlimited sick leave. god I fucking wish we had a union. I did everything they asked and they just changed the benchmarks to make a case against me. they keep saying I’m super valued and they think I’ll get promoted if I keep up what I’m doing and in the same breath they pull this shit.
Enjoy the holiday season and don’t worry about this. They’re going to fire you and there’s nothing you can do about it at this point. Look for a new job starting in January.
Don’t bother quitting - just start the new job and buy yourself something nice with the severance they offer at the end of your PIP.
the part that gets me is that the month after the time period they looked at for the PIP, I was well-clear of the benchmarks they set in it and they agree that they wouldn’t have given me a PIP if they’d analyzed it a month later. and they’re also clear that I’m going to meet all the benchmarks they set easily before the time period is up (3 months starting in January). so will they fire me? won’t I have a wrongful termination suit if they do? I have documentation of my health problems that led to me taking sick leave – this seems like retaliation for medical leave.
This depends on your management team. I’ve put people on pips before but my pips are a loud clear message to get your shit together, this is your last chance.
Many managers view pips as a nice way of letting you know you’re gone, start looking.
Given that your productivity is high, I would assume the latter, honestly. If you worked for me and got 100% of the work done in 80% of the time, I’d be looking to pip the rest of the team. (Not really I’d only pip someone if they’re really underperforming)
Edit: there are a lot of factors that I don’t know. Closing jira tickets is a poor metric, even points is a better metric. The fact that they’re laying out an achievable metric implies you can succeed past this and if you meet the metric and they still fire you, you have a much better case to sue for wrongful termination. There could be pressure from senior management, you could have a manager who thinks it’s their job to motivate the team through fear, you could have a jackass jack welch believer, someone could be out to get you etc.
the infuriating part is that I went and pulled the same metrics for the rest of my team - I’m the same as everyone else. I stg this is just HR retaliating for sick leave. my managers can’t justify what they wrote in the PIP and freely admit that they possibly chose the wrong dates to look at because I’m way above everyone else on the same metrics just a couple of days after they closed the window. it’s such bullshit. my manager’s manager was like “I’m glad to hear you’ll be here until March” as a reply to “so what, am I going to get blindsided with new metrics again in March?” such an evasive prick. I’ll give another team at the company a chance to poach me and then reach out to recruiters after that, probably at the end of January.
I think playing nice until early next year is a good approach. You’re describing incompetent management one way or another and a capriciousness about retaining talent that is incredibly toxic. I’m very good at what I do, I would look at your situation as a giant red flag and would be looking to move on. Bad managers don’t recognize that they’re not just punishing you, they’re showing their entire team how they think of them and they’ll lose whatever talent they have. Whatever they think a pip is, it’s a real escalation in a relationship between you and the company. They may be too stupid to recognize that but even in that case, do you want to work for stupid management?
The hiring market at the end of the year is always tough, my advice is to get an offer and evaluate if you want to deal with them any more.
yeah, I’m in a field where it’s not hard to find work. never takes me more than a month or two. I appreciate the advice and I’ll take it to heart.
sorry if this is a stupid question but what is a PIP?
In any case this sounds extremely frustrating and alienating. The absurd arbitrariness & shifting goalposts that come along with being a wage laborer are pretty insanity-inducing.
Performance improvement plan. Corporate speak for we’re documenting a reason to fire you with cause so you can’t sue us (or it’s harder to sue).
Your company and bosses are such pricks, I’m so sorry
If you’re searching for a new job, feel free to DM for a referral. Also unlimited sick leaves here but also likely to get your manager mad if you take too many tbh
thanks, I appreciate it. if I decide to leave, it will be over the next 2 months. I haven’t really needed the sick leave since I got on seizure meds so hopefully it will stay that way. I’ll DM you