Learning to say no to idiot authority is becoming a valuable skill.
How "conservative { uhh } but progressive!" Idiots in Authority deal with the learned who say "no", or, the horror, use words like "salvage" regarding the craftsmanship of the Idiots....
PIP seems to have become a popular tool to the new generation middle managers for the purpose of a “homogeneous team”. That is, PIP has become an acceptable and common practice to get rid of the “black horse” employee that is typically high-skilled and highly productive, thus at odds with a team of mostly mediocre members (including the manager) and hard to terminate based on pure work performance.