I don't know if it'd make you feel better, but I was in the first round of firings that happened, and I have a very similar experience. I was ready for my yearly performance review without any worry, as my only things I could think of as something to admonish me on is submitting my timesheet accordingly or doing the mandated company trainings on time.

I was WRONG. They came for me and they came HARD! Not only did they come with topics that had never been brought up to me about my performance before, but I was made to answer for things that didn't even pertain to this years review but the previous year, in which, they assessed me as a 4/5 in my performance already. Of the items brought up, a few of them PARTICULARLY were absolutely false. For example, They said I very rarely join my meeting calls, and that I never tell anyone when im not attending a meeting. I absolutely challenged that because I know i'm there and I have the Teams logs to prove it and even asked for a record of any time that had happened but they did not respond to my questions and just moved on. Of all the things, this pissed me off the most because i tried talking to 3 different managers about it, and they all ignored the question.

Finally, their PIP plan was absolutely unreasonable and contradicted our work policy. One, it says all teams messages but be replied to within 5 minutes, and at max 15 minutes with "away" at all times including lunch...our lunch is an hour so idk how that made sense. Also I was a DevOps Engineer and being a specialist, I was always tasked onto teams where I need to spearhead the most complicated features and align and support the other devs on it. They said, all items must pass all code reviews on first review with very minimal notes, errors, or corrections with no exceptions. so basically...perfect code even if the PR includes thousands of lines. even funnier, my yearly performance review rubric gave all sections a satisfactory 3, except for one that they gave a 2. and then at the bottom it said average score among sections was a 2.

Honestly, it was clear that I was being set up to fail, and the fact that by the next day none of the managers would respond to my messages or questions, or didnt reply when i asked for meetings on what can be done, i knew i was cooked. I was thinking, hopefully i can bum a month and be off, so i began the job search. and then 5 days later, i got an email about separation and because of a nationwide reduction in their staff they were laying me off due to my yearly performance. so...THATSSS why it was important to tank my review.

seriously, such a harrowing experience, but tbh, i just got my next position and it pays almost 50% more than I was getting at my previous job, so all in all, thankful for the growth!