In the case of a sour breakup, you should 100% lie. Just say it was great but you were in need for a change. Don't dramatize the lying part because you lied to get in and the employer lied about how great their company is. Work is a lie, play the game.
In the case of a drama-free breakup, when pressed for feedback and the room being receptive of it, do share your thoughts. But toned down, in a light hearted manner. Comment on things and processes, not people. This gives the impression "helpful until the end".
Both ways are a clean exit, with no bridges burned. There might come a time in your life where you're less desirable on the market, having intact relations can make a huge difference then.
You should internalize the dishonesty as a type of strength, because that's what it is in this context. In a sour breakup, you're given the perfect opportunity for revenge, with little immediate consequences.
Your ex-boss Tim is an asshole. He knows he is. And you know he is. You now have the opportunity to finally say it to his face.
Applying silence in this situation is powerful. It says so much more. I could harm you right now, but I chose not to. This radiates self control, which is widely respected. Meanwhile, Tim was looking forward to a good burn and argument, but didn't get any. He feels submissive, like a Roman emperor giving him a thumbs up, allowed to live another day.
And that's how you play it. Alternatively, you can be 21 years old and post on Medium "7 reasons why I quite company X after 8 months". Let me know how that goes.
If there’s any advice I could ever give anyone who has any amount of integrity and tries to live an honest life - it’s this alone. If you don’t play the game - you’re not playing the game everyone else is and you will always lose in the end.
Extremely painful to deal with for bright eyed young folks or those switching industries thinking things might be different.
Show up and do the work, consistently. Just this basic discipline puts you in the top 20% of performers, everywhere.
Make your superiors look good and in any case, not bad. They don't care what you do for as long as you do this. This does not require sucking up, just deliver.
Be reliable. Deliver on promises, likewise do not commit to a promise you can't fulfill and explain why. When you mess up, admit it and fix it.
Avoid politics, divisions, conflicts that put you in a camp. You have no opinion, or a very boring neutral one. Rather than share more than you know, share less than you know. Don't smear colleagues, even if they deserve it.
Do all of the above humbly and silently. It will get noticed. You'll be perceived a solid no-nonsense drama free worker that gets shit done. You don't even need to ask for opportunities because they will find their way to you.
Because you get things done.
To me living an honest life is feeding my family which I'll always do or I'll die trying. I refuse to do work that harms society, but other than that I'll gladly tell whoever in the office anything they want to hear if "that's how it works".
> I refuse to do work that harms society, but other than that I'll gladly tell whoever in the office anything they want to hear if "that's how it works".
So does that preclude work where telling your boss what they want to hear puts others at risk? Where along the scale of Chernobyl, Challenger disaster, medical implants, working on Facebook ads, writing enterprise grade Java, or creating eggbeater calibration routines do you draw the line at "harms society" when all you care about is keeping your boss happy?
I’ve had a similar approach, so I can give my take. You can read the advice cynically or genuinely, and either could be true. It depends on the organization. If you’re working somewhere that this can be taken at face value, you’ve got a good gig.
For me, I make sure I work in an industry that benefits society, and I make sure I work for a company that fits the spirit of bettering society. After that, a lot of the rest takes care of itself. Does that limit opportunities? Sure - it eliminates a number of government agencies and most publicly held companies. That still leaves a huge amount of space. By making sure I’m working somewhere with a clear mission I agree with, what makes the boss happy is likely to line up really well with what I’d want to do anyway.
Billing mistakes default to benefitting the customer, production incidents are as transparent as possible, consistent long term views on how to build a product and business (yes, you still cut corners when it makes sense, but you build a strong foundation to let yourself move really fast at the right times), etc.
Another benefit of consistently getting things done without drama - you end up with a lot of autonomy. When you see something that needs to get done, or a project you’d like to be involved in, things just seem to line up.
You dream if you think that will get you opportunities. In most companies being good and realiable at your job without playing the game ends with you doing always the same job because why would they promote someone who is good at what he does and never complains about being promoted or raised? They will see u as useful in your current state
This only works up to some point. Specially when you become senior, just doing the work will keep you in same position forever. Maybe you will get your annual raise etc, but people who play the game will move up and you likely have to listen and build things the way they want, even if you know the problem space well and have a good solution.
I'm not sure I understand what "the game" is, and I'm in my mid-50's. I don't know whether I'm so good at the game I don't know I'm playing it--because nothing bad has happened--or, I'm not playing it at all--and nothing bad has happened. And I've been in this since the late 80's, through IBM, Microsoft, and Intel, not to mention two startups and contracting.
I feel like I’ve been at more companies than you and I started in 2013. The fuck.
The game is about presenting an image that doesn’t actually exist. It’s about not acknowledging your manager is a toxic piece of shit and your company is completely broken and will likely be bankrupt in a few years while execs milk every ounce from it. It’s about faking positivity and that you’re so excited to join the company because it’s so amazing and definitely not because your previous employer is horrible. It’s about lying about past accomplishments because everyone does this in interviews so you need to stand out and seem just as good or better.
It’s about knowing that the other side is doing this too and you’re not the only one lying. You get lied to during interviews, you get lied to during onboarding, you get lied to during 1:1s, you get lied to during performance reviews, and you get lied to when leaving the company. You get lied to about why you’re building the product you are. You get lied to about why we chose an architecture. You get lied to about why you didn’t get something but someone else did. (But better - you don’t ask. You play the game. You lie about knowing)
It’s about acknowledging that work involved a heavy amount of lying from all sides and being honest - while noble - will not get you far in this industry. Especially in SV where lying is king. Where lying is renamed as “aspirational” speaking. Etc.
The game still exists in companies that build physical products, but I've found it's not quite as bad there. You're right, SV is the king of lying, along with any publicly traded company.
My experience is small privately held businesses that offer physical product are the most pragmatic and 'honest.' The closer you are to the source of income, the less everything but the money matters. I like being only 1-2 steps from the money, because it means no one gives a flying fuck about anything other than the almighty dollar at all costs. At least that's a game I understand. More than 2 levels from the source of money and you're shit-deep into authoritarian politics land, where the name of the game is to buy social capital in the authoritarian structure of a corporation, with little direct ties and influence on the source of corporate persuasion (income).
That is, when you're too far from the source of money, such as middle management or lower in a large corporation, your only real way to gain power is to become the most cunning psychopath rather than maximize profit. As an engineer, I've 'engineered' my personal solution by only taking jobs where I report directly to CEO/CTO/President so that politics dissolve into "make money or die." I much prefer it that way.
This is a great understanding of how to keep your sanity as someone that just wants ro get sh*t done.
This cannot be accomplished in a largecap company. Too many politic layers. Cant be done in a startup that is professionally backed - too much window dressing for investors.
However, small privates are the sweet spot for honest workers. Get stuff done, or make sales, and ownership doesnt care if your hair is blue or your style is brash. In fact, most savvy owners will hire exactly that "rough" worker precisely because what they see is what they get.
That worker is not an apiring manager, but an artisan, with no patience for nonsense, and ready to call out BS when they see it.
I've been really close to the money making side of things and it hasn't changed anything. I think it's all dictated by the culture of the company. Almost every time, I work on the things that are making money and then the politics, the games, and the noise just come through no matter what.
Maybe it works different in the physical goods space but as far as software goes - I see no difference no matter how close you are to the source of revenue.
You are right of course; words like "Truthfulness", "Trust", "Honesty", "Integrity" are liberally sprinkled everywhere but don't mean anything anymore at all. Everybody knows this but still we are all forced to play The Game.
These other responses sound like an episode of Dynasty to be honest. All you have to do is keep up a minimum of a mildly positive spin on things and get your work done. That's it.
To get through to management, you'll probably have to kick it up a notch for every promotion.
If there's more drama that than, you're working at a poorly managed organization. Move on at the first opportunity, life is too short.
To put it simply, The Game is acknowledging that every single other person you encounter in your workplace is just an individual agent with their own motivations and agenda.
The game is to make those around you look good. Results may be a way to achieve that, but they are subordinate to making your boss and contacts look and feel good.
The 'game' is that what works at the free-market business level (maximize profit) doesn't work at the authoritarian non-free-market employee level (i.e. you win by making those with social capital look good and winning this social capital).
Within #2 I have a rule and its never in any circumstance speak badly of anyone, if you must frame it as areas for improvement. At best you come off as whiny, at worst it flows out and you get retaliation
Yes, it's #2 everyone has a problem with. I have another rule, don't complain, and if you do, catch yourself. That stuff is contagious, especially with the small stuff that doesn't matter. It's like a plague and it will make everyone way more miserable when they probably should be, including yourself.
It's an interesting system we have. We claim to value truth but punish people for speaking it when their version of the truth doesn't make us feel good.
Not acceptable during an exit interview:
"My boss is an egotistical jerk who intentionally makes the job hard on his employees and here's the specific things he did with time and date stamps"
Acceptable during an exit interview:
"I got a job offer that fits my present and future career goals better (i.e. lets me get away from my boss who is an egotistical jerk...)"
Disagree. The game is not set in stone, you can kick the table.
Now, honesty is tricky, you can aim at being honest but not trying to be mean. You can aim at being honest but not disclosing everything. Many angles possible before going for "yeah dude, just lie".
The game changes as we change. Scamming people used to be tolerated, its less and less tolerated now. Often going as far where you can honestly question if the proposed thing is really a scam or just overpriced service/good. We make those boundries.
I realize this will get you along but if everyone does this, nothing changes.
Also the cost of these lies are immense for companies, managers, employees and customers. Assigning employee A for one task and B for the other although it should be reverse. IMHO that's also the reason why companies ship products that are profoundly bad for their customers and only "realize" this after many years.
I know of a few people for who that is the reason why they prefer working in startups.
I can see how, for the jaded, data might match these conclusions.
It feels like something written by someone with relatively low social and emotional intelligence, which will generate a negative feedback loop and more disappointment and cynicism.
You have an opportunity to share constructive feedback. If you use that opportunity to get revenge, it will reflect on you. It doesn't mean you have to lie through your teeth, but it also doesn't mean you owe them the completely unadulterated version of your personal catharsis.
I don't see how lying can ever be recommended. It purposely misinforms. It distorts the worldview of those who are lied to. You can be honest in a kind way. You don't have to always say everything. But don't lie!
Don't lie, it is not helpful and just misleads those who you lie to. It is cowardly. It's much better to be honest and kind.
I made the mistake and told the truth one time early in my career.
I got fired, err... I wasn't retained after a multi-month temp period, and was brought in to be fired, then exit interviewed.
I was upset, but stuck to the truth. My direct boss was passive aggressive, didn't like me, and excluded me from the team. His code was awful, in the long term wasn't maintainable, and wouldn't be able to meet the needs of the road map because of poor design decisions. Some cliques had formed to the determent of the tiny company.
Unfortunately after that exit interview, it became extremely difficult for me to get work in that community. Unknown to me at the time, I made an enemy of my direct boss, who had much deeper connections with that area tech community than I ever could have imagined. I only found out after making friends with someone else who told me they had heard nothing but bad things about me.
It was a lesson learned. After a many years, and a move, it is no longer a problem, but it derailed me for quite a while.
It should have been HR that interviewed you, and your direct boss should not have been given specific information that would make them hold a grudge about anything you said. Sounds like that company has some issues.
What does "should" mean here? You seem to be implying that there is exactly one correct way to handle this which there is broad consensus on.
If so where can i go read the rule book for the correct answers on all of managing people for all human endeavors?
It reminds me of people who are convinced that there is one true way to do "agile" and that every one who disagrees is somehow subjectively wrong because some blog post from some guy who went to some meeting 40 years ago kind of agrees with them.
HR typically conducts the exit interviews as they are a neutral party. It’s common sense as to why your boss shouldn’t do it... you know, since the feedback people have is often about their boss.
If you’re looking for the book of these basic rules, maybe take an HR class?
It's obvious that they're making a point that there is never going to be an ideal realized... and so to speak otherwise is playing a part, and naturally would be called out.
I think you have to try to avoid the situations you described, but I think 99% of the time, bad mouthing someone who is toxic is not going to have these far-reaching negative effects. I have done it in many exit interviews and its never bitten me. I obviously do not ask for references from terrible managers who I bad-mouth in exit interviews, rather I ask for references from strong leaders who I can honestly speak glowingly about and who I develop close relationships with. I think you shouldn't be afraid to speak the truth in most cases and if you've developed a reputation as a good employee who others like to work with, many times the information you provide will be taken seriously. It probably won't be acted upon unless others report the same thing, but I still find it worthwhile. It at least gives them the opportunity to do the right thing.
Disagree. You can ask in private but DOXXing somebody via HN/Reddit hivemind is a no-go without proper evidence. 1 anecdote does not suffice in this case (sorry OP, I do believe you though)
Setting aside the question of whether this is ethically good/okay, how does this count as doxxing? You're not de-identifying a pseudonymous person, or publishing private info like a home address, you're just saying something about a guy on the internet.
Does this amount to doxxing though? Naming someone or a company in a public forum is one thing, posting their home address and phone number is different
what if that person has a particularly identifiable name? It wouldnt be hard to guess who it was in that case by searching for their name on LinkedIn, noting their geographic history, and guessing at which (tech or otherwise) companies the manager has worked at.
What's more, a common name might mean multiple people get harassed via that same method due to poor detective skills.
Well then... don't harass people. Saying "My manager Brad really fucked me and the team over with his self-serving decision-making, putting me in a really bad spot which ended up costing me my job, and then negatively influenced my subsequent job search by bulshitting about me to his friends" seems pretty reasonable.
I'm not in the business of calling people out to shame them, but I sure as hell would like to know who sucks at managing at specific companies so I don't accidentally work for them.
No. Use this energy in the next elections to make sure you get to elect representatives that create at least a modicum of decent federal legislation to protect workers against such things, and more importantly, to make it financially feasible for workers to sue when their rights are infringed.
What’s the long term story for that startup and boss? Any further success or failure?
A few big tricks to learn in career maturity involve how to get along in situations where there may be some toxic or even just unhelpful factors. Figure out how to be unthreatening and work with or beside cliques. Figure out how to work around technical problems without making enemies. Etc. Also be sure to draw lines that don’t limit you too much nor let you come to harm.
Unknown to me at the time, boss had independently made a widget that was responsible for a sizable portion of the profit for this company. He was in the process of selling the widget to the company.
I was hired during a company expansion as a domain expert for a new product category in which they were developing. I was placed initially under boss to learn the company ropes.
There were a few odd things about the job, I was frequently not invited to team/company functions, outings, lunches, nor meetings. Being told by my boss that I needed to earn the right to go to these things, and I hadn't earned it yet, or that the meetings didn't concern me. The boss assigned me work on his widget, and generally left me alone. My desk wasn't in the same area as the rest of the team. I was put in new office space with the other people that started when I did. Even after space with my team opened up I was required to work in the temp area. I had to provide my own laptop and lamp for the first month while employed as the company as they hadn't procured me one. Yes, lamp, I didn't have overhead lighting in my area, as they planned to put in a skylight, it never materialized. Instead of moving on to the development phase of the task I was hired to do, I ended up taking support tasks, like calls, emails, writing docs, etc. (I chalked it up to needing to learn the system, but I was being paid triple what they were paying help desk staff) Also wasn't given write access to their code repository, I had to submit patches to my boss.
When I was let go, the owner and vp over boss brought up how they thought I wasn't a team player as I wasn't attending any company events. I needed to get my external affairs in order because I kept having outside engagements keeping me from work. Dumbfounded by these accusations I showed them I'd come to work everyday, attended every meeting I'd been invited and explained I often felt left out when the team got to go to outside events (from stuff like ice cream to pro ball games). After showing all my emails and schedule it came to light that my boss was never inviting me to these events and was giving them made up excuses for me.
As for the code, it was bad. Broken in very fundamental ways. I gave the code a fair eval during my exit. Explained how it's design flaws wouldn't allow them to expand the widget much beyond it's current abilities and showed how it was incompatible with their long term road map.
In the end I had no leverage, so I wasn't retained.
--- The update. ---
6 months after of my departure, a third of the company was gone. Everybody that was part of the expansion had left or was fired, and several other people took better jobs elsewhere.
Eventually they hired a few new developers to take over the widget. After a couple of years, a new version was released with new code base, but it was now late to the market and better products replaced it.
The owner eventually bought out the widget from my boss in order to sell the company, many years after I left. The majority of the staff at that point transitioned with the notable exception of my boss. He retired, I think he fishes now.
As for me, well, I had a couple of rough years there were I wasn't getting hired. Thought it was bad luck, but through some chance encounters I've came to learn that someone was spreading some bad info about me. I got some counseling, which helped.
As for why the retaliation, I think it was because my boss lost leverage and money over the widget deal. I learned from a former coworker that my boss had been planning an exit from the company as soon as the widget deal finalized, which was supposed to happen right after I started, not years later. I think he knew his program couldn't meet the roadmap he was selling the company and was hoping to make it someone else's problem.
It sounds like you weren't meeting the needs of the company either and this is all sour grapes.
If someone is not meeting the expectations or underperforming and it's not a character problem. I'd be open to working with them if they did some growing somewhere else. If however, you have this kind of attitude of blame-shifting and finger pointing without any substance to back it up, no one will want to work with you.
"If however, you have this kind of attitude of blame-shifting and finger pointing"
They asked him whether anything is wrong, they don't get to complain about the answer.
On the other hand, for a senior person to go around town and spread rumours about a (presumably) junior team member is exactly the kind of behaviour I want nothing to do with.
This comment is miopic, seems the closer you are to the top the less maturity and aelf-control you are expected to have?
I once fired a Jr dev who lied about having done work and was generally being a salary thief. When I told him, he said he would work for free, it would never happen again, it was a misunderstanding and pleaded for his job. I told him no, so he went into the office crying to beg the founder for his job.
If someone were to ask me about hiring him, I would say in no uncertain terms that it's a mistake. I wonder, though, if he was telling his side of the story on HN, how I would have been painted as the villain.
None of the feedback OP has given to HR has any substance. If you throw around heavy words like this, you better know how to back your words up.
- passive aggressive: This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way?
- excluded you from the team: How was he excluded? Was he not invited to events? Or did he not get good projects? If you are a temp with potential performance problems, it's normal that you don't get the cool projects.
- code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something
- long term maintainability: I don't think he was there for long
- missing roadmap because poor design decisions: Again a junior opinion, running projects are complex with many different variables, you fail meeting deadlines for various reasons, there's never a single reason, and that reason is never "we had a bad piece of code written by one guy". I don't think OP has the historical context of that led to the that code.
When I hear all this feedback coming from a temp, all I hear is they weren't a team player, they don't know how to be diplomatic and most of the things they are saying are coming out of frustration and have no substance and is not actionable.
> "- passive aggressive: This is a personal judgment...
missing roadmap because poor design decisions: Again a junior opinion"
So you asked a Junior person for his opinion and you complain that you got Junior's opinion? What did you expect, to get a senior executive's opinion?
It's irrelevant if his opinions are incompetent - let's imagine he got fired for being an complete idiot. Then you asked for his opinion, and complain that it's an idiotic opinion. That means we have at least two idiots!
What in the world are these complains about negativity, is management entitled to love and loyalty from employees it fired? This sounds like a North-Korea style dictatorship, not a company.
If they are too daft to know that fired employees might provide negative feedback, or if their fragile egos can't handle it - that's their problem.
Let me make a parallel that might be clearer:
If someone comes up to me tells me I smell, that's kind of offensive.
But it if I go to someone and spesifically ask them 'do I smell', they might answer 'Yes'.
I don't get to complain that they are not a qualified perfumer, or their judgement is poor - I picked them, I asked them. And I certainly don't get to go around town telling everyone how they are a terrible person.
> This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way?
It's an exit interview, so that is an excellent question for HR to ask.
> excluded you from the team: How was he excluded?
same as above.
> code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something
Something you can correlate with other feedback, and see if it gets mentioned repeatedly, or not.
...
But you straight out just always assume the most negative interpretation, and then come to the conclusion that your prejudice was confirmed, and support spreading that outside the company.
Yeah I've managed an assumption based on what I'm seeing here. That's all the data I have.
Similarly most everyone assumed that the manager went out of his way to talk shit about him. Managers don't go around and talk shit of their employees without getting prompted. If someone asks his manager "Hey I saw you worked with aroundtown, what was your experience like" you bet the answer is going to be crystal clear.
You are sealioning with all of these questions and accusations. This isn't a trial, aroundtown doesn't need to divulge all of the evidence in order to share their anecdote here. You've made an unfair judgement without knowing them or their boss.
I've made a judgment about the event with what I have read. I have no intention to bully anyone.
My point is clear, we are only reading one side of the story and I don't see an iota of maturity in the story he described. Therefore I also don't believe that his manager called everyone in the town to tell them not to hire him. We don't even know the feedback was sent out to his manager.
Maybe the other employers figured out on their own or maybe they asked his manager for a reference.
And again, this isn’t a trial and aroundtown doesn’t have to share all their evidence. Why not just take it as an anecdote and leave it? You’ve repeated this theme enough now that it sure seems like bullying. Would you just let it go?
I guess the main point is they were exit interviewed by the HR, but then the conversation was leaked to their direct manager. That's a no-no regardless of the OP was right in their accusations or not.
Except aroundtown expressed their opinion to HR when asked, and the boss went around badmouthing them around town. Only one of the two is the asshole here.
Nah man, exit interviews aren't to express opinions or talk shit, it's a data source for HR to identify problems emerging as patterns and improve their org/company.
One guy saying "my boss sucked" isn't really feedback
For this to work, employees have to trust that they can be candid without repercussions. And employees don't have access to the inner workings of the business that they work for, but know that there are similarities across businesses. For this reason, the conduct of an exit interview is governed by the widespread behavior of similar businesses, as communicated by workers among one another, and not by the company. If things like exit interviews are widely abused, then they become useless.
I don't see any reason to doubt his story, and it's pointless to anyway. It might be total fiction, but within those parameters, he was right and they were wrong. We're just expressing opinions on a forum, which is the most moot thing to do anyway.
>exit interviews aren't to express opinions or talk shit, it's a data source for HR
These are the same thing. You're trying to legitimize your opinion under the pretense of seeking raw, objective data, and characterizing OP's interview responses as something less than data, but it's not true.
Why couldn't HR see this as just a data-point? Put things this way, if the "junior opinionated guy" is full of it, this kind of feedback won't emerge again, and you can discount it.
Or maybe you've got some other data-points indicating this guy is an issue? Say, his projects are consistently late, or there's issues developing new features, or his teams have a higher attrition rate, or, or, or.
This is why it's my opinion that these things should be as secret as possible so people can feel comfortable voicing their real opinions knowing it won't blow back on them, and the company can get real feedback that might prevent thornier issues from becoming terminal.
So you are supposed to provide data sources about problems, but are not allowed to involve opinions in that? Can you give some examples of feedback that would fit that criteria?
You can opinions if you can express them in a more neutral and actionable way.
- My boss doesn't like me and excludes me.
vs
- I think my boss has a few favorites who get all the cool projects. Despite me being the best person as I had the most experience with technology X, my performance in good standing, and having showed interest in the project, I didn't get assigned to that project.
As someone who has done exit interviews on both sides some quick notes:
1) I would dial back dramatic sweeping criticism. Now is not the time to relitigate every grievance, claim doom will befall company etc.
2) Treat it as any other feedback cycle. Here's what was working well, here some areas I might look at improving. Keep it light and friendly.
3) Do a slight "I" perspective. I'm moving for higher pay and to have a bit of a bigger role / influence on decisions etc. I'm moving in part because progression options were unclear to me. I'm moving in part to be able to do a masters program with an EAP program, start a retirement plan match (401K) etc.
I had great references from all my former employers AND I did the exit interviews they wanted. They were friendly.
I left one very very cushy job, did a very friendly exit interview, they hired me back on as a consultant at x times my normal rate. It really worked out better. I'd had a split reporting structure internally (nightmare), and when I came back consulting each project had a clear "customer" I could work with / manage against. Everyone was happier. When I left I just said, One area that was tricky for me was the split reporting structure which made it harder to prioritize my work. When I consulted I had a point of contact clearly defined.
I think this is good advice. I treat these interviews as an opportunity to keep a door to return to the company in different circumstances. When you look at folks working in FAANG (or other cohorts of big companies), there is quite a bit of movement back and forth over time. It might not seem like it, but HR records can still be hanging around when you interview in a different department a couple of years later. They often shield these some from hiring managers, but they get connected up eventually.
This might sound unpopular but, when leaving a company I'm mentally telling everyone to f-off. Unless the the interview is with someone that could refer you, I wouldn't even waste any time or energy in that interview. It's not worth it. Miss it. Nobody will remember.
Totally not a problem. If you are in the f-off frame of mind then probably for the best!
You won't be pushed that hard for an exit interview if it was pretty clearly not a good fit. Some of these transitions are a relief for all concerned (employee AND manager).
If a manager has someone with leadership / significant upside potential I do think a discussion is worth doing if possible.
I told my boss at the time that the reason I was leaving was because they where forcing us back into the office to do meetings from our desk in the middle of the pandemic (which it was, 18mths ago June).
I also told him that if they didn't change that policy they'd haemorrage their most senior staff.
Of the 9 lead devs they had at the time (including me) they lost 7 over the next 8mths (I already knew three where leaving in the interview just hadn't announced it yet).
It took them another 8mths to decide that remote might be an option, after literal decades of experience on their systems (not me I was a relatively new hire) walked out the door.
Now they are constantly posting vacancies for leads and fighting in a market where a lot the good jobs offer remote first if wanted.
Now if my boss was smart he'd have seen the writing on the wall, saved his dev team knowledge and could have hired before the boom in remote dev.
The thing you realise as you move up in seniority is that the people in "charge" are really no brighter than the people they are in charge off, he was my boss because he was the senior of the two devs on the original spinoff company and so just moved up a level every time they expanded, he was a fairly terrible manager of people and didn't have the backbone to deal with his boss when it was necessary.
References really aren't a think in the UK (at least no one has ever checked mine that I know off) so I was less concerned about that and I had zero intention of ever working for that company again so if I set the bridge on fire, so be it.
> Of the 9 lead devs they had at the time (including me) they lost 7 over the next 8mths (I already knew three where leaving in the interview just hadn't announced it yet).
> It took them another 8mths to decide that remote might be an option, after literal decades of experience on their systems (not me I was a relatively new hire) walked out the door.
I am starting to see this happen at work. We've undergone a re-org and it has been handled very poorly. Management doesn't seem to care, or at least they won't really acknowledge the struggles that we're dealing with at the team level, and as far as I can tell there's no plan in place to prevent the more skilled and experienced folks from walking right out the front door. Pay raises for most people were subpar this year. Many people were denied promotions for bullshit reasons. Etc.
> References really aren't a think in the UK (at least no one has ever checked mine that I know off)
I don't even list references. I offer to give references up if they're requested and that is stated plainly on my resume. My references are people I have had meaningful working relationships with, so if some potential employer is going to ring these people up I like to give them a heads up. They're people who I've spent time with in the trenches and who can speak to my technical competence, ability to operate under pressure, and my technical leadership abilities. Two of them have storied careers in technology, spanning back to the 80s, and are people that could be Googled.
Anyway, in nearly 15 years in this industry, I think that I've maybe had 1 company I was interviewing with ask me for my references and I can't even recall if they used them.
Pretty much the same with references. Of course, not really surprising. If I give the contact information for three hand-picked people does anyone really think any of them are going to say “run away fast”?
> Anyway, in nearly 15 years in this industry, I think that I've maybe had 1 company I was interviewing with ask me for my references and I can't even recall if they used them.
Background checks wont even always ask your permission before verifying your employment history. They usually won't even need contact info from you.
I’ve had 2 exit interviews and both were good experiences.
The first scheduled the exit interview 5 months after leaving my job. Clearly said that they wanted to make sure I was comfortable in my new job before asking for feedback. I think the gap of a few months is a good mechanism to get honest feedback if someone is willing to provide it (and is what I now do for exit interviews myself)
Second time was with a manager I really trusted (I was leaving for other reasons). Gave him a list of the 15 things that I thought needed changing. When I visited almost a year later he showed me the list still on his office wall, with 12/15 items crossed off.
I think game theory might optimize for your own immediate gain, but overall many managers and companies want to do good, and your feedback might actually help if delivered the right way.
There are plenty of good managers mixed with the bad. Obviously you knew your boss in this case was a good manager and trusted him with that info. Hopefully people realize when to trust the people getting the feedback and when not to. Generally when exit interview feedback starts to look the same from specific departments or managers...the upper ups and HR take notice that something is off. I've also seen feedback from exit interviews that people aren't happy about stuff that they knew was part of the job (like left before and came back and were somehow surprised the job was the same).
Generally spot on in my experience. I've only ever agreed to one, and it was a mess, with the interviewer getting very upset and pushing back on all of my answers. Since then I politely decline. I've had one boss tell me it wasn't optional, to which I responded that I'd be happy to leave earlier if he wanted to enforce the requirement. He swiftly backed down, as we hadn't yet finished knowledge transfer.
Hypothetically and assuming 1) at-will employment, 2) company policy requires exit interview and 3) they didn't care about the knowledge transfer, could the company then terminate you "for cause" because you refused to do the exit interview?
Yes, they could, that is the definition of at-will employment. As long as the termination reason is not illegal there is nothing stopping them. Some employers will escort you out of the building immediately once you let them know you plan to leave, I know multiple examples of this happening at Microsoft at least.
Yes, but there's a huge difference between termination and termination "for cause". The latter has specific meaning - it'll often trigger negative consequences like losing your vested equity. It usually only happens in egregious cases: fraud, harassment, punched a customer, etc. If you're merely refusing to do your job, you'd probably just be regular terminated (including if they decide to include "do the exit interview" as part of doing your job).
When I was at MSFT a little over 10 years ago the norm was that to be that if you gave notice, and said where you were going, and it was a competitor in certain industries, you would be escorted out immediately or same-day.
Our extended team was pretty collegial about this -- de facto, people could choose to work out their 2 weeks by keeping quiet, or to leave right away by naming a name. (I think this got you some extra vacation? Never quite sure how that worked out.)
this is not "with cause" though. They're always free to pay out your notice and have you finish immediately, but you can't be terminiated with cause after you've formally resigned.
However the definition of with cause varies by state.
Also, i genuinely dont know if refusing an exit interview meets that criteria.
Generally, exit inteeviews are:
- Not what you were required to to do in the first place
- Not a policy in the standard handbook
- Not a critical ad hoc work function
Therefore, the issue is murky and wouldnt pass HR review. I would bet most companies would let it go unless this decision came from ownership itself
I've never once in my long career seen constructive feedback from exit interviews make its way back to the leadership or management orgs.
I have seen a top engineer tell his CEO why he was leaving and everything wrong with the project (and he said this, I'm sure, very politely and with the intent of helping them). He made the critical mistake of sharing where he was going next (a FAANG). The CEO of old-company called VP of new-company, and the new company withdrew their offer. Yup, Top Engineer was then fully unemployed, his reward for being honest. Lawsuit, you say? No, my friend didn't have $500k or whatever sitting around for legal fees. He just got a new job, and is fine now. Still, lesson learned.
I have shared direct, honest feedback to my skip level boss before, during and after the course of somewhat disastrously run projects. I've kept in regular contact with my old team since leaving and thanks to my feedback the company has completely turned around... NOT! Still the same old, same old patterns playing out day after day. Learned my lesson on that one. It's just not worth it.
I have no idea what the author is on about. The exit interview is often the best 30 minutes of a bad job!
You can tell them what they are doing well, what they aren't doing well, praise good employees and criticize bad managers.
If you are both professionals, it's a cathartic experience that supports your remaining coworkers. If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway. But if you are an unprofessional neurotic intent on treating Greg from HR like a captive corporate agent, I guess you will probably have a bad time?
> If you are both professionals, it's a cathartic experience that supports your remaining coworkers. If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway.
It seems to me that the author is suggesting a third type of person: one who is professional until they're criticized.
I had two exit interviews at the same large corporation with very different outcomes.
1) The formal exit interview with HR. The HR person was apparently called to do it on her day off (no idea why they didn't just have someone else do it), and made sure I knew it, complained that "we just spent a lot of money on those classes you took and you were on track for Leadership training." Seriously? People leave: it's a cost of doing business!
2) The VP of Engineering called me into his office to say goodbye and ask a few questions. Specifically, he wanted to know if the company's diversity programs were accomplishing anything useful (I'm black) or if they were just fooling themselves. In his words "you already have another job, so I'm sure I can trust you to be completely honest." I took him seriously and tried to give complete, honest answers to. Truth be told, I loved working there. I just wanted to move away from that part of the country and had a great opportunity.
HR's attitude pissed me off so much that if I didn't already like the place I would probably have badmouthed them to anyone who asked.
Yeah, but most people cannot take constructive criticism, whether they think of themselves as being professional or not. They might put on a good face but are internally seething that someone dared critique them. It's a difficult line and if you need to give that sort of feedback to someone because you are actively working together, that's one thing. People can be professional, as you say, and can work through it.
But if you are leaving a company, that's even less of a reason for the person you're critiquing to listen to what you are saying (b/c they can just write it off as someone who has sour grapes or was leaving anyway), and even more of an opportunity to just create unnecessary animosity. And that professionalism that becomes a necessity when the person is still a coworker can disappear completely.
Sure, but the GGP comment said they would be giving you a bad reference anyway, while the GP comment (and the article) made the point that sometimes they will only give you a bad reference if you manage to offend them during the exit interview.
Some people are just insecure and always get offended by constructive criticism, some people have poor communication skills and think they are "just being honest and constructive" while actually being very offensive (we probably all know a few coworkers like this) and sometimes the person doing the exit interview has just had the worst day of their lives. Bland platitudes in the exit interview will almost never hurt but candid feedback can definitely go sideways very quick. Game theory says it's better to play it safe.
I would agree with this take but there's still a point about why I worded it the way I did.
I thought about wording it differently (e.g., a person will behave professionally until ...) to help illustrate that but the way I chose to word it also helps to illustrate the perceptions of the other individual: it seemed very much that they were professional until their behavior changed.
What do you do when you work for a company where you think managers are bad, and their managers are bad, but they all think they are great and they think you're the problem? How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
HR doesn't care (in my opinion) that you think a manager is bad. They need bodies to do jobs. They just do what they are told in my experience. They aren't going to go up the ladder and get rid of a manager because you don't like their style.
It's a cruel world out there. Worst part about doing IT for a living if you ask me (or whatever it is you call what we do). Same boring stuff every day M-F 9am-5pm. Everything's always broken. Login/auth/2FA/plumbing data back and forth from one system in one format to another in a slightly different format aren't "sexy" problems. Are humans really designed to do the roughly the same thing from 21 years old to 65 years old?
Some manager chirping in your ear about a deadline or an estimate, like we don't do this same song and dance every week. Projects with no requirements. I worked for an organization that valued how nice you and be versus how much you can get done. I understand how important collaboration is and how important teamwork is. It's just frustrating to log on to a job where... your manager controls your happiness and they think they rock and you think they suck and the truth is somewhere in the middle but it doesn't matter because... their managers and the managers of those people are all about a certain culture. How do you quantify culture?
> What do you do when you work for a company where you think managers are bad, and their managers are bad, but they all think they are great and they think you're the problem? How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
If you notice you are the only one in 200 people have any issues, a reasonable question to ask yourself is if the problem is you. If you end up believing you aren't, you should at least be able to articulate why you're the only one.
> If you notice you are the only one in 200 people have any issues, a reasonable question to ask yourself is if the problem is you.
This is exactly the right attitude. If everyone else is happy and the only problem is you, all the more reason to be respectful! It's better to treat it as a cultural misfit rather than ask them risk making 200 other employees unhappy to appease you.
In the absence of larger issues, maybe. What if you're one of very few minorities or women working at the company, and the issues seems to stem from issues that shouldn't be issues? That seems more like a company problem and not a personal or cultural problem (given that the culture in question has laws to try to prevent it).
I agree it's probably best to start from a position that it's just a cultural mismatch. I imagine sometimes it gets entangled with a lot of other issues though, whether rightfully so or in perception only.
I think even in those situations, telling them that you never felt like you fit is still the right approach. I there is actual wrongdoing, report them. But if it's a boy's club, it's probably better to phrase it as such than point to each individual actor as sexist.
I think at least in American companies, it's hard to tell whether your co-workers are actually happy, or if they are putting on the expected corporate ExcitedToBeHere persona. You ask 200 co-workers "How's it going?" and you're going to get 200 variations of: "You know, really busy, but it is super-exciting to be meeting KPIs and synergizing the latest roadmap with our external stakeholders, blah, blah, blah." Ain't nobody saying "Well, you know, Bob, things are pretty shitty for me because I spent the last quarter working my butt off and Lumburgh gave the promotion to that idiot he's been banging in the conference room every evening."
Being honest opens you up to having that honesty used against you, so people just put on a cheerful saccharine smile and lie.
This, plus most people are “bad” or “good” in some environments and not others. If it’s a bad fit, it’s a bad fit. Worrying about whether you’re the problem or other people are the problem is rarely productive, and sticking it out in an environment that’s bad for you is (often) going to set you back professionally.
If you find yourself on the opposite side of opinion with the entire management of a company you've found that you don't fit with the company. In this case it doesn't matter if one manager or all managers are objectively bad or not your communication on the way out should be why you feel you didn't have a good fit with the company not why the company should fire manager #14 specifically and expecting them immediately to do it on the word of the 1 guy leaving the company.
Sure, if leadership is universally terrible, say your piece and walk away. But there are plenty of situations were the company is okay enough, but leadership should know that there's a specific department or manager who is contributing to turnover.
If you refuse to speak up because you think no one will listen, you might equally be part of the problem.
Getting into individual criticisms is probably about the last thing I would do in an exit interview. It’s not my problem any longer because it’s an exit interview.
Generally speaking momentary catharsis associated with blowing up bridges isn’t worth it.
I’m weirded out by how this comment is exactly how to handle it imo but not many others seem to agree. I’m perplexed. I get more confused about other peoples opinions the older I get but maybe that’s the thing I’m older and wiser.
Just think for a second about the overlap between “people who want to speak their mind in an exit interview” and “people who like arguing in online forums” and the comment disparity makes a lot of sense…
> How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
I really do you see where you were coming from here, but there are two things to consider here.
1) Subjective assessment is totally valid when discussing management. It’s a job about people at its core, so how people feel is relevant. If a company can’t see that then there is a larger company culture issue there. Unhappy people not working well with their manager(s) are not going to put out as much - or necessarily good - work
2) It’s not about “are most people happy or not complaining,” it’s more about patterns/repetition (e.g. “a pattern of behavior.”) If you oversee 200 people over 5 years and 10 of them left citing “inappropriate conduct/I was uncomfortable at work,” that’s going to get HR and upper management hopefully asking questions.
> How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
HR should track the attrition rate for each manager. If twice as many of manager X's reports are quitting or transfer to other teams than manager Y's reports, then manager X or the projects they manage might be a problem (for employee morale and company success).
HR can also send out anonymous employee engagement surveys.
> HR can also send out anonymous employee engagement surveys.
If employees view management or the company as Bad™, they will assume such surveys are 1. not actually anonymous, and 2. never going to make a difference, and all claims to the contrary will be seen as empty platitudes. (Obviously this can be counteracted by actually showing that the company is willing to act on feedback, but even if you're in a position to do that you have to get over the bootstrapping hump.)
I was invited to answer one of these, at a company with truly the most hateful manager I've ever had. Oh, was I ever ready to offer my jaundiced, embittered opinion...until the survey required I log in with my company email address.
Yes, there was the usual verbiage about anonymizing, blah, blah, but I lost all confidence that my response wouldn't be tracked to me. I never returned the survey.
I still haven't determined whether this was by incompetent or malicious design.
There was a post on here years ago from somebody who sold software to corporations for "anonymous" employee surveys. He said that executives always wanted to deanonymise the results and, sadly, he was happy to oblige.
I don't know, as a homeowner I've only seen plumbing in a couple of houses, but they seem to be constantly discovering innovative solutions to the same basic problems.
If you need catharsis after leaving a job, call up your old college roommate or your parents to bellyache.
Nothing you say is confidential. There's a good chance the notes will go directly to your old manager and/or manager's manager, with your name on it.
Be bland and non-committal, and if you are really pressed, give the mildest criticism like "I wish the ticketing system was easier to use". Even that has a risk since if the current ticketing system is somebody's pet project and your criticize it, you might get that someone mad at you.
Tech is big enough and experienced people have enough hiring power that I've never heard of anyone skilled that couldn't get another job even if they were as asshole, much less gave honest feedback.
I consider it part of my integrity that I try to bring to every job to give honest and direct criticism about things I found lacking, especially if I'm leaving because of those lacks.
Perhaps they fix them, perhaps they don't, perhaps it helps other people on the team, but I can't imagine an actual downside outside of highly specialized niches where one could actually be cut out of further opportunities even with competitors
Why should I care? I say things during an exit interview I want them to know.
Because you can't predict the future with 100% fidelity. Which means you could find yourself in situations like:
- working under the same person (that you pissed off via the exit interview) again at a different company
- applying for a job at another company where that person (that you pissed off via the exit interview) now works and will badmouth you
- applying to go back to the company you're now leaving
- etc., etc.
I would say there's nothing to be gained from being honest during an exit interview, and just enough to be lost, to make it a bad deal. But a lot of it honestly comes down to "luck of the draw." I'm sure plenty of people have gone all "scorched earth" in an exit interview and never had any fallout from it. Others, however...
How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
I think the assumption that the only possible result of being honest in your exit interview is that everyone who becomes aware of what you said dislikes you are a result is weird. Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
Sure, those things could happen. But those of us arguing against being overly honest in exit interviews would generally say, based on our experiences, those things are just very unlikely. Personally I find them so unlikely as to be in the "not even worth considering" category. Kinda like, yes, I could be killed by a meteorite smashing through my roof and striking me, but I don't spend any time worrying about the possibility.
Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
I don't know anything about being "brutally" honest, nor am I suggesting that one must be a jerk about anything. But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
Like others have said... the idea isn't to be intentionally deceitful during an exit interview. At least that's not what I'm suggesting. But it's also not necessary to say everything you could say, or even you might want to say. Especially since the biggest gain is often just a momentary sense of catharsis.
That said, everybody has to judge their own circumstances and make decision based on their own values, goals, constraints, etc. "Do what you think is right, and hope for the best" isn't the worst strategy one could follow.
> But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
This is definitely a cultural thing, I brought this up with my team recently, the concept of "negative feedback" and got two different reactions – my feedback to the team was about how we give negative feedback, and nobody at all agreed with that phrasing LOL
Either some people who heard what I said and thought, surely this means when you have done something wrong, and it's not actually negative feedback, but corrective feedback so that you know how to do that thing right in the future.
And the other reaction was, "negative feedback, positive feedback" no such thing it is all just feedback, but watch out for positive feedback because all of it is probably fake, and nobody is fooled by that "compliment sandwich" BS.
I don't think this is a problem for exit interviews, at least not exclusively; the point is that people are either receptive to feedback or they aren't. You can try to candy coat it, but if there's any chance that being direct is going to make the feedback more likely to land, I personally think I prefer the direct approach.
(Then again, I never notice compliment sandwiches, so maybe they work on me.)
I only notice shit sandwiches if the compliments are obviously bullshit. If they ring somewhat true, it’s just a balanced meeting with positives and negatives.
But the second I hear a bullshit compliment, I feel like I’m about to get a sales pitch.
> I would say there's nothing to be gained from being honest during an exit interview
Maybe for me. But I know for a fact that one of my exit interviews was used as part of a basis to reassign a manager and give everyone in the department a raise. So I consider giving a good exit interview part of doing the right thing.
You can have happy endings. Once in a while an annoying manager will actually realize that they've been out of line, and reform. But the downside is so big it's not worth the chance.
> Why should I care? I say things during an exit interview I want them to know.
With a little benefit to you (other than catharsis) and unlimited downside if you do. The entity benefitting from that conversation is none other than the company itself. They are usually not going to change as a result. And if they do, you no longer work there. So why would it matter?
You. Owe. Them. Nothing.
Corporate entities are not your friends and they are not your family. If they say they are...RUN.
Or tell them at really any given point in time during your employment if you're that confident that your employer won't retaliate against you and you're concerned with workplace improvement.
> Nothing you say is confidential. There's a good chance the notes will go directly to your old manager and/or manager's manager, with your name on it.
At the big corporation I work at, we have yearly surveys. We also do exit interviews with people who are leaving. You're right the notes usually go directly to the person's supervisor. Then the upper management guys put together some kind of directive to try and improve whatever was spelled out in the surveys or the exit interview feedback if they start seeing a pattern.
Then it becomes a quarterly goal for the manager - say reducing team churn before EOY. Goal is met, everything goes back to normal and nobody is the wiser about anything said in the exit interview.
Its literally a one-time deal that is a short-term, surface level managerial fix.
Even when you supposedly have a system in place that should theoretically handle negative survey and exit interview feedback, the system is designed to more or less just sweep it under the carpet as if nothing ever happened.
I usually love Jacob’s writing but I completely agree with you. I attend exit interviews, and I’m as honest as I can be, and I’ve never experienced a bad outcome… and I’ve given some pretty bad feedback! I’d go as far as to say, the worse the feedback is, the better the reception often is — because I’m offering up information that can, at the very least, help prevent others from quitting.
An exit interview is an explicit opt-in from the interviewer to hear bad news…
You are taking out the human element of a bad manager wanting revenge for you bad-mouthing them. You might say 'well it's not professional to do that!', however a well motivated manager with an axe to grind can find all sorts of ways to cause trouble for you within 'the rules', which is often precisely how bad managers operate on the job. In fact, the article goes into detail on this.
It's actually something of an archetype for a manager to be snide and 'keep within the rules' while absolutely making employee's lives miserable. That's how they survive politically. I should know, I've had it done to me.
This ignores the cult-like attributes of many companies. You've decided to leave, therefore your critique may no longer be considered reliable - "obviously a disgruntled employee who did not appreciate our efforts to improve the world" - that's going to be the thinking in some quarters.
Also I'm not convinced on the idea that it is unlikely to elicit change. My current employer takes exit interviews very seriously when they lose good people, and tries to fix the situation before losing more.
Like you said, if it is handled professionally - that is, you have valid concerns/criticisms that you are able to quantify and address in a constructive manner - it can be very useful for everyone involved.
I get that for every company that seems to care there are probably 10 that seem to not, but I always find this sort of stereotypical "work sucks and is a zero-sum game" attitude that is common on Reddit and HN a little saddening. Sure, your primary concern should be to take care of yourself, but this idea that everything with 'Inc.' after its name is full of layers of uncaring, heartless drones is frankly untrue. People think the same about IT/tech/dev, and it's not true there either. It does not have to be you vs them, even when you decide to leave.
>I have no idea what the author is on about. The exit interview is often the best 30 minutes of a bad job!
My exit interview at a toxic job was really bad. I was given old format of exit interview form, me and my manager knew it's not going to be imported into a system and analysed, it has quite stupid questions like "would you stay for 2% more salary", or asking to blame people "is any of below a reason of you leaving: PO, SM, fellow developer/QA", while most people were leaving thanks to C-level people who didn't want to recognise their fault. If they knew employee was leaving the company for a lot more money of changing role, they were asked different questions that made the company look more positive to investors.
Wut? I hope you responded with something like "Hell no, but make it 60% and we can talk". Typically when I have jumped ship I got something like 20%-40% more with my new employer.
Of course, the questions were designed to make leaving employees look bad and leave for no reason, and like said above, I got an old format which wasn't imported into a system and presented as metrics.
In my experience, exit interviews are mostly a formality that do not create any changes to people or processes after you leave. I think it would be interesting to have a law that says potential job candidates are allowed to view recorded exit interviews though.
Right now Glassdoor basically serves that purpose and is more cathartic than venting to some poor HR peon--someone might actually read your Glassdoor review.
>You can tell them what they are doing well, what they aren't doing well, praise good employees and criticize bad managers.
You can do that over a beer or two with the (ex-)colleagues any time before or after you leave. It's not like you are forced to delete them from the contact list. And if you have managed to build this kind of trust between yourself and another employee, it's always a good idea to keep a connection to them. Ping them a couple times per year, discuss some common topics, and be ready to refer each other if one is looking for a job and the other one has an opening at their company. This is called "networking".
As far as the exit interview goes, the only things it's wise to say there are the same as telling your new employer why you left the previous workplace. "Just wanted to work with X, while they were focusing on Y, so we shook hands and parted". Everyone knows it's bullshit, but it's a test of your ability to de-escalate and avoid conflict, and it is very important.
Oh, and don't underestimate the bad managers either. If they abuse you and you still act professionally (and leave politely), you are just a resource. You are no longer needed, they have no interest in abusing you, they might even give you a neutral reference if anybody asks (although don't count on that). If you personally call out their bullshit in front of other subordinates, they may take it personally, and you really do not want a personal vendetta with someone who's full-time job is to spread gossip and manipulate people.
> If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway.
Most 'references' are "Bill worked here from 6/2019 to 12/2020. Bill left with the title of Chief Ball Washer."
They may throw in an eligible for rehire or not but the boomer idea of a Employer Reference has been dead and buried almost as long as I have been in the workforce. And I'm closer to retirement than I am to when I joined the workforce.
Shit at most of the places I have been the leadership turns over faster than the employees so there's no one there to say how I worked anyway.
I think for a lot of engineering jobs this is absolutely true. That said, it depends entirely on what your focus or what your industry is.
As an example, before I moved into software engineering, I worked in digital media. There are maybe 22,000 working journalists in digital media in the United States (and that's also allowing for employees at the larger national papers like WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, etc) -- give or take a couple of thousand. If you then factor in for location (say, New York City) and coverage area (say, technology), you're now down to a small enough number of people that you can and will realistically know someone at almost every single place you would be going for a job. You run into people at conferences. You see people at the same parties. You have mutual friends. It's small and incestuous. So in that case, telling HR or your editor how the company can go fuck itself is usually not a great idea. Because you'll wind up working with these people again someday.
Unless you're in a more specialized area or community, software is different because you have 8x employees at one FAANG than in some entire industries. So in that case, as you said, turnover can be so swift and the reference is usually "Bill worked here from X to Y and had the title of Z."
But if you ARE in a specialized area, social capital matters a lot (I frequently get pinged by people at companies I don't even work at, asking my thoughts on a particular person) and so that's one more reason NOT to do the exit interview, or to at least not tell the person where to shove it in that interview.
Somebody at new company is a buddy with someone at old company, and calls up to ask "What's the deal on <potential hire>". No paper trail, nothing for the lawyers to track down.
The context of the article is in reference to being honest with the company in an exit interview. It has zero to do with informal references, personal references, or that fact that you run into people you used to work with in every industry.
If HR is printing and handing out your exit interview to all your former colleagues and they all disagree with your POV; a) you have a bigger problem and/or b) you might just be the asshole everyone else is talking about.
Edit: To be fair, your feedback could get back to the person it was about and they could fuck with you later but aren't they doing you a favor at that point. Anyone who I dislike enough to specifically call out by name in a negative way in an exit interview was typically someone I would never work for or with again.
The risk of honesty is that something negative you say will get back to the target, who will then bad mouth you.
It does happen. In the worst cases, the bad guy will actively sabotage the frankly speaking exiter's job search.
You say, "I really found Bad-Director's micromanaging our sprints unendurable".
Now Bad-Director is your enemy and will bad mouth you at every opportunity including off the record reference checks. Doesn't happen 100% of the time, but often enough to be a risk.
I don't see why you care about any of that. It doesn't concern you anymore. It isn't your problem. There are way better avenues of catharsis that have literally zero potential impact on your future job seeking abilities instead of the theoretical zero you're assuming.
I don't agree. I assume we're all professionals but some people are oil and water, doesn't mean you need to burn a bridge. Tempers cool, favors sometimes need returned, references are there in the future. I'm not burning a bridge with an exit interview. I no longer owe the company I'm leaving anything, but I'm leaving the bridge intact. I leave on a good note, I might call out particularly talented people that I feel get overlooked but otherwise I generally won't even have one bad word to say, even if I want to.
They sound like awful, possible hostile, environments OP has worked in. I'm with you here, there is absolutely room to provide constructive criticism and to provide an opposing data point, I have seen instances of an organization changing over time at least in part due to what people have said in their exit interviews. We're all human beings and we want each other to be happy and successful. If that's not the environment I'm in, then I made a mistake. If I am, it's not at all like OP described.
The last time I had to do one it was with the head of HR, we went to a local restaurant / bar to do it, rinsed my expenses on cocktails and got absolutely smashed for the entire afternoon. It was fantastic.
Is everyone really doing exit interviews this wrong? At my company the exit interview is with HR. All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back. As a manager, this has been extremely helpful. HR is not always your friend, but in my scenario there is really nothing to lose.
Obviously it's not anonymous to the interviewer. Clearly in this case it was anonymous to the manager receiving the feedback. I think this is not too uncommon.
Ive been in orgs where HR was literally sleeping with head of sales, and had me fix phones with dickpics and BJ vids and etc btwn employees...
uh HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.
Do not confide in them, especially anything personal.
Also, if you have an IOS device - log into your apple account and confirm the devices tied to it.. HR will (in many SV orgs) attempt to add a device to your apple account to monitor you.
BYOD is a nightmare for personal privacy, and HR depts will use personal info against you.
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EDIT: Just a reminder that Uber literally went after the medical records (HIPAA violations, at min.) to slander a person calling them out for sexual misconduct
Should 100% demand a work supplied device for work. Or at worst buy a cheap second Android to use as a work device. There is no circumstance where using your main personal device for work is a good idea.
> Also, if you have an IOS device - log into your apple account and confirm the devices tied to it.. HR will (in many SV orgs) attempt to add a device to your apple account to monitor you.
This comes off as more than just a little bit paranoid - HR can't just add devices to your iCloud account. It requires credentials and 2FA to do that for one thing, and it'd be illegal in most of the countries we're in to boot.
They offer the employee a device... company will pay for it:
"But I want to only have 1 number, and want to keep my own (naive yound tech employee says)"
You can take this device and just have yuour number on it...
You login to your apple ID on that device...
They read every text...
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Do you recall when FB tried to make a phone...
THANK FUCKING GOD THAT FAILED.
uh... I was a new hire at FB when this tok place and they held a mtg and were talking about the phone, and the question was asked about what was thought of the new phone, and I misconstrued the mtg as being "open and connecting people" -- and I spoke to the product guy in the mtg, and I told him it was a POS. NOBODY liked my non-sycophantic behaviour... as I said that I had experienced it IRL with users and they all hated it...
That went over not-so-cromulently.
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FB, even internally, is the quintessential "You cant get out of your own way..." company.
> All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back
Oh sweet summer child.. No feedback is anonymous, ever. It can be 'confidential', which means that HR can disclose it at their discretion or as appropriate.
As a manager, if you get value from the exit interview, with all due respect, you're doing it wrong. All the feedback which could be part of the exit interview should never be a surprise or an added value after the fact.
And why should the employee help with that? And why at that point? There's a lot of opportunities for feedback during employment. If you're banking on exit interviews, you've already lost and you're doing it fundamentally wrong.
At smaller companies with no HR, there is a lot of room for personal gripes to muck up exit interviews. I've experienced this firsthand with an unhinged founder.
They are speaking from the perspective of a manager, so HR isn't leaking identities to them.
Although based on what they are saying, I don't think it would be hard to de-anonymize this info - exit interview feedback looks different than general feedback, and if it's in any way specific (and if it's unspecific it's not super useful) it's almost always easy to identify who it's from.
Of course, they don't get an embossed label with the name(s) of the one provided feedback. However, depending how high are they on the ladder - even directly asking may yield results.
What struck me was the belief 'all feedback', e.g. no exceptions, no redacting that may reveal details, no language replacement.
The other issue is mixing with w/ regular feedback - aside personal integrity what's the reason for anyone to be honest on an exit interview.
they said they were a manager, evidently the responses come to them in such a way that they feel it is anonymous.
However, I have a problem seeing how the data from an exit interview if truly anonymous would be at all useful. But they said it was useful for them as a manager as well, so...
To replies about things never being anonymous: I'm the manager in this scenario, so I can tell you confidently that it is anonymous to the best of abilities. Perfect? No. Warranting of the fears in the article? Also no. But hey, ymmv. My point is simply that it doesn't have to be the crass way the OP describes.
HR setup an exit interview that was meant to be anonymous. Asked questions about improving the department. I took it seriously I was direct in my feedback thinking that I was helping my coworkers have a better workplace in the future and helping the company identify potential issues. I was wrong. HR immediately gave my feedback to the boss because the HR person and my boss were friends. Nothing changed in the department but I created an enemy with someone whom I had a good working relationship with. Lesson learned.
If asked to give an exit interview just say everything was great, you are sad to go, but are pursuing a great opportunity that you can't turn down. 99 percent of the time your honest direct feedback will do nothing to improve a situation and only burn a bridge for you.
In an exit interview I've done, it was clear to me that HR was trying to spin a story about why I was leaving that didn't align with what I was saying or trying to say. They were nice enough, but it was full of questions that appeared to be designed to invalidate my thoughts or feelings. For example, the question: "But did you have the resources you needed to do your job?" to my point of "I felt like I was set up to fail on these projects."
They also focused on single points that were actually just a small part of a much larger picture, emphasizing them as though to suggest that they were the singular reason for me leaving. It was a frustrating experience, and it felt dishonest. I felt like they didn't want the real reasons I was leaving, they wanted a story that didn't make the company's processes and management look flawed.
If you are leaving because you were dissatisfied, it is not impossible that you would later file suit claiming that the causes of your dissatisfaction constituted constructive termination on the part of the employer, and that the reason for that was some protected characteristic. HR therefore uses exit interviews to collect evidence that can be used to substantiate the defenses that (1) there was no constructive termination, and (2) if there was, it was for some other reason than a protected characteristic. This is one of the main reasons for seeking exit interviews of voluntary departures. (If you actually felt like you were being set up to fail, there is even more reason for concern about this than in the baseline case, especially if your feeling was correct.)
You lose every battle when you leave a company. That's just something you have to accept. They get to put whatever narrative out there that they want, and you won't be there to defend yourself.
In my experience, HR will end up painting something banal as the main reason for an exit instead of ever (publicly) admitting to some creative or strategic differences.
Saying "the new job is closer too" will lead to the narrative that the reason was 100% based on commute time.
I've used an exit interview to explain that commute time is a huge problem and that they need to open a $location office rather than providing so many shuttle buses
HR is NEVER your friend. They are not on your side. DO NOT TRUST HR.
Anonymous feedback is never anonymous. DO NOT TRUST HR.
Here's the deal... Exit interviews, as a manager, were annoying because they could ding me on my annual reviews. And that's fine, except... people would complain about things I had no control over. "Oh, my manager made me do something stupid that I didn't like!" Yup, I get it. Only it wasn't ever me making them do that, it was my boss, or a client. And still, as the manager, I'd get blame.
And you know what I did with that information? Every time someone trashed me, or the company, in an exit interview, I'd remember it. And 2-3 jobs from now, when you need a rec, or you need someone to say something nice about your time at my company, I'd be unavailable. Or if the new place you were applying called, and asked me, "Do you have any feedback about X candidate?" You better believe I had things to say about the people who were negative.
The advice in the post are spot on. Keep your mouth shut. Odds are it's not your boss that's making the bad decisions. Odds are the culture is exactly how the people at the top want it to be. Anything you dislike, it's likely out of your manager's control. Trashing them is just a sign you don't see the big picture. And bosses are petty, they'll get revenge if they can. And odds are you'll need them to say something nice about you at some point.
> if the new place you were applying called, and asked me, "Do you have any feedback about X candidate?" You better believe I had things to say about the people who were negative.
> And bosses are petty, they'll get revenge if they can. And odds are you'll need them to say something nice about you at some point.
You're opening yourself and your company up to getting sued. An employee uses the exit interview for the purposes the company claims they're for and you take 'revenge' on them? That's pretty unprofessional. You should be trying to change the fact that the exit interview unfairly impacts your perf review, if anything.
You're right that HR is never your friend and today's world is so small, but my take: Be cautious with your words while offering genuine, constructive, and non-personal feedback.
It's possible that HR will never do anything--covering for a toxic middle manager--yet expecting to see action from a single exit interview is unrealistic.
SO! While you're not obligated to give any honest feedback, but if you like your coworkers then it's worth a shot.
> And bosses are petty, they'll get revenge if they can.
It sounds like you're including yourself in the group you call "petty". And in an earlier part of the post, you talked about behavior that I'd consider vindictive.
Honest question: Are you happy that you behave that way, or do you wish you behaved differently?
I'm not criticizing. I'm genuinely curious about the different ways people see the world.
Good lord, what terrible advice. If anyone is reading this and thinking of adopting his ideas, please consider (with the exception being if you're still early in your career):
1) Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins
2) Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill
3) If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored. She won't lose her job, but it's not going to do her any favours either
My counter-advice then, is:
Be honest every day, and do your work well. If you get in trouble for telling the truth, that's not a company you need to be at. I have yet to get into trouble for being honest, even when when it the truths were difficult to swallow, but of course it depends on where you are in your career.
Also important; don't be a dick. There's a difference between telling the truth to constructive ends, and being a whiny critical negative contrarian.
You can say all you want about “be yourself” and “honesty is the best policy” but that doesn’t mean the company across the table from you is going to be a good actor.
You’re placing a lot of faith on the company here, and in my experience people in companies will absolutely do things like what the author listed and thinking that they won’t is just naive.
I’ve personally experienced having a former boss who’s friends with your current boss and what that can do to your reputation.
spoiler alert: even in a situation where there wasn’t a lot of bad blood, it meant a perceptible negative change towards me.
I had a similar situation, but can't go into details. My new boss had developed a blind spot for gossip about me. Lucky me, I guess, but I also think it may have had to do with cultural differences between Europe and the U.S.A.
I feel like author actually considered all your points, but regardless arrives at the same conclusion:
The expected value of an exit interview -for you, the individual- is near-zero or possibly negative.
At the point of your exit interview, you're done with the company. You're no longer part of the team, you're no longer in the family. Your advice and feedback is that of someone who decided to jump ship.
I suppose if you're the absolute top performer at your company and they begged for you to stay, and the VP asked for one last chat to get your advice on how to fix the company... then sure, go for it. Otherwise, just hand over your badge and wish them all the best of luck.
I'm being more selfish than that. Of course I wish the company would improve even as I'm leaving, but my _main_ concern is my own psychological wellbeing, and I've found that it hurts me to hold things back for the sake of playing a game.
> 1) Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins
'Leaving a job that doesn't suit you' is the part where you're being true to yourself; whatever you say in the exit interview usually doesn't have a material positive effect on one's own life except possibly the chance to get some closure if things have been really bad - in such situations, however, I would say there is a less than average chance of achieving even that, otherwise maybe it would have been possible to work things out without leaving.
> 2) Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill
So whose name should I write down when asked for a referee? My own? As the article said, later in your career this is much less of a concern but when starting out and being an unknown quantity, every sympathetic connection is more valuable because you don't have many.
> 3) If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored. She won't lose her job, but it's not going to do her any favours either
Sure it can, it happens all the time. Dick CEO will either find ways to rationalise the bad feedback, outright ignore it, or else the feedback won't make it that far up the chain as the interviewer values their own job and the CEO is a dick.
> If you get in trouble for telling the truth, that's not a company you need to be at.
Right, but... we're talking about exit interviews; by definition you won't be staying there and derive little to no benefit by being fully open even if things do change. The author of the post wasn't necessarily advocating lying unless there was no other way, just being economical with the truth.
> Also important; don't be a dick. There's a difference between telling the truth to constructive ends, and being a whiny critical negative contrarian.
Sure, that's always good advice, but it doesn't require total honesty; bland empty replies work just as well and don't trigger the kind of fragile egos that so often seem to make their way up the food chain.
Haha, I love these "With all due respect, you're a moron" lines :D I'm kidding, it's fine.
> whatever you say in the exit interview usually doesn't have a material positive effect on one's own life except possibly the chance to get some closure if things have been really bad
The material positive effect is the act of staying honest itself. It is psychologically damaging to do otherwise, or at least for me it was. If holding things back doesn't bother the person, then I have no argument.
> So whose name should I write down when asked for a referee? My own?
In a way. What I was getting at was that _later on in your career_, you will not need references if you're half decent. But yes, I did say that things are different when you're starting out, and you may have to play the game a little more.
Yeah. Big part of this is cultural. US is "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."
Many other parts of the world value honor and honesty more. I'm from one of those parts. In this case, it's a prisoner's dilemma. Honesty doesn't benefit you, but if everyone's honest, it benefits everyone. Exit interview, it doesn't hurt too much either. It's a safe time to be honest.
Having been on the other side of the table, if your manager is professional -- and most managers are -- it's a numbers game. The odds of an exit interview having an impact are close to zero. It's one person's issue. That doesn't make it invalid -- if you have a 30 minute longer commute to the new office, hate the way we do performance evaluations, or want growth paths into product management, you've got a valid reason to leave.
If five people hate the new location, how we do performance reviews, or don't think they have good internal growth paths, I'll act on that.
Simply saying it was time to move on or to try something new isn’t being dishonest. It’s just not getting into all the dirty laundry. I wouldn’t be as dramatic as the author but I basically agree I’m under no obligation to the company at that point and just want to get out the door.
I’m sure there are exceptions. You don’t want to go back to an office. The company wouldn’t support some initiative you were championing. But for the most part I’ll make it as proforma as I can.
Agreed. There's no need to get into the details, but if they're brought up, I won't skirt them. This isn't so much for the company, as it is for myself. It's not _exactly_ venting, more like feeling good about myself that I didn't do something I disagreed with.
> Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins
Being true to yourself is not the same as saying what you think. I might think that my coworker is ugly, but I don't need to say it. I also might think that salary is too high. Not everything needs to be said.
> Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill
Sure, I'll try that next time when I'm looking for a job and they ask for references. I'm sure it will work out great!
While I agree in spirit with your point that being true to yourself is very important, as somebody who's been consistently honest (over ~15 years or so career) I'm afraid I think you're far too optimistic on that front.
By all means do what I do which is -- be honest so you can sleep at night knowing you tried to do the best for the company -- but don't always expect good outcomes.
That last point is the crux of why things don't always work out because, who decides whether you're being constructive or a whiny, critical, negative contrarian? Might it be the manager you're criticising? :)
I've had the 'it's the way you say it' thrown in my face before despite having said things a number of different ways each getting the same response. Manipulative, gaslighting managers absolutely thrive on those kind of blurry lines.
Often middle managers are playing an entirely different game than you are. They want to look like they're not only essential but the reason things turn out well. Some decide to adopt a meta of bashing down people who call any of that into question (an underling raising concerns might risk them taking credit rather the manager).
I've also had the bad luck of having a truly evil manager in the past who made sure to cause actual psychological harm to me and other ex-colleagues. I am glad you haven't experienced that but they do exist.
I guess the correct test for 'is it me?' is to assess what others think. If many independent employees are experiencing the same thing then it's probably real. If it's only you, then question whether maybe you're the cause.
Yes yes and yes! I hear you, and mostly agree. However! (because of course I have a "however"):
> ... but don't always expect good outcomes
The good outcome is the physchological soundness of not playing the game. Saying things you don't believe in order to do what's expected has a negative pyschological impact on you. If it helps the company too, that's a nice bonus.
In addition, if the last 6 developers all left because they got offers 30% more, maybe that will finally be the push to raise salaries for their current employees that are still there.
Also, most places I have worked will not allow management to give more than the dates you worked, and if they would re-hire you again in a job reference. They are too scared of lawsuits..
Yeah not even that sometimes...dates of employment, title, broad responsibilities (she wasn't a gardner, she was a nuclear physicist). Anything else potentially implies judgment and is open to interpretation/libel. That's how I've been trained in scenarios for references.
I've never heard of eligibility for rehire being given in an external reference. There is no purpose for that other than to get sued. But it may be in the file easily accessible for internal use only.
> Be honest every day, and do your work well.
> Also important; don't be a dick. There's a difference between telling the truth to constructive ends, and being a whiny critical negative contrarian
In that spirit of honesty: you really have no idea, and are extrapolating from a sample size of one. What feels good and righteous is not always what is most effective.
> 1) Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins
This advice is about being fully truthful with others. You can avoid exit interviews as a waste of your time, and still be "true to yourself."
> 2) Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill
You don't get a choice in whether employers use references, and in the he-said-she-said scenario, you lose against the candidate whose references weren't toxic. This is borderline "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" advice.
> If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored.
It actually totally can. HR reports to the CEO, not the board. Bill Gross lasted 43 years at PIMCO, which is longer than your typical HR career. In fact, I'd almost bet "asshole" is a job requirement, based on stories we hear about CEOs. I've never personally encountered such a person professionally, but if you're leaving because they're an asshole, telling them that to someone who can make good on the classic "you'll never work in this town again" threat is doing yourself no favors.
> If you get in trouble for telling the truth, that's not a company you need to be at.
I feel like you don't understand what an exit interview is: it's somebody in HR interviewing you to protect themselves from lawsuits. They want to know if you are leaving due to harassment, or violence, etc. By the time you do an exit interview, you have already decided to leave the company, and unless the reason you are leaving has to do with illegal behavior, it's unreasonable to conflate the interview with HR changing anything.
> 3) If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored. She won't lose her job, but it's not going to do her any favours either
Maybe for large enterprises there's a path somewhere regarding this. But in the smallish companies I've worked (350 or less people), the most the HR department doing the "exit interview" would be able to do is to tell the "Head of HR" about it, and then, what would the Head of HR do? She would tell her boss about it... and her boss (the CEO) will laugh it off.
The argument is a little ginned up to get attention, but the core point is real - there’s little upside to meaningful participation.
An HR survey is usually a waste of time that will be a distilled into some pie chart. Genial, politically content free yakking. A sit down with a VP can potentially be a useful thing for you.
If your position is to speak your truth or whatever, it’s likely better to find a reason to blow it off. I’ve done those as the VP guy, and when you let me know the CEO is a tool 6 different years, everything you say has a “crank” filter applied.
4) If something is outside of you or your recipient's control, don't worry about it - complaining about it is at best gossip and at worst agitating
5) Part of your job is to help your managers make good decisions. Even if they made a bad decision, it's their responsibility and your job is over. No need to dwell on it.
A lot of people don't seem to know where the line is between being constructive and petulant. Or they are under the mistaken belief that complaining about things makes them seem intelligent or interesting.
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
I have never done any exit interview, if I had to do one I would just say I got a better opportunity somewhere else. Generally speaking, if you need me to tell you what’s wrong with a place where you spend 8 hours per day, then maybe it’s better for you to spend your days doing another job, but I also tolerate companies because in this system I’m required to have a job to have an acceptable life , but inside I hate any company and the point of this fake "show" that they care about improving is such a bullshit that to me it’s frustrating to be asked to take part in it so that ‘we can learn and improve’ just please
Funny as it is, you are right. In a past life, with a past company (now out of business), and a past boss (I intentionally write "boss", as this guy had nothing to do with a leader) I made all of the wrong choices on the points you marked. Although, I had/still have a great reputation in my industry, it happened exactly as you said... after I moved to my next step in my career, rumors start to appear that my old boss said bad things about me. Luckily, his own reputation went all the way to the ground and under in the next year, and the untruths he said did not make any harm. But this is real, if I had left without going head first into this guy and answered the exit interview questions impassively, I would have saved a lot of negative emotions. Just the feeling of telling everything straight was too much to resist for my broken ego. Now I know best, I am leaving, who cares... the next day I am gone, page is closed, spent the energy for future positive, than for past/current negative.
HR exercises are really not to your advantage anyway, running down the clock and keeping it bland are the best choices, just like any other HR exercise.
My issue with the author's claims is that everything is framed in a "what's in it for me" reference. Even when they decided to break their own rule and go to an exit interview, the decision was made because there was the "didn’t think I had any downside risk."
There are times when your personal choices may need to take a backseat to more important goals. If you are really committed to a mission, even one you've decided to leave, I would think you'd want to give feedback that can help improve the chances of that mission being successful, even if there's a personal downside risk.
Think about something like the Boeing 737-MAX. Imagine a software engineer who decides to leave because they think the safety culture is really terrible. Would you prefer that employee voice their opinion during exit, despite the chances that it may make a change, or just quietly slip out the back?
If you have important concerns to bring up in the exit interview, then why didn't you bring it up previously?
When I left a previous job, I didn't say any of the reasons why I was leaving. All the problems in the company had been previously expressed by me or other people MULTIPLE TIMES. The problems were always ignored. I didn't want to bring them up again just to have someone argue that those problems "aren't that big of a deal" or "must not be the real reason you're leaving" so I kept my mouth shut.
That's a fair point. I guess I was working from the assumption that the type of person who is mission-oriented and wants the org to succeed even without them, would also be the type of person who has been trying to fix those issue during their tenure.
I would argue, though, that just bringing an issue up isn't the same as actively trying to solve it. Pointing out problems is easy, but fixing them is often hard. Finding effective ways to communicate issues and building the relationships necessary to have the social/business capital to help fix them is not something that just occurs by shining a light on a problem. I suspect the person who wants to have a constructive exit interview isn't just wanting to vent and point at problems.
Whistleblowers get destroyed in the culture we have right now, they loose everything. It don't think its reasonable to ask people to destroy their own lives so that we might one day find out about the horrors that companies do only to watch as nothing is done to resolve it with the perpetrators.
If the circumstances were different and the public didn't stand for such widespread mistreatment of those that stood against illegal activity then there is different advice, but far from having protections for whistleblowers as it stands we only have punishment.
Even internal-only whistleblowing on non-safety things like IP issues or quality can be risky.
In theory you are helping by making them aware non-publicly. But if profits are good they may want to keep these things quiet and unresolved.
With unemployment at ~4% unethical people just want to continue guzzling unethical money until snot hits the fan -- when product or service collapses under the weight of the problem then get a new job at same pay. They don't want to fix anything even if long-term its a big problem. OTOH, when employment is 9% then it isn't a sure bet that equivalent job is available, and scammers need to adapt faster.
I would say it depends on the context. Are you in a profession with an ethical obligation and an oath to the public like a doctor, engineer, or lawyer? Then I think you have an obligation to say something regardless of downside. Those aren't "jobs", they are "professions" because they profess an oath that should be more than mere words.
> If you are really committed to a mission, even one you've decided to leave, I would think you'd want to give feedback that can help improve the chances of that mission being successful, even if there's a personal downside risk.
Let's not have any illusions about the "mission" that 99% of us are on. That mission is to do mind numbing meaningless work on some ad-tech platform because they pay us 3x the median salary to do it. Don't ever think for a moment that your company cares about you or your affinity to their "mission" at all.
I agree that "mission" is more buzzword than substance in SV. But there are certainly many people outside that bubble who work in organizations with missions that are important to them. List any number of governmental, safety-critical, or health related fields for an idea. IMO, extreme pay is a way to compensate precisely because they know it's not a purpose they really identify with.
> Would you prefer that employee voice their opinion during exit
If it's something really important, e.g. safety culture, then the employee should have already raised this much, much earlier.
If the company didn't listen then, then evidently they see concerning behaviour as an acceptable cost of running their business in a certain way.
I think it's bad to say anything revelatory in an exit interview, as it shows you as someone who isn't prepared to speak up when you notice something wrong.
To the point of another post, I don't think they are mutually exclusive unless the exit interview is held by the same person who you would normally voice daily concerns to (e.g., direct supervisor). Many organizations have exit interviews scheduled with people many levels higher precisely because they recognize the middle-managers won't have the ability to sanitize the feedback first.
Meaning it's possible to have been voicing concerns the entire time but not have them reach the same level as you'd get at an exit interview. I look at exit interviews as an accountability measure for mid-level management.
All that is useful to the company, but not to the employee leaving. I would agree there are potential upsides to a company, but there are only potential downsides for the employee.
If a company wants to get feedback from the shop floor, they can run anonymous employee surveys.
Maybe it makes a difference how the company treats their employees?
Large organizations tend to become bureaucratic and very concerned with their downside, both as a group (human resources) and as individuals (managers). Often they don't treat employees as people, but rather as resources, as cogs in a machine.
Some companies are rather inhumane. I don't think there's anything wrong with analyzing the situation with this in mind.
Sure -- in healthcare people say things like "I think new job's approach to managing patient outcomes has the rigor that I prefer" or "I think my new gig professes to emphasize xyz more than this job, and I think that is a better fit for me."
I'd kind of hope they'd bring it up before the exit interview. If you're only raising important issues on your way out the door it's just virtue signalling to make yourself feel better. Work to fix it or keep your mouth shut & move on.
I agree, and another commenter said similar. I will say that an exit interview can often be a unique circumstance to raise issues to levels that you may not have the ability to otherwise. For example, most military units have exit interviews where enlisted get a one-on-one with the executive officer. Because of the tightly controlled hierarchy in military organizations, this may be their only chance at a one-on-one exchange with that level. To your point though, flat organizations should have plenty of opportunity before quitting to raise concerns to high levels.
In the case of a sour breakup, you should 100% lie. Just say it was great but you were in need for a change. Don't dramatize the lying part because you lied to get in and the employer lied about how great their company is. Work is a lie, play the game.
In the case of a drama-free breakup, when pressed for feedback and the room being receptive of it, do share your thoughts. But toned down, in a light hearted manner. Comment on things and processes, not people. This gives the impression "helpful until the end".
Both ways are a clean exit, with no bridges burned. There might come a time in your life where you're less desirable on the market, having intact relations can make a huge difference then.
You should internalize the dishonesty as a type of strength, because that's what it is in this context. In a sour breakup, you're given the perfect opportunity for revenge, with little immediate consequences.
Your ex-boss Tim is an asshole. He knows he is. And you know he is. You now have the opportunity to finally say it to his face.
Applying silence in this situation is powerful. It says so much more. I could harm you right now, but I chose not to. This radiates self control, which is widely respected. Meanwhile, Tim was looking forward to a good burn and argument, but didn't get any. He feels submissive, like a Roman emperor giving him a thumbs up, allowed to live another day.
And that's how you play it. Alternatively, you can be 21 years old and post on Medium "7 reasons why I quite company X after 8 months". Let me know how that goes.