[HN Gopher] Exit interviews are a trap
___________________________________________________________________
Exit interviews are a trap
Author : _ttg
Score : 294 points
Date : 2022-04-04 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobian.org)
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Many engineers who are leaving a startup may have a whole bunch
| of options or equity. This equity has value and one way to
| preserve that value is to give honest feedback in an exit
| interview.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| If they weren't taking the feedback prior to you quitting, they
| certainly aren't going to take the feedback after you're gone.
|
| And if you weren't giving the feedback prior to you quitting,
| you haven't been doing a great job of preserving the value of
| your equity up until now.
| omoikane wrote:
| The main (possible) positive value for exit interviews is for the
| coworkers you left behind, if you want to use your departure as
| the last chance to help your teammates. The author also mentioned
| this, and if I were to say anything in my exit interview, that's
| what I would use it for.
|
| That said, my motivation for staying at a job is mostly because
| of my comrades, and if I decide to leave, it's probably because
| all the people I liked have already left.
| atum47 wrote:
| I kinda liked my exit interview. Got the chance do talk about
| what have happened and much of a douchebag my former "coworker"
| was. It was nice to be heard.
| quantified wrote:
| 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.
| draw_down wrote:
| exabrial wrote:
| If you did care enough, I'm sure you could hire a lawyer to draw
| up a non-retaliation and non-dispargement agreement you could
| have the company sign, but why bother? You can't be forced into
| an exit interview in the US. Just accept the meeting invite,
| don't show up.
| gneray wrote:
| Jacob, this is...so disappointing.
|
| Avoid, be bland, lie? There is no integrity here.
|
| The upside of being honest is 1) preserving your integrity, and
| 2) most people who leave share their reasons for leaving with
| someone ultimately, which usually gets back to the team they
| left. If you share a different story and your old team finds out
| later, it's just going to create a worse impression.
|
| How about: find a clear but respectful way of articulating why
| you are leaving. And if the complaints are longstanding, you
| don't need to go on and on about them, you can just reference
| past conversations and be done with it.
| badrabbit wrote:
| For those starting out in their career in the US: They do not
| play fair and they will lie about you and talk behind your back.
| By they, I mean the people that do the hiring. When you apply at
| one place , they will contact buddies at your current or former
| place of work even without your consent and you have no chance to
| fight or dispute that (and it is also illegal, not that they
| care). It's not a level playing field, if you leave a bad work
| place, just be glad you were able to leave. Hopefully, job market
| economics will get them to change. Be forgettable, as in how
| people will forget everything about you except how you made them
| feel.
| rdiddly wrote:
| I think I just came up with a new rule: You should never be in an
| exit interview with anything new to say. If you find yourself
| revealing anything in the exit interview that the company doesn't
| already know, you should've brought it up awhile back!
| fleddr wrote:
| You should definitely go to an exit interview.
|
| 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.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| 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.
|
| Focus on the outcome you want to create.
| bradlys wrote:
| > Work is a lie, play the game.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| Here's my old man manual to life at work.
|
| 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".
| [deleted]
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > 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?
| tamrix wrote:
| And always say the money wasn't enough. Your past employees
| will thank you. ;)
| gotaquestion wrote:
| 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.
|
| Can you elaborate what The Game actually is?
| digisign wrote:
| 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.
| notch656a wrote:
| 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).
| bradlys wrote:
| 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.
| notch656a wrote:
| 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.
| pigeons wrote:
| Obviously.
| shevis wrote:
| The one piece missing from this is article is the fact that some
| people do actually have a vested interest in the continued
| success of the company even after leaving (e.g. option/stock
| holders). Not that your feedback will likely have any material
| effect on the value of the company, but you never know!
| skrebbel wrote:
| I don't know man, some bosses actually do want to learn and
| improve.
|
| There's this narrative in the tech blogosphere that managers are,
| by definition, psychopaths who want to screw you over and I'm
| just not seeing it.
|
| I mean, sure, this can happen but an honest and open exit
| interview can also just be a nice thing you do for a boss who
| you're happy to help succeed, even if you're leaving them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The best exit interview I ever gave was with the incoming
| security manager. I laid out all the gory details for him, told
| him what he was going to find and where to look for it. It was a
| delightful interview. The organization didn't really want to deal
| with the reality, but it was a pretty big business risk
| nonetheless.
|
| Sadly, for them, he promptly quit a week later. I don't know for
| sure if it was my exit interview that convinced him.
|
| Other than that, I generally follow the advice in the article.
| Keep it kinda bland. But that's mostly because I'm old and very
| experienced, and by the time I leave it's because management has
| clearly indicated they're not going to change things. I've
| already told them the problems, because I'm not afraid of
| retaliation. So everyone is on the same page, and if I don't like
| that page, I step away.
|
| It helps to have a strong network of good former coworkers so I
| can just find another gig if this one doesn't suit me.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Let's consider the upside: maybe the company changes! Probably
| not, though: whatever the criticism is, it's highly unlikely it's
| something new.
|
| Yes, highly unlikely for anything to change at the company you're
| leaving. Beyond what he outlines here, one big consideration is
| that many companies have cult-like characteristics. If you decide
| to leave the cult...err, I mean _company_ you 're now considered
| an unreliable source of information anyway ("who would choose to
| leave this company where we are going to change the world!",
| "Obviously this is a disgruntled employee with _issues_. " etc.).
| Maybe you were once a true believer in the cult's... err, I mean,
| _company 's_ mission when you first joined, but became
| disillusioned over time. Many others who remain there will still
| be true believers.
| bumby wrote:
| 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?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > 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.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| 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.
| softjobs wrote:
| Case in point: Edward Snowden.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| heurisko wrote:
| > 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.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| mikem170 wrote:
| 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.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| > _why didn 't you bring it up previously?_
|
| 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.
| khazhoux wrote:
| 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.
| cpach wrote:
| What's the point of exit interviews really?
|
| I had an exit interview earlier this year. All the constructive
| criticism I had, I had already given, during my tenure. And as
| Jacob alludes to, there's no point in venting in an exit
| interview.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've always assumed the point was that an employee on their way
| out would be more forthright in providing honest and candid
| feedback since they're no longer worried about getting fired,
| and they would use that feedback to reduce further turnover.
|
| But seeing how rarely that feedback is acted on, yeah...I'm
| failing to see the point in exit interviews.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| The biggest underlying issue seems that no feedback is acted
| on.
| cpach wrote:
| Yep. This is my take though: Why depend on exit interviews
| to try to gather (or pretend to gather) important
| information about your organization? It's much better to
| foster an organisation where people can voice their opinion
| while they're still employed.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > What's the point of exit interviews really?
|
| I always assumed it was HR's last chance to head off potential
| lawsuits.
| flog wrote:
| Ditto. I assumed it was an opportunity to document any
| legally problematic reasons that drove you to quit so they
| could get ahead of them, or reinforce their case for firing
| you.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Seems like the same could be said for "360 reviews", where you're
| encouraged to review your managers.
|
| Should you avoid those too? There is probably little chance that
| things will change. Maybe I'm too optimistic.
| mistertester wrote:
| I am not afraid of doing an exit interview and putting everything
| on display, specially if leadership is toxic. It's important for
| HR to understand problems within the company so that they can be
| addressed. I have done this with no issues arising from it even
| though I have referenced that same employer in my resume.
| lucisferre wrote:
| It is rarely, if ever, HR's job to fix toxic leadership.
| notahacker wrote:
| Potentially toxic _middle management_ on the other hand...
|
| I've actually carefully avoided saying stuff that was
| substantially true about managers precisely because I knew
| that (i) it'd match what other leavers had said and (ii) I'd
| been there a lot longer, and knew the real issues were
| structural, but if the company decided there was an issue
| with staff turnover it wasn't the big picture stuff they'd go
| for.
| japhyr wrote:
| So many comments here are disagreeing with the article because
| people commenting have had positive or neutral experiences in
| exit interviews. But he's talking to the people who haven't
| already been through enough jobs to be able to assess whether the
| particular exit interview they're going into is safe. He also
| describes very specific criteria people can use to assess whether
| they are in a position to offer critical feedback during the
| interview.
|
| I really appreciate this article, because this is one of those
| specific moments in a job where walking in unaware can affect you
| really badly, for a long time. Making people aware of that
| situation, and offering a framework for how to think about it,
| can be really helpful to people who are in their first jobs.
| [deleted]
| mateo411 wrote:
| There can be an upside to an exit interview. If you have equity
| in the company, then suggesting things in an exit interview that
| will be a positive change for the company can benefit you.
|
| Note, that the likelihood of a company implementing changes based
| on your exit interview feedback will be pretty low.
| eftychis wrote:
| I would even say zero. More likely your exit might be the final
| straw to break the camel's back, but unfortunately I have never
| seen that happen. (Might get a CEO fired though; so that might
| be positive in some companies. But again that is the mass
| exodus of talent and not what they said in their exit
| interviews.)
| legitster wrote:
| 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?
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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.
| mooxie wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| My experience has been the opposite :(
| agilob wrote:
| >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.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| > would you stay for 2% more salary
|
| 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.
| agilob wrote:
| 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.
| drcongo wrote:
| 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.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| 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.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > 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.
| jrsj wrote:
| Not only does the third type exist, they appear to be the
| default.
| rising-sky wrote:
| then they are _not_ professional, taking constructive
| criticism come with being _being_ professional
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| 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.
| jrsj wrote:
| most "professionals" aren't professional about this (in my
| experience)
| WJW wrote:
| 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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| 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.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The VP of Engineering sounds like a mensch.
|
| The HR person sounds like an HR person.
| babyshake wrote:
| > It seems to me that the author is suggesting a third type
| of person: one who is professional until they're criticized.
|
| Or to rephrase, one who is professional until an actual test
| of their professionalism.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Then you are not a professional.
| [deleted]
| phphphphp wrote:
| 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...
| not_a_shill wrote:
| 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.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > a cathartic experience
|
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| > There's a good chance the notes will go directly to your
| old manager and/or manager's manager, with your name on it.
|
| Why should I care? I say things during an exit interview I
| want them to know.
| anamax wrote:
| > Why should I care? I say things during an exit interview
| I want them to know.
|
| If "them" is your old manager, why not just tell them
| directly?
| not_a_shill wrote:
| 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.
| mbesto wrote:
| > 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.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _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...
| legitster wrote:
| > 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| 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.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| 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?
| mindcrime wrote:
| _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.
| yebyen wrote:
| > 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.)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| One more reason to not say anything. It will likely have no
| real effect.
| llamataboot wrote:
| 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
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > criticize bad managers.
|
| 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?
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| > 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.
| legitster wrote:
| > 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.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Also, answering the question can help you find what you
| are looking for.
| kbenson wrote:
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I mean maybe you need to find a different job? What do you
| consider a "sexy" problem?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Something that makes tangiable improvement to the real
| world would be a good start
| legitster wrote:
| Then be a plumber!
|
| (But then again, I guess plumbers work on the same boring
| stuff every day from age 21 to 65+)
| saalweachter wrote:
| 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.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > 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.
| cpeterso wrote:
| > 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.
| mejarc wrote:
| 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.
| ectopod wrote:
| 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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > HR can also send out anonymous employee engagement
| surveys.
|
| If employees view management or the company as Bad(tm),
| 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.)
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| ionwake wrote:
| 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.
|
| Or maybe I'm just an idiot.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| john_moscow wrote:
| >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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| jeffwask wrote:
| > 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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| JJMcJ wrote:
| An informal reference is another deal.
|
| 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.
|
| Do you really think that never happens?
| jeffwask wrote:
| 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| 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.
| barnacled wrote:
| 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > 'well it's not professional to do that!'
|
| The more you need to vent at the exit interview, the more
| likely there will be unprofessional behavior at your expense.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Being brutally honest about your boss or working environment is
| akin to burning bridges.
|
| If it's something that no one is likely to take too personally,
| then sure tell them that you didn't like the quality of the free
| lunch or that you wanted an air hockey table instead of foosball.
|
| But there's really no upside to slamming your former boss, and
| there could be a downside if the hiring manager at the company
| you want to work for reaches out to that former boss personally
| to ask about you.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I generally agree that exit interviews are a trap and I also seek
| to avoid them unless it is with someone I trust, in which cases,
| they probably already know what the situation is and why I'm
| leaving anyway.
|
| I did have one situation in an exit interview (with an HR person
| who absolutely did not like me and the feeling was completely
| mutual) where I offered advice not to hire a replacement for my
| role but to use my salary to hire two new people instead and
| promote another colleague to my old title. Even though this was
| the logical and obvious decision to make (my salary was roughly
| double what an entry-level person would have been paid and the
| team needed more headcount that it didn't have budget for, as
| well as a person ready to step up to a more senior title/role), I
| was still utterly shocked when the company actually listened to
| me and made the change. Good for them!
|
| But I think a lot of people use an exit interview to vent and get
| all their bullshit with their old job on the table, and I imagine
| that can be really cathartic. Like the author of the piece, I'm
| usually not someone who will do any of that because of
| professional consequences that can come from that sort of thing,
| but that is also tied to the sorts of jobs I've had, where the
| communities around them tend to be fairly insular and where
| everyone talks to everyone and winds up working with everyone. At
| the job where they actually took my advice about hiring, I went
| to a competitor that was in the exact same building. Don't burn
| bridges when you're probably going to see people in the elevator
| or on the roof deck.
|
| That is NOT the case for a lot of engineering roles.
|
| If I worked for a contractor or vendor that then farmed me out to
| various clients (often large enterprise software companies with
| tens of thousands of employees and vendor roles), I would be a
| lot less concerned about the repercussions of speaking my mind in
| the exit interview with the vendor company, because the worst
| that will probably happen is that that company won't ever want to
| work with me again, but I can still go to a million other similar
| companies. Plus, the likelihood that you'll run into the same
| people again feels small when you are working on something more
| generalized than in a more focused area.
|
| But even in a best case scenario, where a company actually wants
| to take your feedback into account, I agree with the author and
| largely don't see the value (for the employee) in sharing why
| they left.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| 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
| Apreche wrote:
| What's with the assumption that you are quitting a job because it
| sucks? A lot of times people have to quit or change jobs for
| their own reasons and only have positive things to say.
|
| And if the job does suck, who cares if you burn bridges there on
| the way out? You only need to maintain bridges that go to good
| places.
| heurisko wrote:
| > who cares if you burn bridges there on the way out? You only
| need to maintain bridges that go to good places.
|
| There are only potential personal material downsides to burning
| bridges, e.g. you might need a contact one day in the previous
| company. There is no personal material upside for burning
| bridges.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > who cares if you burn bridges there on the way out? You only
| need to maintain bridges that go to good places.
|
| Unless you discover one day that the way forward, to your
| horror, just might have been across one of those bridges you
| burned.
|
| Also, people talk.
| panda88888 wrote:
| For me the deciding factor of how much honest feedback to provide
| in the exit interview is determined by who is interviewing me. If
| it is a routine step of the HR checklist, then most likely the
| feedback is not really going to have any impact and it is not
| worth the effort (and also potential risk, however small that may
| be) to provide detailed comments. However, if the exit interview
| is conducted by someone whom I trust and has potential pull
| within the leadership org (manager, manager's manager, director,
| VP , etc.) then I am more than happy to give a detailed list of
| what's good and what's bad.
| daenz wrote:
| 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.
| jayd16 wrote:
| 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.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| 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
| dragonwriter wrote:
| 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.)
| TameAntelope wrote:
| 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.
|
| The point is that it doesn't matter; you're gone.
| andrew_ wrote:
| 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.
| optymizer wrote:
| 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?
| treis wrote:
| Probably but that just means they're on the hook for
| unemployment.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| 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.
| mherdeg wrote:
| 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.)
| respondo2134 wrote:
| 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.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| 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).
| duxup wrote:
| I find a lot of these ideas where in an exit interview you
| FINALLY tell them what you are thinking very strange.
|
| For me almost certainly I've already addressed what concerns I
| might have by the time I am exiting.
| JamesUtah07 wrote:
| I could have used this advice in the last couple of weeks. I
| chose to be more candid because I thought I had a good rapport
| with my management and I was only things I'd already complained
| about. I guess I have a few regrets now and it's very likely I'll
| end up working with them again so hopefully they took the
| feedback positively.
| jldugger wrote:
| It's kinda weird how this blog is basically https://www.manager-
| tools.com/2009/04/handling-exit-intervie... with the serial
| numbers filed off
| hectormalot wrote:
| 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.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > he showed me the list still on his office wall, with 12/15
| items crossed off
|
| Wow. I want to work for that guy.
| hectormalot wrote:
| Fun fact: He left to join another company some time later,
| and I now work with him again.
| epolanski wrote:
| I could sum his whole post with: don't give information
| needlessly in professional environments.
|
| If you have nothing to gain, don't give information for free. You
| never know the dangers of doing the opposite.
| smm11 wrote:
| A guy started at a place I was at, and we realized we worked for
| some other company five years earlier.
|
| Quick lunch later, seems that the place I was at had not changed
| one iota from when I was there. Even when a middle manager moved
| or was replaced, action from on high kept the processes in place.
|
| You're just a cog in the machine, and if the machine is running,
| there's very, very little that might enact a change.
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| A simple heuristic I go by: consider the weight that the
| organization applies to feedback from you while you are working
| there and the weight allocated to advice from total strangers
| with nothing to do with the organization. The moment you announce
| you are leaving, and feedback or advice you offer will probably
| be weighted even lower than either of those. In many
| organizations, it drops to near-zero the day you decide to leave
| the team.
|
| In fact, the multiplier goes negative after someone exits in most
| companies I've experienced, resulting in them being blamed for
| recent decisions they were party to, even if they seemed fine at
| the time (scapegoating). Everything the departed touched is ripe
| for second-guessing.
|
| If I want to give advice or feedback, I do so early and
| respectfully. If I don't feel heard and decide to leave, I won't
| be repeating it because its weight is sinking like a stone
| between announcing my departure, the exit interview, and joining
| the ranks of ex-employees.
|
| Any self-serving catharsis isn't worth the damage done to the
| professional relationships, which the author covers nicely.
| foogazi wrote:
| Just say everything is great and you just want a change
|
| If they cared about what you thought you already had countless
| 1-1's, all-hands, anual reviews, etc
|
| Be realistic- they are not going to fix their org based on 30
| minutes of my feedback
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| It honestly sounds like the author simply doesn't know how to
| effectively give feedback. This line is really telling:
|
| > So, the best case scenario is a very unlikely chance of a
| positive outcome, and even if you get that positive outcome, it's
| of no direct value to you.
|
| What if you own equity? What if you just want to leave places
| better than you found them and any hope this last meeting would
| help is enough for you?
|
| Anchoring your entire spiel with "look I really want to preface
| this by saying I'm telling you this because I'm hoping enough
| people leaving over it will finally get the company to take it
| seriously. I care about <company> because I have friends here I
| really wish well for, and I have equity in the company and want
| to see it succeed" then go on to provide clear and actionable
| (even if uncomfortable feedback).
|
| Examples of this kind of feedback:
|
| * Troy has been a Product Manager of <X Team> for 8 months now
| and has yet to product roadmaps that fire up myself and the rest
| of the engineers. This is starting to impact how we think about
| technical foundations work and leaves engineers feeling bored on
| one of our most mission critical teams. <Troy's manager> should
| have a pulse on this by now, and I would hope would do something
| otherwise <Company> will continue to lose great engineers.
|
| Obviously this is all case-by-case, but it feels like any company
| where the fall out was so bad you need to lie wouldn't give you
| positive references anyway. I don't know probably my own biases,
| but I automatically assume people are bad at giving feedback when
| I read salty articles like this. I've been in several jobs where
| I've been able to give cutting feedback in an exit but also
| maintained great relationships with folks. The underlying theme
| has always been to learn how to give effective feedback and give
| it frequently. Effective means concise, actionable, measurable.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I generally agree, but it also depends why you left.
|
| If you left because you hate your boss, yeah probably pass. If
| you left because you hate your co-workers, yeah probably pass. If
| you left because you hate the new direction of the company -
| pass.
|
| If you loved working there but want to work in a different field,
| your buddy started a company, you got a once-in-a-lifetime
| opportunity to move to France - no reason not to go, tbh. If it
| doesn't work out, they'll happily have you back.
| wccrawford wrote:
| IMO you should always go to the exit interview, even if only
| not to burn bridges. But the information you provide should be
| as bland as possible.
| [deleted]
| baryphonic wrote:
| > They could tell you they're fine to be a reference, but when
| someone calls they could say bad things. They could refuse to
| confirm your employment to a background investigator. They could
| call your new company and tell them you were fired for fraud.
|
| These things are almost certainly illegal (IANAL) and could open
| up a firm employing such tactics to significant legal liability.
| In many larger companies, internal policies dictate that
| reference checks should only be answered with confirmation of
| employment dates and nothing else, due to the possibility of
| lawsuits.
|
| The biggest risk of being honest in a way that reflects
| negatively on your employer in an exit interview is burning a
| bridge. This is a fairly minimal risk if the exit interview is
| with HR, though you maybe flagged as a potential trouble-maker or
| something.
|
| I worked with a guy once who hated video calls. They made him
| nervous, and he felt strongly in async communication (inspired
| heavily by Basecamp's literature). The rest of the team/company
| was more open to video calls alongside written communication, and
| so he found a job elsewhere. In his exit interview, he brought
| this up as a problem, and so even though we didn't abandon
| synchronous calls, we had a bit more insight into the invariants
| in our team culture that would help us when hiring as well as
| when communicating internally.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > These are all real stories: every single one of those
| hypotheticals is actually something I've seen happen
|
| I'm highly skeptical. I'm going to have to hear more details to
| buy this story.
| pm90 wrote:
| Great advice.
|
| If you really feel like "sticking it to them", just write
| anonymous reviews on Glassdoor. Really go into details. Let your
| feedback be visible to everyone; if you think its useful, someone
| currently working at the company _will_ bring it up, I guarantee
| you.
| 30908551 wrote:
| The article could have ended here:
|
| >And even if your feedback does finally start some change - it's
| too late for you. You're already out the door. The time to fix
| the problems was months ago, before you got fed up and started
| your job search.
|
| I have left two FAANG companies and have never given anything
| resembling the kind of feedback they requested in the exit
| interview. I have always kept it to the 'bland' described in this
| article -- all the reasons I left were personal and had nothing
| to do with management, the company, or anything. No praise, no
| criticism, just my choice to move on.
|
| I see no reason to expend any energy, not even 15 minutes, to
| improve a company I'm leaving.
|
| It's the same reason I don't leave feedback on Yelp, or talk to
| managers at restaurants about my experience, etc... I just move
| on.
| geocrasher wrote:
| At my last job, I used the interview (with HR, not my manager) to
| do something I didn't have the power to do before: Call out my
| bad manager! When HR found out what had transpired, they were
| horrified. Later on I found out that my manager got into some hot
| water over the ordeal. Good. Whatever needed to happen to make
| things easier on the next person. I didn't have anything personal
| against the manager, but one can only be isolated and put on
| Ignore for so long.
| erehweb wrote:
| Why does HR do exit interviews anyway? Basically it's a CYA
| technique - they want to try to detect lawsuit-related risk like
| harassment. Maybe as a secondary if they get a lot of bad reports
| about a manager they might investigate. But mostly it's
| formalized box-ticking on their part, and should be on yours too.
| lostdog wrote:
| People at the company want to believe that the exit interview
| is a good way to catch and fix retention issues. The problem is
| that unless you have an engaged manager giving the interview,
| then nothing will change... And if you did have an engaged
| manager, then they would have fixed the problems before you
| were leaving.
|
| In my opinion, the only way to cause change during an exit
| interview is if a bunch of leaving people say the same thing,
| and management is forced out of denial of the issue. When I
| exit, I just give one sentence about one problem, and otherwise
| just say things are fine. It's now up to management to realize
| the urgency of the problem, and no longer mine to deal with.
|
| In the past I gave detailed, documented feedback about how a
| certain individual was unfit to be a manager. Shortly after I
| left they promoted them (and then fired them shortly later).
| I'm no longer going to give detailed feedback at exit
| interviews.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| One of the hosts on the podcast Softskills Engineering shared a
| story around Exit Interviews.
|
| Exit interviews don't provide any benefit to the person leaving,
| so the out-the-door coworker asked their remaining teammates what
| they would like him to say during his exit interview. The
| remaining teammates essentially said that they would like more
| competitive pay, so the departing person kept bringing everything
| back to that topic during the interview. A few months after he
| left, the remaining teammates let him know that they all received
| raises.
| greenblue wrote:
| vishnugupta wrote:
| PSA: HR is _not your friend_. Their job is to keep tab on and
| shield corporations from employee unrest. Think of them as a
| benign internal police; sort of complement of legal department.
| Legal is to handle external threat and HR is to handle internal
| threats.
| [deleted]
| Scarblac wrote:
| Way too dystopian, not all companies are like that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Think of them as a benign internal police
|
| But drop the benign; HR are at least as prone, if not moreso,
| to being malign than the regular kind of police.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I liken them to when William Devane pretends to rescue Dustin
| Hoffman from Laurence Olivier to try to get him to talk in
| Marathon Man.
| qqtt wrote:
| HR typically actively campaigns to exert influence over the
| rest of the company, as some combination of justifying their
| existence and proving their worth, angling for higher
| headcount, expanding influence, and larger and larger title
| inflation.
|
| HR is part of the corporate hunger games like every other
| division, and their incentives are typically not exactly
| aligned with helping you as an employee.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Seems like every time HR comes up here, someone says this
| stuff. It's really tiresome.
|
| I get that there are doubtless places where this is
| essentially true -- particularly, perhaps, in the US scene,
| given the overall culture there -- but I do not believe it to
| be a universal truth.
|
| If your experience of life and work has led you to believe
| this of every company and every HR department... well, I'm
| sorry for you. And if it's more a case of wanting to appear
| smart and edgy by making this claim, well, I'm sorry for you
| too. It must be sad to live such a cynical life.
| cjhowarddev wrote:
| I agree with you as I've never seen this side of HR and
| I've worked at various companies in the US (including
| Amazon, which was by far my best employer).
|
| The tide in the US seems to be normal people vs business
| with this idea that all businesses are out to take
| advantage of employees and I just don't feel that's true in
| a general sense.
|
| Granted, I'm a highly skilled software engineer making
| great money and with seemingly limitless opportunities in
| the current market so saying I have privilege is an
| understatement.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| HR is the subunit of the firm dedicated to minimizing risk
| and maximizing efficiency across the firm (and thus,
| independently of the specific business function of other
| units) in the extraction of surplus value from workers.
|
| Their function within capitalist industry is directly,
| fundamentally, and uniquely concerned with the manner in
| which capitalist industry itself is hostile to workers.
|
| A firm in which HR is not generally hostile to the
| interests of workers is fundamentally maladapted to
| competition in a capitalist economy and is, _ceteris
| paribus_ , likely to either fail in the face of competition
| without this defect or be forced to rectify the defect.
| Scarblac wrote:
| > HR is the subunit of the firm dedicated to minimizing
| risk and maximizing efficiency across the firm (and thus,
| independently of the specific business function of other
| units) in the extraction of surplus value from workers.
|
| And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to achieve
| that is by having happy employees in a healthy work
| environment. So in my experience, that's what HR tries to
| achieve.
|
| I'm sorry your experience was different.
| defen wrote:
| > And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to
| achieve that is by having happy employees in a healthy
| work environment.
|
| I think that's way too broad and general of a statement.
| It really depends on the nature of the industry, the
| competitive landscape, and many other things. In non-
| essential software, where the hands-on technical
| employees have tremendous influence over the direction of
| the firm, that may be true. In extractive industries and
| possibly even industrial ones it may be cheaper to
| externalize as many costs as possible, invest the bare
| minimum legally required in safety equipment and
| training, etc.
|
| Why did it take strikes, literal shooting battles,
| legislative action, and generally tremendous amounts of
| effort to enact basic workers rights in this country if
| it would have been cheaper to just ... give people a
| happy and healthy working environment?
| jfk13 wrote:
| And why do people insist on assuming that the behavior of
| the worst companies is the standard that all companies
| necessarily follow?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to
| achieve that is by having happy employees in a healthy
| work environment.
|
| It's generally not the cheapest, and often not even
| possible where there is a deep conflict between
| preferences of employees and/or between the fundamental
| market realities of the line of business and ideals of
| "healthy work environment".
|
| It's true that "cattle not pets" isn't the line you give
| to the cattle, who really want to believe that they are
| "valued members of the corporate family".
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...police..._
|
| I had a problem at work. I called HR. Then I had two
| problems.
| throwawaysurely wrote:
| I have many years of work experience and have worked in 10
| companies so far. I always ended up sugar coating my feedback in
| nearly all of the exit interviews. However, this time around in
| 2021 during my 10th workplace I decided to be honest.
|
| Positive feedback: I praised all the great coworkers, great
| managers that I worked with, good senior people that I worked
| with, the companies policies, etc.
|
| Negative feedback: I had left the company because of my last
| manager who was both toxic and incompetent (my previous managers
| were great leaders). He had no idea about the work that we did,
| nor did he have any rudimentary leadership skills. I ranted out
| everything (it was very soothing) even though I knew he was
| friends with the HR team. But for once in my life I decided to be
| super honest and shared what I felt and shared examples, data,
| emails, etc. It felt very good and I left the company without any
| emotional baggage.
|
| Latest update: I just came to know that another colleague who had
| left around the same time had also given a similar feedback about
| this toxic manager's behavior. The HR decided to share their
| objective observations but nothing happened as this manager is
| friends with the senior management too. However, the person who
| replaced me was an expat from Europe (I and the IT company is in
| southern Asia and expats are treated like gods here). The expat
| had the same experience within one month of her joining and she
| too left the company within 3 months because of this toxic
| manager. She was not as kind during her exit interview and she
| also shared a formal complaint. Now the cat was out of the bag
| and the HR was forced to intervene and more people started
| sharing their issues about this toxic manager. Long story short:
| This toxic manager is now in big trouble (I can't share more info
| here).
|
| So my personal opinion now is: Always share honest feedback about
| jerks in your exit interviews. You might be doing a good deed in
| the long run for many people. Sharing an honest feedback during
| an exit interview is like 'not littering'. If everyone starts
| doing it, then the city will always be clean for you and for me
| and for our families :)
| dweinus wrote:
| 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.
| whymauri wrote:
| 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.
| dweinus wrote:
| 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.
| xxs wrote:
| >All feedback is anonymous
|
| How do you know that?
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| 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.
| xxs wrote:
| 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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...
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Anonymous feedback very, very rarely is. Even when everyone
| involved is doing their best to keep it anonymous, it very
| rarely is.
| eli wrote:
| 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.
| tspike wrote:
| There would have to be a lot of people leaving
| simultaneously for it to be anything but obvious who it
| came from.
| djrogers wrote:
| err:
|
| > rolled up with non-exit feedback
| respondo2134 wrote:
| pretty tough for me to believe anything from HR is anon, when
| every URL contains a GUID...
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > 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.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > As a manager, if you get value from the exit interview,
| with all due respect, you're doing it wrong.
|
| Well...yes. Isn't the entire point of an exit interview, from
| the organization's perspective, to find out what they're
| doing wrong?
| decebalus1 wrote:
| 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.
| calyth2018 wrote:
| > All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback,
| and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be
| easily linked back.
|
| I think the Brooklyn bridge's on sale.
| gbfkjdjvc wrote:
| Nothing that passes through HR is anonymous.
|
| Ever.
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, EVER.
|
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| 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
| sslayer wrote:
| HR is there to protect the company, not you.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| michaelje wrote:
| How can they add a device to your AppleID? Don't they need
| your user/pass etc..?
| samstave wrote:
| 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...
|
| ---
|
| 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.
|
| --
|
| FB, even internally, is the quintessential "You cant get
| out of your own way..." company.
| SecurityLagoon wrote:
| 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.
| djrogers wrote:
| > 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.
| samstave wrote:
| Sure, we will go with your assessment of assumption over
| my hard evidence to the contrary...
|
| Good thing that such acts are * _illegal*_ - that 'll
| show'em.
|
| --
|
| FYI - KEEP YOUR PERSONAL SHIT PERSONAL.
|
| ---
|
| One must develop a personal air-gap.
| throwaway195729 wrote:
| I quit my last job because my team ganged up on me and held an
| "intervention meeting" because I broke the production environment
| after my code had passed local development and staging. The
| person who found out didn't tell me, but silently fixed it and
| called for a meeting. I incidentally saw we had a meeting with a
| vague title, and asking about it, my team members avoided
| elaborating.
|
| Eventually, the meeting was a scolding. I wouldn't accept this
| kind of behavior, so I stood my ground, switched teams a week
| later and "worked from home" on my last week on the team. (This
| essentially amounted to not showing at morning meetings, and not
| doing any work. Not voluntarily -- I refused to be in a meeting
| with them, and I couldn't make myself do anything that had a
| positive impact for them.) I delivered value and had a good time
| with my other team for another 4 months, after which I switched
| jobs when I'd found a step up. On one occasion my old team lead
| had a meeting with my entire team; he'd ask every one of us
| questions, except me; I was air. I'm pretty sure he wasn't
| completely conscious that he did this. He once said he didn't
| like cocaine, because the few times he tried it, he just wanted
| to beat people. Drugs bring out the best in people.
|
| My old team lead asked a few times if we could have a one-on-one,
| since I switched teams, as if there was something to evaluate. I
| should have told him no and explained that I was not going to
| enter a meeting room with him again. I just let him schedule a
| meeting and didn't show. He let go pretty easily.
|
| While I don't feel exactly like this now, this is what I felt: I
| owe this company nothing. They can take their bad behavior and do
| with it exactly what they want.
|
| I didn't call out the company on Glassdoor. There were only two
| rotten apples (a hysterical co-worker and a mildly psychopathic
| team lead), and dozens of good ones.
| jrockway wrote:
| That's weird. You had coworkers that hadn't broken production
| before!?
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I agree with you. What the co worker did to you was wrong. But
| I would also venture to say that there could be a reason
| specific to you as to why you were targeted in this way.
| aroundtown wrote:
| 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.
| throw1230 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Your boss was right in warning his friends.
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| throw1230 wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| stavros wrote:
| I didn't say it was useful feedback, I said they asked
| him his opinion and they got it. Badmouthing him around
| town for it is completely uncalled for.
| nathanlied wrote:
| 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.
| digisign wrote:
| It is after a number of people quit. Then there is good
| information on who the problem is.
| detaro wrote:
| 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?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "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?
| throw1230 wrote:
| 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.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| 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.
| detaro wrote:
| > _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.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I feel like people like this are fair game for naming and
| shaming.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| 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)
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Not to nitpick, but I think the term you're looking for is
| "Doxxing".
| ukulele wrote:
| DOS = denial of service
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Thanks updated
| afterburner wrote:
| Sounds like the other person has more power in the
| "community" though, and a grudge against them.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| They are _and_ that will make it even worse.
| ianai wrote:
| 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.
|
| And don't say jack in an exit interview.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I used my exit interview to rebuke and rain fury upon my managers
| who were all failures. It felt good.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| Mostly agree, though I think some companies do gather and act on
| feedbacks that they get over and over. I'd give real feedback if
| it's innocuous and positive:
|
| "It would be cool if we had more social events!" "I liked working
| with product and I wish there was better collaboration between
| product and engineering orgs."
|
| But I stay away from criticizing individuals or the company at
| large. Nothing to gain at this stage.
| etempleton wrote:
| I made this mistake early in my career.
|
| 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.
| sdoering wrote:
| I have to disagree. At least in some very specific circumstances.
|
| First a bit of context. In Germany, some companies have something
| called a works council. A body of employees that represents the
| interests of the workforce vis-a-vis the employer.
|
| The works council has certain rights and is well protected
| against reprisals. And it is bound to confidentiality.
|
| For works councils, exit interviews are a valuable way to learn
| about problems that have previously flown under the radar. And in
| most cases, the works council is interested in improving things.
|
| In many cases, it has the means to do so. It may take some time,
| as everything does, but in my experience exit interviews can
| help.
| olivierlacan wrote:
| You don't "have to disagree". You're presenting a very
| different context than the one the author presents, a decidedly
| non-European working environment.
|
| The one you relate has far more balanced relationships between
| employers and employees. In that one, there are stronger
| guarantees against reprisals, but I'd wager those guarantees
| are not foolproof either. It's very easy to poison someone's
| reputation in a community without them finding out for a very
| long time.
|
| Everything can be disagreed with if you switch the context to
| an alternate universe. Your example was useful and probably
| astounding to a lot of North American workers, so I appreciate
| you sharing it.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| 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.
| zerkten wrote:
| 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.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| For sure. I'm not sure if it's 100% allowed, but you will see
| folks marked as no-rehire or do not allow back.
|
| Sometimes these are the blaze of glory you are all idiots
| exits :)
| eeeficus wrote:
| I agree with the article. If you leave, feedback is not worth it.
| I always gave honest feedback at exit interviews and felt like
| shit for a while afterwards. And I don't understand why companies
| are doing this, honestly. Take feedback from your employees and
| really listen! What is the gain to ask for feedback to someone
| leaving the company? Is it more honest? Then you have a cultural
| problem because it means your employees are afraid to give honest
| feedback.
| sfink wrote:
| Because it's hard to trust the signal. If you (properly) ask
| people to complain, they'll complain. But how do you know
| whether those complaints matter? People will complain about the
| things that bother them the most in relative terms. (Actually
| not even that; they'll complain about whatever's front of mind
| at the time.)
|
| Maybe the cafeteria food isn't great, but improving it would
| have zero effect because it just doesn't matter. But if someone
| who is leaving brings up the cafeteria food out of all the
| things they could have brought up? And 5 of the last 6 people
| leaving brought up the same thing? That's way more meaningful
| than everyone sitting around whining about how the food isn't
| as good as at $X company.
|
| It's a lot like getting product direction from your customers.
| Listen to your customers, but for god's sake, don't just do
| what they ask for. (And if you can somehow find out why the
| ones who are leaving are leaving, that's gold.)
| wccrawford wrote:
| Somebody up top thinks this will actually provide valuable
| information for the future. In my experience, it'll provide
| information, but the company won't actually value it. Either
| the information is actually useless (person is leaving because
| they want more experience that can't be had there) or the
| company won't actually learn anything from it (person is
| leaving due to bad situation or not enough money). They may
| claim to learn from it, and may even think they are, but they
| don't.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I remember a previous employer sending out a survey to
| several customers to get feedback on the product. The boss
| who had the survey sent never bothered read the survey
| results, and he never sent them to anyone else either.
|
| I'm sure he's not alone in ignoring important feedback. I'm
| sure feedback from people leaving the company is generally
| ignored too.
| [deleted]
| csours wrote:
| I agree with the suspicions, but I disagree with the conclusions.
|
| If you want to give feedback in an exit interview, you should;
| BUT NEVER GIVE FEEDBACK IN ANGER! If you think you're going to be
| angry in the exit interview, don't give feedback. If you're angry
| at a coworker, don't give them feedback in that moment.
|
| If you want to give feedback to a manager, probably don't do
| that! Asking questions can be good. Hypothetical scenarios can
| help. It might make you angry that you can't be direct with
| feedback to a manager, but that is generally part of the bargain.
|
| So how to handle an exit interview?
|
| Never accuse. You'll never know the whole situation.
|
| Describe your own experience. It may be painful, but you can
| speak truthfully about your own experience.
|
| Describe how your experience could have been better, without
| accusation.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Exit interviews seem to be only helpful for the remaining
| coworkers if one is not afraid of criticizing poor management or
| mismanagement if that is the case. But in reality they're not
| taken seriously so why bother anyway?
| repox wrote:
| Don't know if this is regional (Dane here), but I've never
| encountered an "exit interview" and couldn't imagine ever
| accepting an invitation to such a thing.
| tqi wrote:
| > Last I checked, the organization was still very much headed in
| the direction that I disagreed with.
|
| This assumes that your opinion on direction is the right one, and
| that anyone or team that doesn't agree is wrong?
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| You can disagree with a direction without it being wrong,
| necessarily. I quit a job once because they were making a hard
| pivot for the enterprise market, and a big reason that I joined
| the company was to get away from big enterprisey deals and work
| more with smaller B2B direct sales sort of tools.
|
| It doesn't make the company going in that direction wrong, it's
| just not a company I wanted to work at anymore.
| wnoise wrote:
| No, it's just a report that the feedback didn't make any
| difference.
| sweetheart wrote:
| The author states there is no upside to giving honest feedback of
| a company in an exit interview, and the one comment I see at the
| moment which argues perhaps there could be an upside is making
| the case that the upside is when you personally benefit from
| stock prices increasing.
|
| Why is it difficult to see that an upside would be that the
| company makes a positive change and people other than yourself
| are benefitted? Why is something only beneficial when it happens
| to me?
| eftychis wrote:
| Well usually a company knows the situation and has made the
| rational decision to follow down that path. So talking
| rationally e.g. to HR is pointless and can only be used against
| you down the road. (Any legal case, and these arise we like it
| or not.) If you are buddies with the CxO (x \in
| {E,T,F,O,M,..}), you probably should have talked to them a long
| time ago.
| thedz wrote:
| i've never seen a company take action from someone leaving, and
| any push for change has to be sustained by people still at the
| company.
|
| i'd be curious if anyone has ever seen it happen
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| legalcorrection wrote:
| > _The author states there is no upside to giving honest
| feedback of a company in an exit interview, and the one comment
| I see at the moment which argues perhaps there could be an
| upside is making the case that the upside is when you
| personally benefit from stock prices increasing._
|
| He talks about exactly this.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| _> Why is it difficult to see that an upside would be that the
| company makes a positive change and people other than yourself
| are benefitted?_
|
| This upside is dutifully noted in the beginning. It's just that
| the author considers it highly improbable, therefore greatly
| diminishing its averaged value, especially when compared with
| the possible downsides.
| xxs wrote:
| If you have to wait for the exit interview to provide any
| meaningful feedback, you have to be naive to consider, it'd
| provide any benefit.
| hnal943 wrote:
| This is addressed in the article. The company is unlikely to
| change as a result of your feedback.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I'm about to quit.
|
| I'm choosing catharsis.
| ithkuil wrote:
| At one of my last jobs at a big corp I was so surprised that when
| I quit there was no exit interview. It kinda made sense though,
| as I noticed there were no real incentives to improve things.
| notahacker wrote:
| At a big corp I quit, I was surprised there was an exit
| interview because it wasn't the first time I left them!
| mberning wrote:
| This is good advice for people with a lack of social abilities
| and no tact. However, it is possible to give very frank and
| difficult feedback but do it in a way that is professional and
| non-petty. A 30 minute download of every conceivable grievance is
| not professional.
| kache_ wrote:
| I'm a politician first and software engineer second.. I have
| _never_ given anyone or any sub-organization bad feedback,
| directly or indirectly. I've advised someone on something that
| could help them be better, but I've never externalized it as
| grumpiness I have.
|
| It's never worth it. Smile and nod, disagree and commit, focus on
| whats in your control, and tend to your network. If they're not
| paying you for an honest exit interview, don't give them one.
| Just focus on hitting the targeted outcomes, however that may be.
| That's all that really matters
| ComradePhil wrote:
| So much this... but I don't see the point of avoiding the exit
| interview. Why not mention minor non-problems which everyone
| sort of agrees with or they are already doing something
| about... while emphasizing that you are leaving because of what
| the new opportunity brings and not what is bad about the
| company.
|
| Disagreeing to an exit interview seems unnecessarily hostile...
| and it may lead to on-the-spot ad-hoc informal exit interview
| anyway... and the questions may take into account the fact that
| you disagreed to it.
|
| Just agree and comply, tell them what they want to hear. It's
| easy.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| _Sometimes_ they 're a trap. Sometimes people genuinely want to
| know your opinion and if they did anything wrong in your view.
| Sometimes that VP wants to know if the rumors are true that your
| direct manager is planning to return to Andromeda. Sometimes it's
| just good to clear the air with your manager, especially if there
| were some contentious issues.
|
| And even if they disagree as to the causes or solutions that you
| propose, it's really good to at least have the conversation -- to
| communicate! This is the last time you'll ever get a chance to
| (sort of) speak freely.
|
| Really, these people are all humans too. Well, most of them,
| anyway.
|
| So, seriously, lean toward taking the exit interview, even with
| full knowledge of the (true) downsides listed in the article
| versus few upsides _for you_. Just gauge the exit interview based
| on the person who 's sitting across the table.
| htrp wrote:
| Large companies as a matter of policy will refuse to provide
| references. All they will do is confirm Names and Dates of
| Employment (not even titles).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| FWIW, the hypothetical the author poses of the retaliatory
| company (because it's a hypothetical) isn't mediated by whether
| or not you do the exit interview.
|
| Your previous company can decide to hand out false bad referral
| signal because they didn't like your face, regardless of whether
| you agree to do the exit interview. Hell, if it's the kind of
| folks who might give out false bad referrals, they could do it
| _because_ you refused the exit interview (in their minds, you
| snubbed them).
|
| Without knowing more about an employer, I don't think you can
| apply this "Exit interviews are a trap" concept universally.
| nabaraz wrote:
| I like these. I use my exit interview to praise and give positive
| feedback about my co-workers.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| this is a great strategy. If you really care about your now
| former coworkers use the opportunity to recognize and promote
| them. Fixing deficiencies is a job for those still working
| there, not you.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Great advice here.
|
| 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > 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.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > 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.
| ghusto wrote:
| 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.
|
| EDIT: For formatting
| briffle wrote:
| 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..
| jldugger wrote:
| > 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.
| khazhoux wrote:
| 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.
| mobjack wrote:
| That is short term cynical thinking.
|
| Being able to give honest and constructive feedback is a
| skill that will grow your career more in the long run.
|
| An exit interview is one of the safest times to practice that
|
| I am not expecting anything to change, but I am going to do
| my best to make an impact as I leave for the benefit of the
| business and my coworkers.
| danparsonson wrote:
| With respect that's quite naive.
|
| > 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.
| barnacled wrote:
| 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.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tomerv wrote:
| > 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!
| shakezula wrote:
| 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.
| xtracto wrote:
| > 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.
| blip54321 wrote:
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| To add to this:
|
| 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.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| You, my friend, are not cynical enough.
| tannerbrockwell wrote:
| An organization that depends on honesty during an exit interview
| is already failed. This is not your time to vent, nor is it
| constructive to give criticisms. Say your thanks, shake the hands
| and move on. Anything else is uncompensated consulting.
| infiniteL0Op wrote:
| noir_lord wrote:
| 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.
| scruple wrote:
| > 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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"?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| On exit interviews:
|
| Companies that want me to give them information that would be
| useful to their business can pay me my consultation rate.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| File this along with the advice about resignation letters to
| state nothing but
|
| _" I am writing to give notice of my resignation from <company>
| on <today's date>. According to the terms of my employment
| contract my final day will be <leaving date >. -- Sincerely,
| <name>"_
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Seems pointlessly Machiavellian. Sure, theoretically, you could
| get burned by what you say in an exit interview. I've never heard
| of it happening. Typically you end up being the 20th person to
| say what you said.
|
| If your company is so poisonous they won't give you a referral
| based on feedback they requested, they probably wouldn't give you
| a referral no matter what.
| krosaen wrote:
| The headline had me clicking assuming I would disagree - as I
| think "trap" assumes nefarious intentions that I don't think are
| there most of the time.
|
| But I found I agreed with the main points:
|
| 1) There's little chance your frank feedback will have a positive
| impact
|
| 2) There's small but real chance of a downside you can't fully
| quantify. Even this possibility may cause you stress.
|
| What I think is missing is that _before_ you decide to leave,
| _do_ give honest feedback. I don 't think shying away from
| conflict for fear of retaliation is a good idea - you can shape
| the place you are still in. But once you are gone, I think the
| chances are smaller, and you have already decided to left in any
| case, which probably means you believe whatever you are leaving
| about will not change.
|
| If you have been giving honest feedback all along, and then do
| decide to leave, the people you trust will already know why you
| are leaving and can choose to take the signal that you felt
| strongly enough to leave to heart if they chose.
| robohydrate wrote:
| I left a job a few years ago and put the entire management on
| blast because they could not fathom the singular reason for
| leaving was poor compensation.
|
| A few months later some former coworkers told me that everyone in
| the company got a surprise raise a few weeks after I left.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Did you ask for a raise and have it rejected?
| robohydrate wrote:
| I actually got a 10% raise which management was all to happy
| to say was the best thing they had ever done for a single
| person. The problem is 10% is nothing if your base pay to
| begin with was 50% below market rate.
| keikobadthebad wrote:
| Yeah... the time to try to help them has gone by then. Nobody
| will listen because it's much easier to blame the guy that's not
| there any more, and let the beat go on.
| regnull wrote:
| How about you stop strategizing and just say what you want to
| say?
| javier_e06 wrote:
| In one exit interview I said to HR: "Working in this project is
| like watching a bad movie. I wouldn't watch a bad movie even if
| you pay me because I cannot un-see it." She responded: "Like
| watching Sharknado" "Yes!" I replied. Best-exit-interview-ever.
| wanda wrote:
| I've always just been straight with my employers whenever it
| hasn't worked out and I've decided to move elsewhere. That's not
| to say that there isn't a need for finesse.
|
| I actually ended up going back to one employer after a year or
| so, when it turned out that they recognised that my criticisms
| (primarily focused on unfeasible expectations w.r.t. work-life
| balance and pressure on teams to deliver) were valid and took
| major action to flip things around. Whether they recognised the
| validity of my criticisms because of what I said, or simply
| because of more people leaving, I cannot say. I don't remember
| any conspicuous absences of familiar faces when I returned, so I
| like to think that I was actually heard.
|
| As with any form of diplomacy, there is an art to the delivery.
| If you're going in with criticism, do so with well-reasoned
| argument and reference to something provable or better yet
| numerically presentable, and point out how the criticisms
| negatively impact _them_ as a business, rather than simply saying
| that you didn 't like [x] or wouldn't have to do [y] at
| competitor company [A].
|
| And for heaven's sake don't make it personal -- I mean, this
| isn't something I've done, but it seems pretty basic that getting
| personal is a no-no.
|
| For example, if _you 're_ moving for a better salary, highlight
| the fact that they're lagging behind in industry sector [P], and
| as a result you won't be the only one leaving. If they want to
| retain talent, they must reimburse the talent competitively.
|
| Contrary to the beliefs of some, managers _are_ people, but they
| don 't always think like people -- they're effectively paid to
| not think like people, but rather to think like a business, to
| embody the needs of the business.
|
| As a result, human considerations can take a back seat, they can
| be reluctant to react to change especially where it involves
| _spending_ money, and they can ignore facts because they haven 't
| been the subject of a pie chart. Explain something the right way,
| however, and you can affect positive change.**
|
| As others from the UK have said, references are immaterial. I've
| never had anyone check my references, and I know this because
| when I got started in software dev 10 years ago, my references
| were entirely fictional.
|
| ** sometimes
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| As it happens I had an exit interview today. I have no idea what
| the author is talking about but I don't think HR retribution
| because of feedback is a thing in London, at least not as far as
| I know. I don't care if there's nothing for me to "gain". You
| know, not everything in life has to be for _your_ benefit.
| Sometimes what people say is what they really mean and they 're
| not trying to subvert you or trap you.
|
| I will be honest until the day I die. I hate the avoidant, sugar
| coating culture we've developed. Brutal honesty is a path to big
| change.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I tried to skip an exit interview once, the HR person was late to
| her own meeting. After waiting for 5 minutes, I left. You can bet
| she called me back in there. Felt so good to tell her one reason
| I was leaving the company was that no schedule was ever on time
| in the entire company, ever, including my exit interview.
|
| I told her straight up that I was going to be honest because I
| had no intention of ever working there again. Being honest really
| felt great.
|
| Apparently, I was memorable - ran into the HR person in the
| grocery store years later and she made a point to chat me up.
| mirceal wrote:
| lol. no. it's not about working there again. It's potentially
| working with any of the people that work or have worked there.
| If you give feedback and it's taken the wrong way/rubs people
| the wrong way this will come back to haunt you.
|
| so, no feedback. at that point there is literally no upside.
| The time for feedback is while you work there.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| In my case, there were no repercussions. I didn't make it
| personal and I didn't call out any individual humans. I was
| very honest about my perspective of the company as an
| employee. I always wondered if it would come back to haunt
| me, never did.
| surelynothatguy wrote:
| hsnewman wrote:
| I got burned once when my company did a annual employee survey.
| My boss determined who gave the anonymous answer and fired me
| eventually.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| same here. the companies that give those surveys play games
| with categories to ensure managers can always narrow it down.
| If I were a manager, I could never trust employees' survey
| answers. Since I got laid-off, my answer to every question has
| always been perfect 5 out of 5, unless I genuinely thought it
| needed improvement, it which case it gets a 4 out of 5. And
| even then I will answer no more than 5% of questions with 4s.
| laurent92 wrote:
| My sister's team did something truly great with the
| satisfaction surveys. They all gave the same marks along the
| months: 6, 7, 10, 8, 8, 10, 7, 6.
|
| It made a very nice Batman shadow on the manager's dashboard.
| That's about all they can be used for.
|
| ...which is a pretty good proof of team cohesion.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. This is a good reminder to everyone else of
| why you should try to avoid identifying yourself on anonymous
| surveys, even if you aren't saying anything risky. Everyone who
| gives their name, or makes it easy to figure it out, makes it
| that much easier to identify those who really want the
| anonymity. (Same principle as using encryption and Tor even
| when you don't really need it.)
|
| People who provide negative feedback on these surveys do become
| targets, and not always for retaliation, but because companies
| (or the subgroups inside them) don't want discontent to spread,
| or would rather have an unquestioning happy employee they can
| manipulate.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Must've been one doozy of an answer :)
| gbrown_ wrote:
| Not sure about others by my exit interviews have typically been
| towards the end of my notice period. I've long since communicated
| (or at least vented) to my manager what I've been unhappy with as
| well as having a detailed talk upon giving my notice. And likely
| as a result, my experiences have been HR just nodding along. I
| certainly can't imagine treasuring up all the negatives and
| blurting them all out to HR one one meeting as this post games
| out.
| pr07ecH70r wrote:
| 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.
| mdoms wrote:
| The supposed "downside risks" in this article just don't seem
| realistic to me.
|
| > There are all sorts of ways that your former employers might
| retaliate. They might decide not to give a reference they would
| have before the exit interview. They might say bad things about
| you at industry events. It might be more subtle: they might just
| carry a negative impression of you in the back of their minds,
| and when you both end up working together again in the future
| they'll hesitate to trust you. Or it might be blatantly unethical
| or even illegal. They could tell you they're fine to be a
| reference, but when someone calls they could say bad things. They
| could refuse to confirm your employment to a background
| investigator. They could call your new company and tell them you
| were fired for fraud.
|
| I just don't see it. Exit interviews are valuable. I find the
| never-ending cynicism around here exhausting. Sometimes people
| just want to hear why you're leaving because they want to learn
| from it.
| politelemon wrote:
| > They might decide not to give a reference they would have
| before the exit interview.
|
| At least in the UK, there aren't good or bad reference. It
| basically boils down to "Yep they worked here, for this long,
| this was their role." All of the other possible outcomes
| mentioned are illegal.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yeah I don't think in the US other outcomes are illegal per se,
| but in practice only what you describe is what is happening
| among Big N tech companies.
| greenblue wrote:
| The post suggests that respected co-workers would bother to
| give negative feedback about you simply because of your
| feedback.
|
| It is an absurd generalization. People have more important
| things to do in their lives than resent a quitting co-worker
| (which is pretty standard in the industry).
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