Why do this? 1. I was leaving behind a lot of people I consider friends and wanted them to have a better experience. 2. I think it gave a good last impression which they might remember.
Obviously this was my specific situation and the managers were actually normal, nice people who could fathom that they may have made mistakes which isn't always the case.
I've thought about this a lot over the years but I don't think I had any information I could have used to predict this outcome. All the people and relationships I could observe were healthy and professional. But it continues to affect me professionally; the company was large and well known in my area and industry, people who worked there then are all over now. I don't give sincere feedback anymore.
This stance, which has been espoused throughout these comments, is in the same conceptual space as "we should stop upsetting terrorists or we're causing the terrorism".
But if you need to work for money there is no absolute freedom, you will have some constraints. You can decide the consequences of violating the constraints are worth it in some cases, as you have in this one. But that may circumscribe your ability to work for money at all in the future, as people are saying here.
People making this choice one way or the other may be more or less moral depending on the specifics, sometimes the circumstances do require our blood. For example someone working for ICE just for the paycheck right now is choosing evil. But it is a fundamentally different choice than "letting the terrorists win" or whatever.
"Sociopathic organizations" exist, you can't just write them out of your reasoning like this. A little marxism goes a long way in understanding what is happening here and how to engage with it.
You may have the best intentions but it doesn't mean the other side does. Lesson learned.
Unless you are a coach, and your job is to give feedback. I would advice a) Don't give a feedback ever. b) If you are in a situation and had to give feedback, always say something positive.
Very few people are genuinely interested in improving and largely use feedback as a mechanism to see how people judge their work, and here a negative feedback is simply used to mark up people as enemies.
There are people who are exceptions to this, but this really is the rule.
Could there still be downsides? Yes. But I think that there are possible upsides if the people in the company come to realize that you were right. They may hire you back?
And so it's a gamble.
On the flip side, the author is right -- it's a small world out there. While I don't regret doing the "right thing" and speaking up about serious issues, I am nervous that I burned some bridges with the two leaders who were let go after my departure. So far it hasn't come back to bite me (~8 years and 3 jobs later), but as they say time will tell.
For example, I applied at a company for a fairly high ranking position and did really well. The technical co-founder said I gave the best performance he’d ever seen on their code exercise. The internal recruiter said I was the first candidate he’d ever given the maximum score to.
Then I had one round where the interviewer showed up very late and was instantly rude. Would barely even talk to me. He had this disdainful look on his face for the whole interview.
The internal recruiter called me after and was basically like, “What the hell happened in that interview? Everyone loved you and said you were amazing. Now Chuck (not his real name) said you’d be a bad hire. What is going on?”
They still made me an offer, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, so I went elsewhere. But apparently a couple of pretty high ranking people were pissed that I walked away, and there were some consequences.
Should I feel bad about that? Honestly, I’m glad. Their interview process was broken, and I hope I improved it so this shit doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Then went to Google: I was absolutely stunned, stunned, at just how reactive people are.
When you're offering unsolicited advice, you have 0 idea how it's going to be taken. Even the gentlest, most caveated things can set someone off.
In 7 years, I saw exactly one post-mortem, and it was well-understood doing one was seen as aggressive.
One time someone was being a bully in code review, something like 7 rounds of review for 200 lines. 600 review comments from the reviewer total. I'm not kidding. Can't remember exact line count but it was 3:1.
The person being reviewed, at that point, wrote a comment on the meta-situation, something relatively innocuous, can't remember it for the life of me. Within 2 quarters he was PIP'd, and it took 3 years to get a release so he could transfer to another org.
This factor is probably at a high at Google, as reality can't really intrude as much as a normal company. But I did greatly change my perspective on how to communicate in the workplace when you're working for someone else.
The counterpoint to this guy's story is many of us who have told an employer the issues that we were concerned with in an exit interview, or even in a feedback period during employment, and seen it come right back around to bite us.
Even if they offer to promote you or give a massive pay rise to stay, the fundamental problems that lead you to look elsewhere originally will likely still remain. Any inducements to stay look shallow when you question why they were only offered in response to a resignation.
Making the decision to quit is usually tough and involves weighing up a lot of different things. Once you've crossed the threshold and realised that quitting is the right course of action, it's hard to undo that process and convince yourself to stay after all. The things that you tolerated before will now be more apparent than ever.
I've stayed in places accepting a pay rise after quitting twice, and both times I appreciated the extra money but regretted my choice within weeks. Both times, I'd left within the year.
Similarly, once you've decided you want to leave your current job, just get on with it and find something new as soon as you can. I find this harder advice to take myself, but several times I've stuck around for 6-12 months after I've mentally checked out of a job. There's a very real risk of others noticing your apathy creeping in, and it can have a massive impact on how people remember you once you've gone.
Yeah this doesn't make sense. You only leave if people don't listen to you.
My manager told me that our PM got yelled at because of that, and told me that negative comments should be restricted to private channels, without other managers present.
So, uh, why would I give any feedback that could be even remotely construed as negative again? Especially when the fallout could land on my coworkers as well?
I agree, you dont need an exit interview but the logic everyone is parroting is how sociopath keep entrenched
I guess I would counter with if I have friends there, I would like their lives to be better. If my exit interview is able to do that, then I would take that as a net positive.
However, you should also be either convinced that HR gives a crap, or that any potential outcomes are acceptable, including but not limited to being moved into "unregulated attrition" status, losing the ability to be hired by the same company in the future, having your words potentially turned into a lawsuit against you, etc. Unless you have actual, legal, signed documentation in place giving you such assurances, these are all on the table.
But they’ll, even subconsciously, remember that I said Joe and Jane were absolute rock stars.
If you had any confidence your feedback would be listened to and actioned on, why would you be leaving?
This horrible game theory bullshit being applied to all work interactions is why I will never work for an American company again.
Sometimes the "game theory bullshit," as you put it, is more evident and sometimes less so. But it's always there.
There are plenty of positives like being a hero to many coworkers and teammates. You should generally care more how competent individuals see you and less how incompetent individuals see you.
Work should be transactional. You owe your employer nothing beyond what you're contractually obliged.
Once I am leaving, I am not being paid for my sincerity. They should know why they suck, I am not going to do consultancy for free.
What makes anyone a slave to future wage payers is not the sincerity of exit interviews (or lack thereof). It is the bills, they keep coming.
If you're walking out over unfair treatment or wage theft or similar, sure, skip the interview.
If you're at the end of your first internship, or leaving on good terms, or both parties genuinely care, there's plenty to be gained.
The exit interview I had with an intern after my first time mentoring was very valuable for both of us, and was a positive point in our relationship.
On the other hand, I'm quitting the same job and will be declining any exit interview with "I've spent the last six months explaining to you why I'm quitting". There is no value at all to be gained from the conversation so I won't.
Skip the interview if the job sucks. Participate if you think you'll get value, or in particular if you're young and early in your career.
Q: Did you feel like a valued member of the team?
A: I chose to leave.
Q: (getting pretty exasperated by this point) Would you care to expand on that.
A: No.
Grief, it was painful and i remember it to that day. But yes, the moment you’ve handed in your resignation, that part of your life is over. There’s literally no upside in doing anything other than smiling and getting out of the door.
From a purely selfish point of view, you're usually right. That said, if the organization is functional, (and yes, I know that's a big 'if',) such an interview with a departing team member can provide valuable feedback that might lead to improvements for the remaining team members.
This may or may not be the case though. Many people at companies actually do give a shit!
I once worked for a guy who who literally destroyed his company because his wife wanted a bigger house. He put the companies finances in a precarious position by sucking out capital at the wrong time and 8 people (the entire company) lost their jobs.
I've worked at a company where the team wasn't hiring (no budget), but suddenly one of the department heads old mates gets hired. A month later someone else on the team gets laid off for no apparent reason. Dead mans boots.
I've worked at companies where non-compete clause's were weaponised. They'd be enforced for long enough to torpedo any competing offers (which you're required to disclose on resigning) and then released, leaving you unemployed without support.
But to go into the world with a mindset of ‘everyone is an asshole’ is just sad.
Maybe in tech or wherever your experience is it’s like this. But many people in the world go about their business with a heart and soul.
Not everyone - but by assuming it’s everyone you are making it worse.
Sure, it didn't get me any more comp at that particular firm but I've heard from those who stayed behind that they eventually did relent.
small startup, you already have excercised shares, you want the company to continue to hockey stick but you think there is a blind spot in leadership that blocks hockey sticking.
So this actually happened for me with regards to my last job. I was honest during my exit interview and said while the company was largely a good place, the only negative (and negative by far) was a particular manager at the firm, and that he was the sole reason I was resigning. About 2 months later that manager was asked to leave. I also had lunch with his manager a few months ago where he acknowledged that his hiring “John” (the horrible manager) was the worst decision of his career.
I was once "forced to resign" for not expeditiously rushing to weaken (punch random holes in) the security of a private credit card network (PCI-DSS applicable) accessible only by a proper VPN. Oh, well, on to the next. There is zero advantage to helping an organization with constructive feedback when they're firing someone, and saying anything negative only puts the ex-employee in potential legal jeopardy.
A good reminder to be cautious , but I don't think the absolute position justified..
I run voluntary exit interviews with departing engineers - I'm not in HR (more of an engineering advocate / practice lead) and any disclosure of content is entirely opt-in, as it's not remotely necessary.
The purpose of these exit interviews _actually is_ to make us better & hold leadership accountable. (And give an escape hatch to The SNAFU Principle [^1])
Ideally we wouldn't only learn this stuff when someone's leaving, but alas sometimes that's how it goes.
FWIW: generally collate insights and themes from these interviews, periodic skip 1:1s, etc.. and use them to report on broad trends we're doing well / sucking at.
For me these things are invaluable.
Now, if you've ground out enough leet code to land an almost no-show job at some bigco that runs on monopoly bucks and everyone is silo'd and everyone is divorced from actual results you'll probably never see that. But it happens.
There is zero value in participating in an exit interview. Just don’t do it.
Pretty satisfied tbh.
In the another job I didn’t think providing any kind of feedback would help me or anyone there due to multiple reasons, so I didn’t even try.
My experience has been that people (including me) kinda suck at accepting critical feedback. You could try to mitigate this with some techniques but you never really know how the receivers will take it (or how the message is relayed!!) So the rational thing to do is to play it safe and not do an exit interview unless you are sure that it won’t backfire on you.
Like any advice, it is contextual. Especially when working for large organizations, the OT is the right default. If you're leaving because things are bad, it will be a mix of 1) people know but did not care/could not do anything about it and 2) people did not know about specific issues. Younger me thought it was often 2), but actually it is almost always 1).
What it said; I respected my team and wanted to give them the best possible chance so I worked for them. The people above me didn't give a shit. It's all quite funny in hindsight how clear that is. To any of my teams reading this, I love you people, I'll try and get you here when I can. :)
The place to really consider more direct feedback is with people that you have worked closely with. Personal relationships matter infinitely more than HR or any "official" record. If you have good relationships with your boss and/or peers, talk to them and give your thoughts, it could give you some closure and maybe even potentially improve things. Just don't let it turn into a unconstructive venting session. Ultimately working in organizations is hard and every single person can generate a laundry list of complaints, the real value is in finding a path to improve with the levers under your control. If you have credible idea about how to nudge things in the right direction, people will tend to appreciate that; if you're just looking for commiseration about how broken everything is then keep your opinion to yourself.
You get a reputation as a straight shooter You start acting at an executive level You get a reputation as someone who not only sees the problems but has ideas on how to fix them.
Do you want to go through life cowering in your rut or do you want to step up, take responsibility and start fixing shit?
Don’t be unkind, but learning to give constructive feedback is a life skill. Cultivate it and learn from your mistakes. Don’t be so afraid to make mistakes that you never learn anything.
Lying to your employer is luch like lying to children. Just accept that you are lying for the greater good, so it is not a sin.
Staying silent certainly plays right by sociopaths and other wrongdoers, sparing them the accountability that holds them at bay.
It also says to those remaining who may not be in as strong a place as you to leave, that you couldn't care less about their suffering, just "what's in it for me?".
Smacks a bit sociopathic itself.