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.
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.
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.
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.)
Generally spot on in my experience. I've only ever agreed to one, and it was a mess, with the interviewer getting very upset and pushing back on all of my answers. Since then I politely decline. I've had one boss tell me it wasn't optional, to which I responded that I'd be happy to leave earlier if he wanted to enforce the requirement. He swiftly backed down, as we hadn't yet finished knowledge transfer.
Hypothetically and assuming 1) at-will employment, 2) company policy requires exit interview and 3) they didn't care about the knowledge transfer, could the company then terminate you "for cause" because you refused to do the exit interview?
Yes, they could, that is the definition of at-will employment. As long as the termination reason is not illegal there is nothing stopping them. Some employers will escort you out of the building immediately once you let them know you plan to leave, I know multiple examples of this happening at Microsoft at least.
Yes, but there's a huge difference between termination and termination "for cause". The latter has specific meaning - it'll often trigger negative consequences like losing your vested equity. It usually only happens in egregious cases: fraud, harassment, punched a customer, etc. If you're merely refusing to do your job, you'd probably just be regular terminated (including if they decide to include "do the exit interview" as part of doing your job).
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.
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.)
However the definition of with cause varies by state.
Also, i genuinely dont know if refusing an exit interview meets that criteria.
Generally, exit inteeviews are:
- Not what you were required to to do in the first place
- Not a policy in the standard handbook
- Not a critical ad hoc work function
Therefore, the issue is murky and wouldnt pass HR review. I would bet most companies would let it go unless this decision came from ownership itself
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
> 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“.
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?
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?
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.
>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?
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.
The main one I can think of is companies altering their return to work posture after having an exodus of employees who did not want to return under stated terms. This sort of thing is rare though as it needs to be simultaneous, consistent feedback that is actionable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I gave one doozy of an answer once in an anonymous feedback survey. I then started to feel quite bad about it and realized probably it's not so hard to figure out who that feedback possibly came from. I went to my skip level boss and leveled with him about the feedback I had given. He was remarkably cool about it and told me they didn't get enough responses to that particular question to pass some threshold and hence he hadn't even seen that response. Luckily he wasn't a psychopath type manager and was generally just a wise old guy who was a great politician and I didn't wind up burning a bridge. But I definitely learned never to give honest feedback under the guise of anonymity.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> If you are really committed to a mission, even one you've decided to leave, I would think you'd want to give feedback that can help improve the chances of that mission being successful, even if there's a personal downside risk.
Let's not have any illusions about the "mission" that 99% of us are on. That mission is to do mind numbing meaningless work on some ad-tech platform because they pay us 3x the median salary to do it. Don't ever think for a moment that your company cares about you or your affinity to their "mission" at all.
I agree that "mission" is more buzzword than substance in SV. But there are certainly many people outside that bubble who work in organizations with missions that are important to them. List any number of governmental, safety-critical, or health related fields for an idea. IMO, extreme pay is a way to compensate precisely because they know it's not a purpose they really identify with.
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.
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.
Even internal-only whistleblowing on non-safety things like IP issues or quality can be risky.
In theory you are helping by making them aware non-publicly. But if profits are good they may want to keep these things quiet and unresolved.
With unemployment at ~4% unethical people just want to continue guzzling unethical money until snot hits the fan -- when product or service collapses under the weight of the problem then get a new job at same pay. They don't want to fix anything even if long-term its a big problem. OTOH, when employment is 9% then it isn't a sure bet that equivalent job is available, and scammers need to adapt faster.
> Would you prefer that employee voice their opinion during exit
If it's something really important, e.g. safety culture, then the employee should have already raised this much, much earlier.
If the company didn't listen then, then evidently they see concerning behaviour as an acceptable cost of running their business in a certain way.
I think it's bad to say anything revelatory in an exit interview, as it shows you as someone who isn't prepared to speak up when you notice something wrong.
To the point of another post, I don't think they are mutually exclusive unless the exit interview is held by the same person who you would normally voice daily concerns to (e.g., direct supervisor). Many organizations have exit interviews scheduled with people many levels higher precisely because they recognize the middle-managers won't have the ability to sanitize the feedback first.
Meaning it's possible to have been voicing concerns the entire time but not have them reach the same level as you'd get at an exit interview. I look at exit interviews as an accountability measure for mid-level management.
All that is useful to the company, but not to the employee leaving. I would agree there are potential upsides to a company, but there are only potential downsides for the employee.
If a company wants to get feedback from the shop floor, they can run anonymous employee surveys.
If you have important concerns to bring up in the exit interview, then why didn't you bring it up previously?
When I left a previous job, I didn't say any of the reasons why I was leaving. All the problems in the company had been previously expressed by me or other people MULTIPLE TIMES. The problems were always ignored. I didn't want to bring them up again just to have someone argue that those problems "aren't that big of a deal" or "must not be the real reason you're leaving" so I kept my mouth shut.
That's a fair point. I guess I was working from the assumption that the type of person who is mission-oriented and wants the org to succeed even without them, would also be the type of person who has been trying to fix those issue during their tenure.
I would argue, though, that just bringing an issue up isn't the same as actively trying to solve it. Pointing out problems is easy, but fixing them is often hard. Finding effective ways to communicate issues and building the relationships necessary to have the social/business capital to help fix them is not something that just occurs by shining a light on a problem. I suspect the person who wants to have a constructive exit interview isn't just wanting to vent and point at problems.
I'd kind of hope they'd bring it up before the exit interview. If you're only raising important issues on your way out the door it's just virtue signalling to make yourself feel better. Work to fix it or keep your mouth shut & move on.
I agree, and another commenter said similar. I will say that an exit interview can often be a unique circumstance to raise issues to levels that you may not have the ability to otherwise. For example, most military units have exit interviews where enlisted get a one-on-one with the executive officer. Because of the tightly controlled hierarchy in military organizations, this may be their only chance at a one-on-one exchange with that level. To your point though, flat organizations should have plenty of opportunity before quitting to raise concerns to high levels.
Sure -- in healthcare people say things like "I think new job's approach to managing patient outcomes has the rigor that I prefer" or "I think my new gig professes to emphasize xyz more than this job, and I think that is a better fit for me."
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
I have no idea what the author is on about. The exit interview is often the best 30 minutes of a bad job!
You can tell them what they are doing well, what they aren't doing well, praise good employees and criticize bad managers.
If you are both professionals, it's a cathartic experience that supports your remaining coworkers. If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway. But if you are an unprofessional neurotic intent on treating Greg from HR like a captive corporate agent, I guess you will probably have a bad time?
> If you are both professionals, it's a cathartic experience that supports your remaining coworkers. If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway.
It seems to me that the author is suggesting a third type of person: one who is professional until they're criticized.
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.
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.
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.
Also I'm not convinced on the idea that it is unlikely to elicit change. My current employer takes exit interviews very seriously when they lose good people, and tries to fix the situation before losing more.
Like you said, if it is handled professionally - that is, you have valid concerns/criticisms that you are able to quantify and address in a constructive manner - it can be very useful for everyone involved.
I get that for every company that seems to care there are probably 10 that seem to not, but I always find this sort of stereotypical "work sucks and is a zero-sum game" attitude that is common on Reddit and HN a little saddening. Sure, your primary concern should be to take care of yourself, but this idea that everything with 'Inc.' after its name is full of layers of uncaring, heartless drones is frankly untrue. People think the same about IT/tech/dev, and it's not true there either. It does not have to be you vs them, even when you decide to leave.
I 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…
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?
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.
> How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
I really do you see where you were coming from here, but there are two things to consider here.
1) Subjective assessment is totally valid when discussing management. It’s a job about people at its core, so how people feel is relevant. If a company can’t see that then there is a larger company culture issue there. Unhappy people not working well with their manager(s) are not going to put out as much - or necessarily good - work
2) It’s not about “are most people happy or not complaining,” it’s more about patterns/repetition (e.g. “a pattern of behavior.”) If you oversee 200 people over 5 years and 10 of them left citing “inappropriate conduct/I was uncomfortable at work,” that’s going to get HR and upper management hopefully asking questions.
> How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is.
HR should track the attrition rate for each manager. If twice as many of manager X's reports are quitting or transfer to other teams than manager Y's reports, then manager X or the projects they manage might be a problem (for employee morale and company success).
HR can also send out anonymous employee engagement surveys.
> HR can also send out anonymous employee engagement surveys.
If employees view management or the company as Bad™, they will assume such surveys are 1. not actually anonymous, and 2. never going to make a difference, and all claims to the contrary will be seen as empty platitudes. (Obviously this can be counteracted by actually showing that the company is willing to act on feedback, but even if you're in a position to do that you have to get over the bootstrapping hump.)
I was invited to answer one of these, at a company with truly the most hateful manager I've ever had. Oh, was I ever ready to offer my jaundiced, embittered opinion...until the survey required I log in with my company email address.
Yes, there was the usual verbiage about anonymizing, blah, blah, but I lost all confidence that my response wouldn't be tracked to me. I never returned the survey.
I still haven't determined whether this was by incompetent or malicious design.
There was a post on here years ago from somebody who sold software to corporations for "anonymous" employee surveys. He said that executives always wanted to deanonymise the results and, sadly, he was happy to oblige.
Sure, if leadership is universally terrible, say your piece and walk away. But there are plenty of situations were the company is okay enough, but leadership should know that there's a specific department or manager who is contributing to turnover.
If you refuse to speak up because you think no one will listen, you might equally be part of the problem.
Getting into individual criticisms is probably about the last thing I would do in an exit interview. It’s not my problem any longer because it’s an exit interview.
Generally speaking momentary catharsis associated with blowing up bridges isn’t worth it.
I’m weirded out by how this comment is exactly how to handle it imo but not many others seem to agree. I’m perplexed. I get more confused about other peoples opinions the older I get but maybe that’s the thing I’m older and wiser.
Just think for a second about the overlap between “people who want to speak their mind in an exit interview” and “people who like arguing in online forums” and the comment disparity makes a lot of sense…
> If they are not professional, they weren't going to give you a good reference anyway.
Most 'references' are "Bill worked here from 6/2019 to 12/2020. Bill left with the title of Chief Ball Washer."
They may throw in an eligible for rehire or not but the boomer idea of a Employer Reference has been dead and buried almost as long as I have been in the workforce. And I'm closer to retirement than I am to when I joined the workforce.
Shit at most of the places I have been the leadership turns over faster than the employees so there's no one there to say how I worked anyway.
I think for a lot of engineering jobs this is absolutely true. That said, it depends entirely on what your focus or what your industry is.
As an example, before I moved into software engineering, I worked in digital media. There are maybe 22,000 working journalists in digital media in the United States (and that's also allowing for employees at the larger national papers like WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, etc) -- give or take a couple of thousand. If you then factor in for location (say, New York City) and coverage area (say, technology), you're now down to a small enough number of people that you can and will realistically know someone at almost every single place you would be going for a job. You run into people at conferences. You see people at the same parties. You have mutual friends. It's small and incestuous. So in that case, telling HR or your editor how the company can go fuck itself is usually not a great idea. Because you'll wind up working with these people again someday.
Unless you're in a more specialized area or community, software is different because you have 8x employees at one FAANG than in some entire industries. So in that case, as you said, turnover can be so swift and the reference is usually "Bill worked here from X to Y and had the title of Z."
But if you ARE in a specialized area, social capital matters a lot (I frequently get pinged by people at companies I don't even work at, asking my thoughts on a particular person) and so that's one more reason NOT to do the exit interview, or to at least not tell the person where to shove it in that interview.
Somebody at new company is a buddy with someone at old company, and calls up to ask "What's the deal on <potential hire>". No paper trail, nothing for the lawyers to track down.
The context of the article is in reference to being honest with the company in an exit interview. It has zero to do with informal references, personal references, or that fact that you run into people you used to work with in every industry.
If HR is printing and handing out your exit interview to all your former colleagues and they all disagree with your POV; a) you have a bigger problem and/or b) you might just be the asshole everyone else is talking about.
Edit: To be fair, your feedback could get back to the person it was about and they could fuck with you later but aren't they doing you a favor at that point. Anyone who I dislike enough to specifically call out by name in a negative way in an exit interview was typically someone I would never work for or with again.
The risk of honesty is that something negative you say will get back to the target, who will then bad mouth you.
It does happen. In the worst cases, the bad guy will actively sabotage the frankly speaking exiter's job search.
You say, "I really found Bad-Director's micromanaging our sprints unendurable".
Now Bad-Director is your enemy and will bad mouth you at every opportunity including off the record reference checks. Doesn't happen 100% of the time, but often enough to be a risk.
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.
>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.
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.
>I have no idea what the author is on about. The exit interview is often the best 30 minutes of a bad job!
My exit interview at a toxic job was really bad. I was given old format of exit interview form, me and my manager knew it's not going to be imported into a system and analysed, it has quite stupid questions like "would you stay for 2% more salary", or asking to blame people "is any of below a reason of you leaving: PO, SM, fellow developer/QA", while most people were leaving thanks to C-level people who didn't want to recognise their fault. If they knew employee was leaving the company for a lot more money of changing role, they were asked different questions that made the company look more positive to investors.
Wut? I hope you responded with something like "Hell no, but make it 60% and we can talk". Typically when I have jumped ship I got something like 20%-40% more with my new employer.
Of course, the questions were designed to make leaving employees look bad and leave for no reason, and like said above, I got an old format which wasn't imported into a system and presented as metrics.
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.
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...
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.
> 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.
How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
I think the assumption that the only possible result of being honest in your exit interview is that everyone who becomes aware of what you said dislikes you are a result is weird. Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
Sure, those things could happen. But those of us arguing against being overly honest in exit interviews would generally say, based on our experiences, those things are just very unlikely. Personally I find them so unlikely as to be in the "not even worth considering" category. Kinda like, yes, I could be killed by a meteorite smashing through my roof and striking me, but I don't spend any time worrying about the possibility.
Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
I don't know anything about being "brutally" honest, nor am I suggesting that one must be a jerk about anything. But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
Like others have said... the idea isn't to be intentionally deceitful during an exit interview. At least that's not what I'm suggesting. But it's also not necessary to say everything you could say, or even you might want to say. Especially since the biggest gain is often just a momentary sense of catharsis.
That said, everybody has to judge their own circumstances and make decision based on their own values, goals, constraints, etc. "Do what you think is right, and hope for the best" isn't the worst strategy one could follow.
> But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
This is definitely a cultural thing, I brought this up with my team recently, the concept of "negative feedback" and got two different reactions – my feedback to the team was about how we give negative feedback, and nobody at all agreed with that phrasing LOL
Either some people who heard what I said and thought, surely this means when you have done something wrong, and it's not actually negative feedback, but corrective feedback so that you know how to do that thing right in the future.
And the other reaction was, "negative feedback, positive feedback" no such thing it is all just feedback, but watch out for positive feedback because all of it is probably fake, and nobody is fooled by that "compliment sandwich" BS.
I don't think this is a problem for exit interviews, at least not exclusively; the point is that people are either receptive to feedback or they aren't. You can try to candy coat it, but if there's any chance that being direct is going to make the feedback more likely to land, I personally think I prefer the direct approach.
(Then again, I never notice compliment sandwiches, so maybe they work on me.)
I only notice shit sandwiches if the compliments are obviously bullshit. If they ring somewhat true, it’s just a balanced meeting with positives and negatives.
But the second I hear a bullshit compliment, I feel like I’m about to get a sales pitch.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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
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.
I don't see why you care about any of that. It doesn't concern you anymore. It isn't your problem. There are way better avenues of catharsis that have literally zero potential impact on your future job seeking abilities instead of the theoretical zero you're assuming.
I don't agree. I assume we're all professionals but some people are oil and water, doesn't mean you need to burn a bridge. Tempers cool, favors sometimes need returned, references are there in the future. I'm not burning a bridge with an exit interview. I no longer owe the company I'm leaving anything, but I'm leaving the bridge intact. I leave on a good note, I might call out particularly talented people that I feel get overlooked but otherwise I generally won't even have one bad word to say, even if I want to.
They sound like awful, possible hostile, environments OP has worked in. I'm with you here, there is absolutely room to provide constructive criticism and to provide an opposing data point, I have seen instances of an organization changing over time at least in part due to what people have said in their exit interviews. We're all human beings and we want each other to be happy and successful. If that's not the environment I'm in, then I made a mistake. If I am, it's not at all like OP described.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
In my experience, HR will end up painting something banal as the main reason for an exit instead of ever (publicly) admitting to some creative or strategic differences.
Saying "the new job is closer too" will lead to the narrative that the reason was 100% based on commute time.
I've used an exit interview to explain that commute time is a huge problem and that they need to open a $location office rather than providing so many shuttle buses
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
They are speaking from the perspective of a manager, so HR isn't leaking identities to them.
Although based on what they are saying, I don't think it would be hard to de-anonymize this info - exit interview feedback looks different than general feedback, and if it's in any way specific (and if it's unspecific it's not super useful) it's almost always easy to identify who it's from.
Of course, they don't get an embossed label with the name(s) of the one provided feedback. However, depending how high are they on the ladder - even directly asking may yield results.
What struck me was the belief 'all feedback', e.g. no exceptions, no redacting that may reveal details, no language replacement.
The other issue is mixing with w/ regular feedback - aside personal integrity what's the reason for anyone to be honest on an exit interview.
they said they were a manager, evidently the responses come to them in such a way that they feel it is anonymous.
However, I have a problem seeing how the data from an exit interview if truly anonymous would be at all useful. But they said it was useful for them as a manager as well, so...
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.
> All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back
Oh sweet summer child.. No feedback is anonymous, ever. It can be 'confidential', which means that HR can disclose it at their discretion or as appropriate.
As a manager, if you get value from the exit interview, with all due respect, you're doing it wrong. All the feedback which could be part of the exit interview should never be a surprise or an added value after the fact.
And why should the employee help with that? And why at that point? There's a lot of opportunities for feedback during employment. If you're banking on exit interviews, you've already lost and you're doing it fundamentally wrong.
At smaller companies with no HR, there is a lot of room for personal gripes to muck up exit interviews. I've experienced this firsthand with an unhinged founder.
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.
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-à-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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
426 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] threadNote, that the likelihood of a company implementing changes based on your exit interview feedback will be pretty low.
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.)
However the definition of with cause varies by state.
Also, i genuinely dont know if refusing an exit interview meets that criteria.
Generally, exit inteeviews are: - Not what you were required to to do in the first place - Not a policy in the standard handbook - Not a critical ad hoc work function
Therefore, the issue is murky and wouldnt pass HR review. I would bet most companies would let it go unless this decision came from ownership itself
But drop the benign; HR are at least as prone, if not moreso, to being malign than the regular kind of police.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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“.
I had a problem at work. I called HR. Then I had two problems.
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?
He talks about exactly this.
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.
i'd be curious if anyone has ever seen it happen
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.
so, no feedback. at that point there is literally no upside. The time for feedback is while you work there.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
In theory you are helping by making them aware non-publicly. But if profits are good they may want to keep these things quiet and unresolved.
With unemployment at ~4% unethical people just want to continue guzzling unethical money until snot hits the fan -- when product or service collapses under the weight of the problem then get a new job at same pay. They don't want to fix anything even if long-term its a big problem. OTOH, when employment is 9% then it isn't a sure bet that equivalent job is available, and scammers need to adapt faster.
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.
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.
If a company wants to get feedback from the shop floor, they can run anonymous employee surveys.
When I left a previous job, I didn't say any of the reasons why I was leaving. All the problems in the company had been previously expressed by me or other people MULTIPLE TIMES. The problems were always ignored. I didn't want to bring them up again just to have someone argue that those problems "aren't that big of a deal" or "must not be the real reason you're leaving" so I kept my mouth shut.
That's a fair point. I guess I was working from the assumption that the type of person who is mission-oriented and wants the org to succeed even without them, would also be the type of person who has been trying to fix those issue during their tenure.
I would argue, though, that just bringing an issue up isn't the same as actively trying to solve it. Pointing out problems is easy, but fixing them is often hard. Finding effective ways to communicate issues and building the relationships necessary to have the social/business capital to help fix them is not something that just occurs by shining a light on a problem. I suspect the person who wants to have a constructive exit interview isn't just wanting to vent and point at problems.
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.
But seeing how rarely that feedback is acted on, yeah...I'm failing to see the point in exit interviews.
I always assumed it was HR's last chance to head off potential lawsuits.
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?
It seems to me that the author is suggesting a third type of person: one who is professional until they're criticized.
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.
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.
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.
The HR person sounds like an HR person.
Or to rephrase, one who is professional until an actual test of their professionalism.
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.
An exit interview is an explicit opt-in from the interviewer to hear bad news…
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?
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.
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.
If employees view management or the company as Bad™, they will assume such surveys are 1. not actually anonymous, and 2. never going to make a difference, and all claims to the contrary will be seen as empty platitudes. (Obviously this can be counteracted by actually showing that the company is willing to act on feedback, but even if you're in a position to do that you have to get over the bootstrapping hump.)
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.
If you refuse to speak up because you think no one will listen, you might equally be part of the problem.
Generally speaking momentary catharsis associated with blowing up bridges isn’t worth it.
Or maybe I’m just an idiot.
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.
As an example, before I moved into software engineering, I worked in digital media. There are maybe 22,000 working journalists in digital media in the United States (and that's also allowing for employees at the larger national papers like WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, etc) -- give or take a couple of thousand. If you then factor in for location (say, New York City) and coverage area (say, technology), you're now down to a small enough number of people that you can and will realistically know someone at almost every single place you would be going for a job. You run into people at conferences. You see people at the same parties. You have mutual friends. It's small and incestuous. So in that case, telling HR or your editor how the company can go fuck itself is usually not a great idea. Because you'll wind up working with these people again someday.
Unless you're in a more specialized area or community, software is different because you have 8x employees at one FAANG than in some entire industries. So in that case, as you said, turnover can be so swift and the reference is usually "Bill worked here from X to Y and had the title of Z."
But if you ARE in a specialized area, social capital matters a lot (I frequently get pinged by people at companies I don't even work at, asking my thoughts on a particular person) and so that's one more reason NOT to do the exit interview, or to at least not tell the person where to shove it in that interview.
Somebody at new company is a buddy with someone at old company, and calls up to ask "What's the deal on <potential hire>". No paper trail, nothing for the lawyers to track down.
Do you really think that never happens?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The more you need to vent at the exit interview, the more likely there will be unprofessional behavior at your expense.
My exit interview at a toxic job was really bad. I was given old format of exit interview form, me and my manager knew it's not going to be imported into a system and analysed, it has quite stupid questions like "would you stay for 2% more salary", or asking to blame people "is any of below a reason of you leaving: PO, SM, fellow developer/QA", while most people were leaving thanks to C-level people who didn't want to recognise their fault. If they knew employee was leaving the company for a lot more money of changing role, they were asked different questions that made the company look more positive to investors.
Wut? I hope you responded with something like "Hell no, but make it 60% and we can talk". Typically when I have jumped ship I got something like 20%-40% more with my new employer.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.)
But the second I hear a bullshit compliment, I feel like I’m about to get a sales pitch.
If "them" is your old manager, why not just tell them directly?
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.
At the big corporation I work at, we have yearly surveys. We also do exit interviews with people who are leaving. You're right the notes usually go directly to the person's supervisor. Then the upper management guys put together some kind of directive to try and improve whatever was spelled out in the surveys or the exit interview feedback if they start seeing a pattern.
Then it becomes a quarterly goal for the manager - say reducing team churn before EOY. Goal is met, everything goes back to normal and nobody is the wiser about anything said in the exit interview.
Its literally a one-time deal that is a short-term, surface level managerial fix.
Even when you supposedly have a system in place that should theoretically handle negative survey and exit interview feedback, the system is designed to more or less just sweep it under the carpet as if nothing ever happened.
I 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saying "the new job is closer too" will lead to the narrative that the reason was 100% based on commute time.
The point is that it doesn't matter; you're gone.
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
Good thing that such acts are *illegal* - that'll show'em.
--
FYI - KEEP YOUR PERSONAL SHIT PERSONAL.
---
One must develop a personal air-gap.
How do you know that?
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.
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.
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...
> rolled up with non-exit feedback
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.
Well...yes. Isn't the entire point of an exit interview, from the organization's perspective, to find out what they're doing wrong?
I think the Brooklyn bridge's on sale.
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-à-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.
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.
I'm sure he's not alone in ignoring important feedback. I'm sure feedback from people leaving the company is generally ignored too.
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.)
This assumes that your opinion on direction is the right one, and that anyone or team that doesn't agree is wrong?
It doesn't make the company going in that direction wrong, it's just not a company I wanted to work at anymore.