Exit interviews are a trap

i'd be curious if anyone has ever seen it happen

By all means do what I do which is -- be honest so you can sleep at night knowing you tried to do the best for the company -- but don't always expect good outcomes.

That last point is the crux of why things don't always work out because, who decides whether you're being constructive or a whiny, critical, negative contrarian? Might it be the manager you're criticising? :)

I've had the 'it's the way you say it' thrown in my face before despite having said things a number of different ways each getting the same response. Manipulative, gaslighting managers absolutely thrive on those kind of blurry lines.

Often middle managers are playing an entirely different game than you are. They want to look like they're not only essential but the reason things turn out well. Some decide to adopt a meta of bashing down people who call any of that into question (an underling raising concerns might risk them taking credit rather the manager).

I've also had the bad luck of having a truly evil manager in the past who made sure to cause actual psychological harm to me and other ex-colleagues. I am glad you haven't experienced that but they do exist.

I guess the correct test for 'is it me?' is to assess what others think. If many independent employees are experiencing the same thing then it's probably real. If it's only you, then question whether maybe you're the cause.

I really appreciate this article, because this is one of those specific moments in a job where walking in unaware can affect you really badly, for a long time. Making people aware of that situation, and offering a framework for how to think about it, can be really helpful to people who are in their first jobs.

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.

They asked him whether anything is wrong, they don't get to complain about the answer.

On the other hand, for a senior person to go around town and spread rumours about a (presumably) junior team member is exactly the kind of behaviour I want nothing to do with.

This comment is miopic, seems the closer you are to the top the less maturity and aelf-control you are expected to have?