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Exit interviews are a trap

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Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#241

Post by Ancalagon »

bsnnkv wrote: post #146
aroundtown wrote: post #99

I made the mistake and told the truth one time early in my career. I got fired, err... I wasn't retained after a multi-month temp period, and was brought in to be fired, then exit interviewed. I was upset, but stuck to the truth. My direct boss was passive aggressive, didn't like me, and excluded me from the team. His code was awful, in the long term wasn't maintainable, and wouldn't be able to meet the needs of the…

I feel like people like this are fair game for naming and shaming.

Disagree. You can ask in private but DOXXing somebody via HN/Reddit hivemind is a no-go without proper evidence. 1 anecdote does not suffice in this case (sorry OP, I do believe you though)

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#242

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

cpeterso wrote: post #162
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> criticize bad managers. What do you do when you work for a company where you think managers are bad, and their managers are bad, but they all think they are great and they think you're the problem? How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is. HR doesn't care (in…

> 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 probl…

> 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.)

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#243

Post by carmen_sandiego »

dbg31415 wrote: post #111

Great advice here. HR is NEVER your friend. They are not on your side. DO NOT TRUST HR. Anonymous feedback is never anonymous. DO NOT TRUST HR. Here's the deal... Exit interviews, as a manager, were annoying because they could ding me on my annual reviews. And that's fine, except... people would complain about things I had no control over. "Oh, my manager made me do something stupid that I didn't like!" Yup, I get it…

> if the new place you were applying called, and asked me, "Do you have any feedback about X candidate?" You better believe I had things to say about the people who were negative.

> And bosses are petty, they'll get revenge if they can. And odds are you'll need them to say something nice about you at some point.

You're opening yourself and your company up to getting sued. An employee uses the exit interview for the purposes the company claims they're for and you take 'revenge' on them? That's pretty unprofessional. You should be trying to change the fact that the exit interview unfairly impacts your perf review, if anything.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#244

Post by hitpointdrew »

agilob wrote: post #176
legitster wrote: post #26

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…

>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 leavi…

> would you stay for 2% more salary

Wut? I hope you responded with something like "Hell no, but make it 60% and we can talk". Typically when I have jumped ship I got something like 20%-40% more with my new employer.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#245

Post by kbenson »

legitster wrote: post #226
cuddlybacon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you do when you work for a company where you think managers are bad, and their managers are bad, but they all think they are great and they think you're the problem? How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is. If you notice you are the only one in 200 pe…

> If you notice you are the only one in 200 people have any issues, a reasonable question to ask yourself is if the problem is you. This is exactly the right attitude. If everyone else is happy and the only problem is you, all the more reason to be respectful! It's better to treat it as a cultural misfit rather than ask them risk making 200 other employees unhappy to appease you.

In the absence of larger issues, maybe. What if you're one of very few minorities or women working at the company, and the issues seems to stem from issues that shouldn't be issues? That seems more like a company problem and not a personal or cultural problem (given that the culture in question has laws to try to prevent it).

I agree it's probably best to start from a position that it's just a cultural mismatch. I imagine sometimes it gets entangled with a lot of other issues though, whether rightfully so or in perception only.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#246

Post by throw1230 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #190
throw1230 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you weren't meeting the needs of the company either and this is all sour grapes. If someone is not meeting the expectations or underperforming and it's not a character problem. I'd be open to working with them if they did some growing somewhere else. If however, you have this kind of attitude of blame-shifting and finger pointing without any substance to back it up, no one will want to work with you. Y…

"If however, you have this kind of attitude of blame-shifting and finger pointing" They asked him whether anything is wrong, they don't get to complain about the answer. On the other hand, for a senior person to go around town and spread rumours about a (presumably) junior team member is exactly the kind of behaviour I want nothing to do with. This comment is miopic, seems the closer you are to the top the less matur…

None of the feedback OP has given to HR has any substance. If you throw around heavy words like this, you better know how to back your words up.

- passive aggressive: This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way? - excluded you from the team: How was he excluded? Was he not invited to events? Or did he not get good projects? If you are a temp with potential performance problems, it's normal that you don't get the cool projects. - code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something - long term maintainability: I don't think he was there for long - missing roadmap because poor design decisions: Again a junior opinion, running projects are complex with many different variables, you fail meeting deadlines for various reasons, there's never a single reason, and that reason is never "we had a bad piece of code written by one guy". I don't think OP has the historical context of that led to the that code.

When I hear all this feedback coming from a temp, all I hear is they weren't a team player, they don't know how to be diplomatic and most of the things they are saying are coming out of frustration and have no substance and is not actionable.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#247

Post by KoftaBob »

Ancalagon wrote: post #241
bsnnkv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people like this are fair game for naming and shaming.

Disagree. You can ask in private but DOXXing somebody via HN/Reddit hivemind is a no-go without proper evidence. 1 anecdote does not suffice in this case (sorry OP, I do believe you though)

Not to nitpick, but I think the term you're looking for is "Doxxing".

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#248

Post by throw1230 »

stavros wrote: post #211
throw1230 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you weren't meeting the needs of the company either and this is all sour grapes. If someone is not meeting the expectations or underperforming and it's not a character problem. I'd be open to working with them if they did some growing somewhere else. If however, you have this kind of attitude of blame-shifting and finger pointing without any substance to back it up, no one will want to work with you. Y…

Except aroundtown expressed their opinion to HR when asked, and the boss went around badmouthing them around town. Only one of the two is the asshole here.

Nah man, exit interviews aren't to express opinions or talk shit, it's a data source for HR to identify problems emerging as patterns and improve their org/company.

One guy saying "my boss sucked" isn't really feedback

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#249

Post by mejarc »

cpeterso wrote: post #162
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> criticize bad managers. What do you do when you work for a company where you think managers are bad, and their managers are bad, but they all think they are great and they think you're the problem? How do you objectively (not subjectively) determine if a manager is bad? If 200 people in the organization are "happy enough", it's your word versus theirs on what a good manager vs a bad manager is. HR doesn't care (in…

> 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 probl…

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.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#250

Post by dweinus »

dweinus wrote: post #39

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.

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.
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