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Exit interviews are a trap

jacobian.org

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Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#321

Post by throwaway6532 »

mooxie wrote: post #66
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…

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 ge…

My experience has been the opposite :(

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#322

Post by deltaonefour »

throwaway195729 wrote: post #98

I quit my last job because my team ganged up on me and held an "intervention meeting" because I broke the production environment after my code had passed local development and staging. The person who found out didn't tell me, but silently fixed it and called for a meeting. I incidentally saw we had a meeting with a vague title, and asking about it, my team members avoided elaborating. Eventually, the meeting was a sc…

I agree with you. What the co worker did to you was wrong. But I would also venture to say that there could be a reason specific to you as to why you were targeted in this way.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#323

Post by throwaway6532 »

ghusto wrote: post #112

Good lord, what terrible advice. If anyone is reading this and thinking of adopting his ideas, please consider (with the exception being if you're still early in your career): 1) Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins 2) Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill 3) If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored. She won't lose h…

You, my friend, are not cynical enough.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#324

Post by _8j50 »

For those starting out in their career in the US: They do not play fair and they will lie about you and talk behind your back. By they, I mean the people that do the hiring. When you apply at one place , they will contact buddies at your current or former place of work even without your consent and you have no chance to fight or dispute that (and it is also illegal, not that they care). It's not a level playing field, if you leave a bad work place, just be glad you were able to leave. Hopefully, job market economics will get them to change. Be forgettable, as in how people will forget everything about you except how you made them feel.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#325

Post by throwaway6532 »

khazhoux wrote: post #183

I've never once in my long career seen constructive feedback from exit interviews make its way back to the leadership or management orgs. I have seen a top engineer tell his CEO why he was leaving and everything wrong with the project (and he said this, I'm sure, very politely and with the intent of helping them). He made the critical mistake of sharing where he was going next (a FAANG). The CEO of old-company called…

I have shared direct, honest feedback to my skip level boss before, during and after the course of somewhat disastrously run projects. I've kept in regular contact with my old team since leaving and thanks to my feedback the company has completely turned around... NOT! Still the same old, same old patterns playing out day after day. Learned my lesson on that one. It's just not worth it.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#326

Post by throwaway6532 »

sarchertech wrote: post #40
hsnewman wrote: post #14

I got burned once when my company did a annual employee survey. My boss determined who gave the anonymous answer and fired me eventually.

Must’ve been one doozy of an answer :)

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.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#327

Post by throw1230 »

detaro wrote: post #308
throw1230 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way? It's an exit interview , so that is an excellent question for HR to ask. > excluded you from the team: How was he excluded? same as above. > code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something Something you can correlate with other feedback, and see…

Yeah I've managed an assumption based on what I'm seeing here. That's all the data I have.

Similarly most everyone assumed that the manager went out of his way to talk shit about him. Managers don't go around and talk shit of their employees without getting prompted. If someone asks his manager "Hey I saw you worked with aroundtown, what was your experience like" you bet the answer is going to be crystal clear.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#328

Post by throwaway6532 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #114

Seems pointlessly Machiavellian. Sure, theoretically, you could get burned by what you say in an exit interview. I've never heard of it happening. Typically you end up being the 20th person to say what you said. If your company is so poisonous they won't give you a referral based on feedback they requested, they probably wouldn't give you a referral no matter what.

There seems to be two camps of people in the comments here. One camp is saying more or less what you say, and the other camp is people who have had it happen to them personally and don't wish to expose themselves to the possibility of the downside risk again knowing how sucky it can be.

Source: I've experienced a situation where I gave honest feedback and nothing bad happened, and I've experience a situation where I gave honest feedback and it impacted a subsequent employment opportunity.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#329

Post by throwaway6532 »

gneray wrote: post #231

Jacob, this is...so disappointing. Avoid, be bland, lie? There is no integrity here. The upside of being honest is 1) preserving your integrity, and 2) most people who leave share their reasons for leaving with someone ultimately, which usually gets back to the team they left. If you share a different story and your old team finds out later, it's just going to create a worse impression. How about: find a clear but re…

>Avoid, be bland, lie? There is no integrity here.

Integrity is a trap.

Re: Exit interviews are a trap

#330

Post by SantalBlush »

throw1230 wrote: post #248
stavros wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>exit interviews aren't to express opinions or talk shit, it's a data source for HR

These are the same thing. You're trying to legitimize your opinion under the pretense of seeking raw, objective data, and characterizing OP's interview responses as something less than data, but it's not true.

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