Your exit interview almost never affects any change. But, sometimes, the powers that be already wanted to do some change, like firing your incompetent boss, and your exit interview provides a nice piece of documentation for the pile in their PIP (pre-firing incredibly-useless process) of said manager and his/her eventual firing.
Exit interviews are a trap
391–400 of 431 posts
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I understand what "the game" is, and I'm in my mid-50's. I don't know whether I'm so good at the game I don't know I'm playing it--because nothing bad has happened--or, I'm not playing it at all--and nothing bad has happened. And I've been in this since the late 80's, through IBM, Microsoft, and Intel, not to mention two startups and contracting. Can you elaborate what The Game actually is?
>I'm not sure I understand what "the game" is, and I'm in my mid-50's. Simple. 1. Be good at your job. 2. Don't be an asshole.
Within #2 I have a rule and its never in any circumstance speak badly of anyone, if you must frame it as areas for improvement. At best you come off as whiny, at worst it flows out and you get retaliation
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm not sure I understand what "the game" is, and I'm in my mid-50's. Simple. 1. Be good at your job. 2. Don't be an asshole.
Within #2 I have a rule and its never in any circumstance speak badly of anyone, if you must frame it as areas for improvement. At best you come off as whiny, at worst it flows out and you get retaliation
Yes, it's #2 everyone has a problem with. I have another rule, don't complain, and if you do, catch yourself. That stuff is contagious, especially with the small stuff that doesn't matter. It's like a plague and it will make everyone way more miserable when they probably should be, including yourself.
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Work is a lie, play the game. If there’s any advice I could ever give anyone who has any amount of integrity and tries to live an honest life - it’s this alone. If you don’t play the game - you’re not playing the game everyone else is and you will always lose in the end. Extremely painful to deal with for bright eyed young folks or those switching industries thinking things might be different.
Here's my old man manual to life at work. Show up and do the work, consistently. Just this basic discipline puts you in the top 20% of performers, everywhere. Make your superiors look good and in any case, not bad. They don't care what you do for as long as you do this. This does not require sucking up, just deliver. Be reliable. Deliver on promises, likewise do not commit to a promise you can't fulfill and explain w…
You dream if you think that will get you opportunities. In most companies being good and realiable at your job without playing the game ends with you doing always the same job because why would they promote someone who is good at what he does and never complains about being promoted or raised? They will see u as useful in your current state
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#395I don’t think they are a trap. You can make constructive criticism without being personal. A lot of times middle management is implementing policy that it didn’t have a say in.
At the end of the day, everyone is human, and most people are more concerned with handling their own problems than making life hard for others.
And if the company has a functional business quality plan, they should be reviewing data from all the exit interviews on a regular basis (maybe quarterly or semi annual). You are just one data point. No matter how brilliant you think you are, they are going to be looking for major trends. Like, everyone made lateral moves for more pay, maybe our pay scales aren’t competitive, or we aren’t recognizing success appropriately.
The exit interview isn’t like pointing at the ship’s unmanned helm and letting the watch officer know the pilot has been in the head for 2 quarters.
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#396I 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…
What’s the long term story for that startup and boss? Any further success or failure? A few big tricks to learn in career maturity involve how to get along in situations where there may be some toxic or even just unhelpful factors. Figure out how to be unthreatening and work with or beside cliques. Figure out how to work around technical problems without making enemies. Etc. Also be sure to draw lines that don’t limi…
A little backstory, then update.
Unknown to me at the time, boss had independently made a widget that was responsible for a sizable portion of the profit for this company. He was in the process of selling the widget to the company.
I was hired during a company expansion as a domain expert for a new product category in which they were developing. I was placed initially under boss to learn the company ropes.
There were a few odd things about the job, I was frequently not invited to team/company functions, outings, lunches, nor meetings. Being told by my boss that I needed to earn the right to go to these things, and I hadn't earned it yet, or that the meetings didn't concern me. The boss assigned me work on his widget, and generally left me alone. My desk wasn't in the same area as the rest of the team. I was put in new office space with the other people that started when I did. Even after space with my team opened up I was required to work in the temp area. I had to provide my own laptop and lamp for the first month while employed as the company as they hadn't procured me one. Yes, lamp, I didn't have overhead lighting in my area, as they planned to put in a skylight, it never materialized. Instead of moving on to the development phase of the task I was hired to do, I ended up taking support tasks, like calls, emails, writing docs, etc. (I chalked it up to needing to learn the system, but I was being paid triple what they were paying help desk staff) Also wasn't given write access to their code repository, I had to submit patches to my boss.
When I was let go, the owner and vp over boss brought up how they thought I wasn't a team player as I wasn't attending any company events. I needed to get my external affairs in order because I kept having outside engagements keeping me from work. Dumbfounded by these accusations I showed them I'd come to work everyday, attended every meeting I'd been invited and explained I often felt left out when the team got to go to outside events (from stuff like ice cream to pro ball games). After showing all my emails and schedule it came to light that my boss was never inviting me to these events and was giving them made up excuses for me.
As for the code, it was bad. Broken in very fundamental ways. I gave the code a fair eval during my exit. Explained how it's design flaws wouldn't allow them to expand the widget much beyond it's current abilities and showed how it was incompatible with their long term road map.
In the end I had no leverage, so I wasn't retained.
--- The update. ---
6 months after of my departure, a third of the company was gone. Everybody that was part of the expansion had left or was fired, and several other people took better jobs elsewhere.
Eventually they hired a few new developers to take over the widget. After a couple of years, a new version was released with new code base, but it was now late to the market and better products replaced it.
The owner eventually bought out the widget from my boss in order to sell the company, many years after I left. The majority of the staff at that point transitioned with the notable exception of my boss. He retired, I think he fishes now.
As for me, well, I had a couple of rough years there were I wasn't getting hired. Thought it was bad luck, but through some chance encounters I've came to learn that someone was spreading some bad info about me. I got some counseling, which helped.
As for why the retaliation, I think it was because my boss lost leverage and money over the widget deal. I learned from a former coworker that my boss had been planning an exit from the company as soon as the widget deal finalized, which was supposed to happen right after I started, not years later. I think he knew his program couldn't meet the roadmap he was selling the company and was hoping to make it someone else's problem.
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#397At 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.
At a big corp I quit, I was surprised there was an exit interview because it wasn't the first time I left them!
Why? Presumably knowing why you left the second time can be useful, isn't it?
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Work is a lie, play the game. If there’s any advice I could ever give anyone who has any amount of integrity and tries to live an honest life - it’s this alone. If you don’t play the game - you’re not playing the game everyone else is and you will always lose in the end. Extremely painful to deal with for bright eyed young folks or those switching industries thinking things might be different.
Here's my old man manual to life at work. Show up and do the work, consistently. Just this basic discipline puts you in the top 20% of performers, everywhere. Make your superiors look good and in any case, not bad. They don't care what you do for as long as you do this. This does not require sucking up, just deliver. Be reliable. Deliver on promises, likewise do not commit to a promise you can't fulfill and explain w…
Also, Don't have a romance at office
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#399Earlier 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…
No way. My people leave because they gain skills and go to FAANG or fintech for way more money than we can offer.
Re: Exit interviews are a trap
#400Good 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…
In addition, if the last 6 developers all left because they got offers 30% more, maybe that will finally be the push to raise salaries for their current employees that are still there. Also, most places I have worked will not allow management to give more than the dates you worked, and if they would re-hire you again in a job reference. They are too scared of lawsuits..
I've never heard of eligibility for rehire being given in an external reference. There is no purpose for that other than to get sued. But it may be in the file easily accessible for internal use only.