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.
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
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.