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Comment by stochastic_monk | Hacker News Reader

Yes, one needs a reason for leaving a company. But at the same time, one leaves a company or a religion or a relationship for a reason. The argument and reasoning necessitate the departure; they're not developed post hoc.

Of course, additional supporting reasons become clear as one looks for and finds the door, and the understanding for why a person or institution is wrong for you evolves as you separate.

I'd be interested in hearing more about how that understanding/perspective changes over time.

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Everyone deals with crap at their workplace. Bad processes, unresponsive third-party dependencies, politics, etc. That happens everywhere, and anyone saying otherwise is either unaware or lying.

Eventually, there's a event that is enough standard deviations larger than the typical crap that the person just breaks. The veil of happiness is irrevocably pierced. And when that happens, all the other crap that they've been putting up with kind of comes crashing down. This is your "additional supporting reasons": they really existed the whole time, but they were at least tolerable before the veil was broken.

In my experience, it's rare that it's more like a dam that eventually breaks under pressure. There's usually that one event that finally breaks the person's will to continue. But then all the stuff that was being held back behind the dam is loosed and there's no coming back from that.

Agreed. And seven times out of ten (made up statistic, ymmv) that event is precipitated by one's management chain. Just yesterday someone reposted the article "People don't leave jobs, they leave managers."

Sometimes people do leave jobs. Scheduling changes, lack of enjoyment or progress, low pay are relatively common reasons.

If I thought that every single person who leaves a job leaves because of their manager, I would have said "ten out of ten times" or "always." But what I actually said was "seven out of ten times." :)

> Yes, one needs a reason for leaving a company. But at the same time, one leaves a company or a religion or a relationship for a reason. The argument and reasoning necessitate the departure; they're not developed post hoc.

It actually seems like this is frequently the case to me. A lot of people get to the point where they simply don't like coming into work everyday, and have to come up for a reason why they feel that way.

> A lot of people get to the point where they simply don't like coming into work everyday, and have to come up for a reason why they feel that way.

Since they "don't like coming into work", the reason already exists, they just (maybe) don't know it yet. As such, it isn't so much inventing a reason as it is discovering it.

I think there's also a difference between the actual reason you leave vs. the reason you tell all your Google friends vs. the reason you post to Medium. You can't tell your coworkers you disagree on politics, so you tell them you wanted to move back home. You can't tell the public audience that the work culture was too hard for you, so you tell them about Google's arrogance or some other thing. A lot of the human ability to rationalize comes from the need to explain your motives to others in a way that endears them to you.

Some people just can't say personally and openly to their boss that there is some problem in policy or system if they think it exists. So they trying to inform this way.

But it's not every case, some experienced specialists can just write story as summary to give some experience to young newcomers, to arouse interest, maybe answer possible questions.

Side note with nothing to do with the original discussion: My father decided to be honest and give constructive feedback during his exit interview when leaving a company similar in size and importance to Google. Then most of his peers retired and they asked him to come back and offered pretty massive incentives for a pretty small commitment. When he decided to accept? HR got involved and insisted he not be hired because he was "disgruntled" in his exit interview. So now when I leave a company my exit interview is 100% peachy with a vague cliche about why I'm leaving, and I might tell one or two very close friends who work there why I'm leaving. If I trust a company to value my feedback honestly enough, I probably won't be leaving for a while.

The reasons one supplies about leaving a company should always be about where you are going, rather than where you are leaving. It almost never makes sense to burn a bridge.

It's really sad when honest, well-meaning criticism/explanation is perceived as "bridge burning"...

Thank you for the post. Makes me reconsider the honest route and go for the pleasant route.

It happens, but it depends on HR person. If such way of behavior is a policy or just a part of character of person in charge.

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