Why Great Employees Quit – Instead of Admitting They're Unhappy
forbes.com
forbes.com
The employee needs to not burn bridges. They need to walk on eggshells through the exit interview. They need to maintain this secrecy long after leaving!
There's a lot that I would love to tell my past managers. Stuff I might tell a trusted co-worker over drinks, or would only tell non-work friends and family, because I know people who have been burned by opening their mouth and being too honest.
If you're a company owner or a manager with a lot of sway in your company and want to fix this, here are a couple tips:
1. Be transparent and honest: criticize yourself and your company when you deserve it, in emails or memos, not just verbally. A culture that tolerates introspection and criticism is more likely to tolerate external criticism.
2. Do not be completely honest and transparent when discussing occasional failures of past employees: it's all too easy to remember mistakes and forget the thousand times they got it right. Make sure that your current employees will know they will be spoken of positively after they leave.
3. Make sure that your employees are friends with each other (and yourself, if possible) outside of work. Everyone needs friends, it's hard to make friends as an adult, and even Gallup uses "do you have friends at work" as an indicator of company health. This will mean that employees will have social conversations during and around work: this is good, they will be more productive if work is a happy place and not sterile, and the cost of a few minutes here and there is much less than having unhappy, lonely people trudging through the work day. If they are trustworthy friends they will be able to communicate honestly.
4. If you are told something negative, don't take it out on them, fix the problem!
While walking on eggshells:
>> I've said "it was just time to move on to something new" about a dozen times in the last one I did
Possible outcomes being honest in an exit interview:
- You help the company you're leaving improve its processes and culture
- You burn bridges by hurting feelings of people in your industry
- You may harm the chances of a rehire
- You may harm the chances of a bad reference
Out of that list, the only way to get the first outcome is to create a culture of good will where the employee WANTS to help or feels safe enough to help without fearing reprisal.
It's not easy to accomplish and in most instances people will err on being polite.
Unless you work in an incredibly close-knit field where everybody knows everybody else, this is a myth and it needs to stop propagating.
You can choose references from personal friends and co-workers that will stress your positive results. The company as whole will never say anything positive or negative for fear of legal reprisal. If you worked for a bad actor, then burn the bridge and don't worry about retribution via reference checks.
It may depend on the field, yes, but this doesn't reflect what I've seen. From my view, unless you're on the lowest rungs of a monster field like retail, most fields tend to be small, and get smaller the longer you're in, as you're transitioning to being a long-timer. People know each other, and people talk. Even if the company itself will never say anything positive or negative, the people within talk to each other. It's incredibly easy to reach out on 'unofficial channels' to find some bits of information, and suddenly, a promising prospect never pans out. As for legal liability, all you know is that you were never hired; if you're lucky, you get a 'we found a more suitable candidate.' As far as liability is concerned, it's easy to sidestep.
Companies can request references from your last direct manager for example.
This has personally happened to me where the last three direct managers (going back 3 jobs) were requested by a tech company.
From what I have seen, it is usually some political or administrative mistreatment that ends up being "the straw that broke the camel's back".
I will accept low pay, a bad manager ,cruel colleagues and a ridiculous work environment so long as I get to do the technical work I have passion for, I don't get treated unequally (except where objective meritocracy applies) and I don't get lied to by my manager. Of course, it should go without saying -- if the competition scouts me and offers better conditions I wouldn't reject that offer.
Corporate america plays too many "games" against rank and file workers.
It makes me a bit envious of all the Enterpreneurs and employees of new startups. The Business hasn't gotten old enough to think up all these devious schemes to save a buck by mistreating workers. I wonder,Is it like getting into a brand new marriage?
Sorry for my pessimistic post, can only speak from my own personal experience. I get attached to coworkers easily and had to quit a few jobs because of b.s.
>From what I have seen, it is usually some political or administrative mistreatment that ends up being "the straw that broke the camel's back".
That makes them unhappy. It's rampant in the US. Programming is a creative endeavor, but most managers only know prod-ops or call center type management. You can't manage creatives that way. We actually had a guy a couple companies ago try to get developers to do time cards like at McDonalds. Another guy decided developers didn't deserve offices, so he kicked all the developer leads out and brought managers from another group to take their offices. That made our DBA of 5 years resign, and he was the best I've ever seen. It's like they don't even consider the effects their decisions have on morale; completely oblivious.
I think scrum makes development miserable, but it's a lot of shit. If I work a few 60-80 hour weeks, I don't expect to be scolded for leaving early once crunch time is over, yet it happens over and over again.
There's all kinds of stupidness in corporate America. It didn't used to be like this. Maybe it was but I was young and willingly suffered fools. If I had to boil it down, it's lack of trust and inability to treat different employees differently. They create policies for the lowest common denominator, like work from home. If one guy is a slacker, instead of firing his ass, they force everyone else to work in the office because, "well if I let you do it, I have to let everyone else do it." No, grow a sack and fire the slackers; otherwise, that's all you'll have left.
All this comes from big corporate managers. Smaller companies are usually better, but not always. If they hire a corporate bozo, they'll quickly go down hill too. M&A ruins a lot of great companies too.
What I do to combat it is have 6 months of income or 10 months of expenses saved up (around that) just for this purpose. If a place becomes too annoying, I just leave and take a couple of months off to unwind and write stuff I like to write. If I'm not dealing with a corporate environment, I can get things done 2-5x faster. Corporate America just sucks the soul right out of you.
Both groups laborers deserve humanity.
Someone unhappy will look for new opportunities. Someone happy probably won't (unless they came to them, which also happens). Sure, you can pay premium to protect against lower offers, but it's a tricky game.
Rands had this metaphor of "shields up/down" for those cases: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/
For me and a few others I know who left for a better opportunity,we were already unhappy but we wanted to stay,endure and make it work.but we all had specific moments where we decided the employee-employer relationship is unacceptable. We didn't merely drift out of our jobs out of unhappiness that built up over time.
The only exception I know is people who get burned out.
Negative reason: Employees want to feel valued. If the pay doesn’t keep up with what they are worth, they’re going to feel the need to move on. A counter offer may only confirm that there employer really did know how valuable they were but decided not to pay them for it - until faced with someone giving their notice.
He's an employee, plain and simple. He got paid to fulfill a service. He did that service well. He then wants to fulfill services elsewhere and decided to do so. Tasks and services were completed, what more can you really ask?
I'm in the same boat. After over a decade working at the same place, I feel its my time to go as well (after all, I want to build a business instead of just be an employee). I know that I'm probably the guy in the company's plans, but I had to look at it this way - You're always needed wherever you go if you do your job as well as you can.
Developer pay is terrible. Compare the pay of people who are really, really good to a mid-range tax accountant at a large firm to see just how bad it is.
Um, what? According to this article [0], top CPA's make $125,000 which is less than new grads make in big tech (Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft...)
[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/051415/how-m...
Definitely some top schools like MIT but most were from your run of the mill state school.
Despite publicly saying how important employees are in the end the real message is usually "If you don't like it here we will not do anything about it".
Better yet, if you make a decision and get a lot of blow-back on it, sit and consider whether it's really the right thing to do. Not every decision is the right one, and the willingness to back up and say, "Yes, you're right: that wasn't the right approach, let's try this instead" (or even just "we hear you and we're reconsidering this decision in light of that") is the mark of a place I'd like to work for.
i rather think each project is a learning experience for both company & candidate.
i’ve had 200 jobs in my career. it’s going great!
1. I realised that my employer is not even keeping my salary up with inflation. There was simple no periodic review process. No refresher equity or annual appraisal.
2. I realised that my manager simply does not have a plan for me to evolve into a leader despite me taking initiative he is too scared that I might fail. If you wont let me take initiative and fail I am not going to get better. You cant learn swimming in a tea cup.
3. Lying leaders. If your inherent revenue model is not based adding solid value to your customers who are doing their honest work you wont last long. The bubble eventually bursts. Honesty in leadership matter lot more than we think.