For $450, a Japanese Company Will Quit Your Job for You

Second, you give the compliment sandwich. You start out with thanking them for the opportunity (any job is an opportunity, no matter how shitty it was, you made money and you learned something, sadder but wiser you may be). Then you tell them you would wish to quit your job after the contractual resignation period. Don't neglect mentioning that! If you just say you want to resign, they might just accept your immediate resignation and you'll miss out on the period you might have planned on. The final compliment has to make sure you'll be able to work together through the final period, just assure them you'll keep up your efforts and help transfer your knowledge to colleagues.

I'll do it for you for $450 if your employers speak English or Dutch ;)

From that, people who have a job in Japan often feel obligated as in "You gave my a job and made it possible to live my life. You invested N years in training me. I'm now responsible for various parts of your business. If I leave it will feel like not paying you back for all you've given me. It will also put you out for weeks to months.".

Japanese have an acute sense of obligation as well. There's a reason why you say "Don't worry this is really nothing" when you give a gift in Japan as you're trying to avoid adding to the receiver's obligation to reciprocate.

Of course as a westerner that attitude used to bug the crap out of me. I knew a person who wanted to quit, their boss said "no, you can't quit", and they stayed on for several more months. At some point in my life my attitude would have probably been something along the lines of "If it's that important I stick around what's it worth to you?"

The longer I'm in Japan the more I'm mellowing on some of my western and spoiled engineer attitudes. Of course not totally but I feel like the it's "me vs them" attitude I see so much on HN leads to worse outcomes than the "we're all in this together" attitude or the "it takes a village" attitude I see more of in Japan. I think both extremes are bad but if my meter was pointing at the 100% me side before it's now around the 75% me side, 25% us side, now.

From the site linked in the article, "Proper Etiquette for Quitting Your Job in Japan":

Show your appreciation to every member of the company, or at least those you have been working with directly. Sweets, small gifts such as mugs, tea sets, a thank-you card or other similar items will be appreciated by everyone. Prepare those for your last day on the job. Usually, Japanese companies will see you off by hosting a small party and presenting you with a flower bouquet, so having something to give in return always makes a good impression. You may also be asked to give a speech, so prepare a few farewell words just in case—but keep it short and sweet.

Skipping these niceties in order to save embarrassment makes the world a little colder.

Most of the team only learned that I was leaving on my last week (I had given 3 weeks notice). I just felt really awkward telling them for some unknown reason. Funnily enough, I worked in a coworking space, and most other people in the space knew I was leaving before my coworkers. My coworkers only found out because they put my leaving party on the "this week" board in the kitchen.

Did once have to give it to my boss's boss though because it was an unexpected snow day and we were 2/3 of the people in the office!

Customs, much like words, lose their meaning when taken out of the cultural context.

The ideal is that you use things like exit interviews as a canvas on which to have a broader discussion about both career and business priorities that will leave them very interested in bringing you back on in an expanded capacity once you've grown in your career more.

This requires the ability to clearly understand and distill why you couldn't get what you needed out of your current job. Nobody's really expecting you to be unhappy, but at the same time, there's a kind of expectation that you raise issues and work them out before they reach the point where you go find another job.

Naturally, something like compensation isn't part of this expectation, if another company is offering you $30k more, you won't be expected to have asked for that before handing in your notice, because obviously you weren't going to get it. But if compensation is the primary reason you're leaving, then rationally speaking, you should be open to accepting a counter-offer. If you're not open to that, then you need to clarify more reasons why you're leaving.

My understanding is that it's best to tie what you want and why you couldn't get it to the business model of the company. That offers the least-offensive pathway through an exit interview that results in no legal issues and the utmost in professional candor. They can't change the business model, so another job is a perfectly appropriate pathway to getting what you want. This naturally requires you to understand the company's biz model and this is best accomplished by having discussions with your manager.

If you want career advancement, doing it through your current job requires you to wait for an opportunity to open up. I would have happily stayed at my last job if I could have led a team, but that wasn't in the cards. But it was an option that we explored.

If you have a personal problem with someone working there, then the expected resolution is to restructure the teams so you don't have any interaction with them. This one is a bit tricky, I wouldn't bring it up in an exit interview, but behind closed doors long before you start looking. This way you can simply hint at it in the interview and everyone knows what you mean without having to actually discuss it, while the surface discussion is about business priorities. A personal problem affects team cohesiveness though, and if management isn't willing to resolve them, then that points to a political problem with the organization.

Anyway, I hope this offers some frameworks and tools to help with career management.

My favorite method of quiting is the following: I enter the manager's office, I say, "I quit" (signing any documents required), then I leave and they never see me again.