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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

My recommendation is to NEVER leave negative feedback on an employee survey. The BEST outcome I've seen from them is incredibly painful meetings that only seem to make the matter worse.

My speculation on this is two fold. The first is that putting things in those surveys is a "permanent record" or at least "yearly review" issue for your manager. So you are (justly or not) harming them, and they will tend to respond to being harmed. The other is that, if you think about it... if your manager is not a person who you can talk to about a problem in a non-anonymous way... doing it anonymously is not likely to help, it's probably better to just quietly leave.

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This guy I know, we can call him Jim, left a large tech company and was honest in his exit interview about why he was leaving, and it was mostly his manager. He was later asked to apply for a job with a different team after his manager left the company years (and promotions) later. HR blocked the hire because he was "disgruntled" in his exit interview. As far as I know, they did nothing to recognize or fix the problem. But they held it against him because his feedback was negative. Unfortunately, a company that views employees as the enemy will find it a self-fulfilling prophecy. They kill the incentive to try help fix problems, and create a situation where you like it or you leave.

"I'm leaving because your company is too good."

"I'm applying for a new position here, because after working elsewhere for several years I've determined your company wasn't that great after all."

"I am only leaving so that I can experience the joy of joining your perfect company again."

It's the inverse of the ubiquitous "why do you want to work for us?" interview question. "Because you give money to your employees and I require money for food and housing" is somehow never what they're looking for.

> My recommendation is to NEVER leave negative feedback on an employee survey.

Even better, game the system and give them glowing reviews.

For example I had noticed the feedback "anonymous" surveys they were sending had a location field as in employee's country, city, town, etc. Well, in a distributed team it's pretty clear who is who based on that location. So I just gave them glowing and happy reviews.

Same when leaving a company. Nice and happy feedback like "I'd love to work here more, but the tech landscape is so exciting and varied and I'd like to gain experience in other areas..."

So much, this.

HR works for the company not for you. never forget. You can extrapolate all other rules from this basic rule.

Yep, couldn't agree more despite the down votes on my previous post. The picture that we like to paint about how companies work is far from the reality, you have play by the real unwritten rules.

It's funny how you guys take some kind of pride in maneuvering what to an outsider obviously sounds like a dystopian-style bureaucratic nightmare of unevenly applied laws and insider-connections.

Rather than fight to change or improve this system, you gloat about knowing how to survive in it. So strange.

This is how you fight to change systems when you're ultimately powerless to do so directly, by subverting the system. The only real power we have is to collectively agree to make the data/system useless.

"anonymous survey"

Right. Just like you don't trash-talk about about your ex. No good will come of it.

I'm of the mind that only good comes of it. It's very therapeutic and who cares what they think anymore. Besides, that's one of the few things that no one faults you for - it's almost expected. I highly recommend it.

When your date starts trash-talking their ex, they'll do it to you, too.

When a prospective employee trash-talks their former employer, they'll do it to you, too.

No hire.

If they do it in front of you they will do it to you - Dr Phil

Strongly disagree, and I've got hiring evidence on my side (former subordinates going to work for friends, and said subordinates didn't know of the relationship) after airing some pretty reasonable grievances when I hired then and when they worked with me.

Of course, there's a scale. "I don't like their tech decisions"--yeah, that's an eyebrow raise, unless there's some real meat there. But I'm never going to judge somebody poorly for saying plainly that they felt disrespected or mistreated at a job, because it's happened to me too.

It doesn't matter if their grievances are legitimate or not (and you have no way to tell if they are). It's bad form to trash talk one's former employer or ex.

It's not just me. You will often talk yourself out of getting hired and many will not pursue a relationship with you if you indulge in it. There is nothing to gain by engaging in it.

It's not just you. Virtually every article I've read on interview tips gives this same advice. Speaking negatively about your former employer always reflects negatively on you.

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