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Comment by jamesbrady | Hacker News Reader

> It should read: "How Your Boss Would Like You to Quit"

Touché, yes there's some truth to this. Many of the points in the post were reflections on people leaving my team as I have an order of magnitude more examples of that than me leaving a team. If you're implying there's some kind of zero-sum thing going on here though, I disagree: it can be good for both you and your boss.

> I wonder what their world view is…

I don't quite follow this paragraph, could you rephrase?

> Leaving the team at short notice is unethical?

Ah, no – this is in the "Don’t sabotage, it’s a dick move" section: it's sabotage which is unethical.

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> Ah, no – this is in the "Don’t sabotage, it’s a dick move" section: it's sabotage which is unethical.

I guess the source of the confusion is that you didn't specify what the sabotage actually is. I mean, deleting all your code before leaving is sabotage. Leaving without notice isn't. What did you have in mind when you wrote that?

> I don't quite follow this paragraph, could you rephrase?

I was highlighting a bunch of beliefs some people have:

- The notion that you should have loyalty to the team beyond your last paycheck.

- The notion that it is you being disloyal to the team, as opposed to management being disloyal to the team.

- The general framing that by lumping people into a team, that there is a single shared goal. A lot of people come to work to get paid, and they do it by providing value. Two people in the same team are allowed to have very different goals. One may care much more deeply about the mission than the other, etc.

- That much of the article places the burden on the employee leaving compared to on the management.

> I guess the source of the confusion is that you didn't specify what the sabotage actually is

Ah ha, I see – yes I had in mind actively doing stuff to undermine the team after the person has left (on the benign end, deliberately doing a crappy job of documentation; on the malignant end, stuff like data destruction). I will make this clearer in the post, thanks!

> - The notion that you should have loyalty to the team beyond your last paycheck.

It made me sad to read this. You don't have to be loyal to your team, of course, but your framing makes me think that you've never been in a position where you've wanted to be loyal to your team, long-term.

Wanting to be loyal to a team is a fools errand. It's the embodiment of having been successfully indoctrinated into the 'work as life & family' culture. I went through 20 years of that because it's my nature. Without a doubt it has been to the detriment of my career and personal life. Stayed on too long at dead-end jobs where I was the parent in the room; Stayed on too long at jobs that underpaid and leveraged my loyalty to add responsibility without recompense; Worked far too many hours a week for no actual reward other than praise.

Managers preach this because they want to make their problems yours as an employee. I know this because I've done it too and will probably do it again at some point.

Loyalty is not a one way street, but being an employee always is, there are no exceptions. Employment is having Damocles sword hanging over you and it's foolish to think otherwise.

I've been in a team that I wanted to be loyal to. I'm actually still friends with some of my former teammates from there. It was a great job right up until the point where they laid off as many people as legally possible and lied about the reasons.

It might be different for an employee-owned cooperative, but if you're working for a corporation, loyalty is a bad tradeoff even if you like your team. The risk/reward of things like being honest with your manager about what isn't working just isn't there (and you'd be surprised - or maybe you wouldn't - how quickly a seemingly friendly manager can decide to act like a total dickhead, and there's nothing you can do about it if they do).

> You don't have to be loyal to your team, of course, but your framing makes me think that you've never been in a position where you've wanted to be loyal to your team, long-term.

I'm sure such places exist, but most jobs are not like that, sadly.

In any case, there's a difference between want and should. I'm not criticizing people who want to be loyal to the team. Just those that think there is an obligation to.

> I guess the source of the confusion is that you didn't specify what the sabotage actually is. I mean, deleting all your code before leaving is sabotage. Leaving without notice isn't. What did you have in mind when you wrote that?

There are three main sections in the article:

- Your reasons for leaving shouldn’t be a surprise to your boss

- Match your notice period to the handover period

- Set the team up to flourish without you

The "don't sabotage" subsection is under the "Set the team up to flourish without you" section, not the "Match your notice period to the handover period" section.

Seems fairly common sense that the author did not intend to conflate lack of notice with sabotage, considering that the subject of sabotage is completely independent and separate from the section relating to notice.

Yeah.

Breaking things out of malice is bad sabotage.

Speaking the painful truths to your coworkers and higher ups can be very productive 'sabotage': you don't have to worry about job security anymore so you can say things that need to be said but others are afraid to.

Not having a backup or turnover process in place is a rookie move made by companies that haven't reached a maturity.

Thinking the employee is sabotaging by leaving the company is a sign you don't understand what the role of an employee is. You are not 5 friends hacking together a game and if someone quits because they get a girlfriend you call them a dick. You are a resource that has been purchased and assigned to work on a specific task. The company hopes to leverage something you do into a profit or as support for a business unit.

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