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Comment by dweinus | Hacker News Reader

Is everyone really doing exit interviews this wrong? At my company the exit interview is with HR. All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back. As a manager, this has been extremely helpful. HR is not always your friend, but in my scenario there is really nothing to lose.

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Anonymous feedback very, very rarely is. Even when everyone involved is doing their best to keep it anonymous, it very rarely is.

Obviously it's not anonymous to the interviewer. Clearly in this case it was anonymous to the manager receiving the feedback. I think this is not too uncommon.

There would have to be a lot of people leaving simultaneously for it to be anything but obvious who it came from.

err:

> rolled up with non-exit feedback

Nothing that passes through HR is anonymous.

Ever.

HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, EVER.

Ive been in orgs where HR was literally sleeping with head of sales, and had me fix phones with dickpics and BJ vids and etc btwn employees...

uh HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.

Do not confide in them, especially anything personal.

Also, if you have an IOS device - log into your apple account and confirm the devices tied to it.. HR will (in many SV orgs) attempt to add a device to your apple account to monitor you.

BYOD is a nightmare for personal privacy, and HR depts will use personal info against you.

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EDIT: Just a reminder that Uber literally went after the medical records (HIPAA violations, at min.) to slander a person calling them out for sexual misconduct

HR is there to protect the company, not you.

How can they add a device to your AppleID? Don’t they need your user/pass etc..?

They offer the employee a device... company will pay for it:

"But I want to only have 1 number, and want to keep my own (naive yound tech employee says)"

You can take this device and just have yuour number on it...

You login to your apple ID on that device...

They read every text...

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Do you recall when FB tried to make a phone...

THANK FUCKING GOD THAT FAILED.

uh... I was a new hire at FB when this tok place and they held a mtg and were talking about the phone, and the question was asked about what was thought of the new phone, and I misconstrued the mtg as being "open and connecting people" -- and I spoke to the product guy in the mtg, and I told him it was a POS. NOBODY liked my non-sycophantic behaviour... as I said that I had experienced it IRL with users and they all hated it...

That went over not-so-cromulently.

FB, even internally, is the quintessential "You cant get out of your own way..." company.

> Also, if you have an IOS device - log into your apple account and confirm the devices tied to it.. HR will (in many SV orgs) attempt to add a device to your apple account to monitor you.

This comes off as more than just a little bit paranoid - HR can't just add devices to your iCloud account. It requires credentials and 2FA to do that for one thing, and it'd be illegal in most of the countries we're in to boot.

Sure, we will go with your assessment of assumption over my hard evidence to the contrary...

Good thing that such acts are *illegal* - that'll show'em.

FYI - KEEP YOUR PERSONAL SHIT PERSONAL.

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One must develop a personal air-gap.

One's entire house should be an air gap in-and-oof-to-itself

Should 100% demand a work supplied device for work. Or at worst buy a cheap second Android to use as a work device. There is no circumstance where using your main personal device for work is a good idea.

> All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back

Oh sweet summer child.. No feedback is anonymous, ever. It can be 'confidential', which means that HR can disclose it at their discretion or as appropriate.

As a manager, if you get value from the exit interview, with all due respect, you're doing it wrong. All the feedback which could be part of the exit interview should never be a surprise or an added value after the fact.

> As a manager, if you get value from the exit interview, with all due respect, you're doing it wrong.

Well...yes. Isn't the entire point of an exit interview, from the organization's perspective, to find out what they're doing wrong?

And why should the employee help with that? And why at that point? There's a lot of opportunities for feedback during employment. If you're banking on exit interviews, you've already lost and you're doing it fundamentally wrong.

At smaller companies with no HR, there is a lot of room for personal gripes to muck up exit interviews. I've experienced this firsthand with an unhinged founder.

> All feedback is anonymous, rolled up with non-exit feedback, and delivered to managers/leads periodically so it can't be easily linked back.

I think the Brooklyn bridge's on sale.

pretty tough for me to believe anything from HR is anon, when every URL contains a GUID...

>All feedback is anonymous

How do you know that?

They are speaking from the perspective of a manager, so HR isn't leaking identities to them.

Although based on what they are saying, I don't think it would be hard to de-anonymize this info - exit interview feedback looks different than general feedback, and if it's in any way specific (and if it's unspecific it's not super useful) it's almost always easy to identify who it's from.

Of course, they don't get an embossed label with the name(s) of the one provided feedback. However, depending how high are they on the ladder - even directly asking may yield results.

What struck me was the belief 'all feedback', e.g. no exceptions, no redacting that may reveal details, no language replacement.

The other issue is mixing with w/ regular feedback - aside personal integrity what's the reason for anyone to be honest on an exit interview.

they said they were a manager, evidently the responses come to them in such a way that they feel it is anonymous.

However, I have a problem seeing how the data from an exit interview if truly anonymous would be at all useful. But they said it was useful for them as a manager as well, so...

To replies about things never being anonymous: I'm the manager in this scenario, so I can tell you confidently that it is anonymous to the best of abilities. Perfect? No. Warranting of the fears in the article? Also no. But hey, ymmv. My point is simply that it doesn't have to be the crass way the OP describes.

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