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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

My experiences while at Cisco about 4-5 years ago:

1st experience: Told my boss I am leaving. My boss’s boss calls me in a room , tells me he has some great projects for me and that we will work together on them. I agree. Turns out it was his last day!

2nd experience: Similar situation, told my boss I am going to a startup. Boss’s boss calls me and gives me a lecture about how it is a bad idea to go to a startup. I leave. A few weeks later I find out he also left for a startup.

Some time later I met the boss from the 1st experience and he told me “sorry, but it was not personal. I was just doing my job”

If you are in a megacorp your job should be to extract as much money as possible while doing as little work as possible. Because your boss's job is exactly the opposite.

Your coworkers are not out to get you but your managers are. Don’t fucking ever trust them.

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It's wild to me that those managers would have been loyal enough to the company to behave that way toward you when not only were they themselves on the way out the door, but the hypocrisy of it would have been instantly obvious, on a timespan of days, not even months or years.

My impression is that in the modern world, most workers consider their personal network to be of much greater value than any ways that their current employer could reward them for "loyalty". Having been a manager and had people quit on me, my response has always been pretty candid and along the lines of, "yeah, obviously this is tough for me as I've really valued your contributions over the time we've worked together. However, you've been clear about your expectations as far as comp/projects/tech/mentorship/career/whatever, and although we've tried to do what we can, I can understand that the role is no longer a great fit for you, so the decision to move on makes perfect sense. Best wishes with your next gig."

Was talking to my manager about how there were opportunities for more money at other companies (like, 20% more, not huge amounts). She said she would work on getting comp adjusted for me, then 3 months later said she couldn't. I asked if my company would counter-offer if I got a better offer, she said no.

I got an offer for a lot more (+60%). My company immediately matched. Don't trust management.

My advice is never negotiate salary like this with a current employer. Always just leave, always on good terms. Let's say you leave for 15% raise and the new company sucks? Give it a year or two. Your previous employer will probably hire you back for a 10%+ premium above your new job that you hate.

I can't imagine what would cause a person to act like that, and on his last day/week of work! Some kind of psycopathy?

Someone who doesn't want a bad reference themselves, for "encouraging people to follow them out the door".

Yeah I am manager. I am pretty honest with my employees. One of my normal sayings is "you have to look out for #1 " (#1 = yourself its not a Star Trek reference)

That said i never say things like that on comms. And usually preclude them with things like "this conversation never happened" etc.

But i feel like part of my job is to give them career and life advancement advice and if that means leaving my team...so be it. That said ive made it pretty clear my style (on a few fronts, this being one of them) may not be all that common. Things like encouraging people to use their PTO, even for mental health days to prevent burnout etc. I do find that style engenders more trust and generally a less combative interaction. I have even had some tell me when they are looking for jobs. I usually tell them not to make a habit of telling someone at work that type of thing.

I have worked with maybe a couple of managers like you in my career, and I have to say I was truly heartbroken when they moved one. It was the most enjoyable and productive years in my career.

It's sad that a manager saying to the employee "you have to look out for #1" has to be off the record.

> encouraging people to use their PTO

Hopefully there aren't too many orgs left out there where a manager would be having to do this off-the-record; certainly it feels like the orthodoxy for some time has been that workers do their best work when they're well-rested and have had breaks, and at a systems level, people being away is important for identifying bus number issues.

All that aside, my company's accountants get antsy about what overhanging PTO does to the balance sheet, so there's a very explicit top-down mandate around fiscal year end time to get people using up their vacations.

Someone who sees a fundamental divide between Workers and Managers, and sees the job of the latter as being extracting the maximum possible work from the former. (And, based on my experience, sees the former as universally trying to do the least work possible for the most money, up to and including trying to defraud the company.)

Or the story is simply not true.

As an ex-manager recently returned to IC work... This is awful, I'd never treat someone this way. I tried to always be respectful of my employees, to the point of recommending to leaving employees that they not take our counter, that they are leaving for a reason and now that they've made the choice I recommend they explore it, and they can always come by if it was a mistake. With the knowledge and backing of my CIO.

Point being not all management is like this and I hope you've found somewhere that respects you.

I think collectively too many of us are too willing to ignore red flags and it let's people/companies like this succeed.

Oh man, I worked with a bunch of ex Cisco folks years ago. Capable but there were a lot of folks just looking to hit metrics in the most cynical way and miss the point of the job. That and some surprising other issues.

My partner and I have found ourselves in similar situations 4-5 times already within a combined ~12 years of professional experience. I don’t have the capacity to trust management anymore.

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