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Comment by lylejohnson | Hacker News Reader

I disagree, unless he meant "you, you specifically". An employee's departure can act as a wake-up call for a company's leadership and subsequently lead to changes at the company.

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Having been in on the company's leadership meetings where departures were noted with a simple 'regret yes/no' flag it was my experience that no single departure had any effect. Mass departures did, trends did, but one person never did, even when that person was a founder.

The rationalizations always put the issue back on the departing employee, "They were burned out", "They had lost their ability to be effective", "They have moved on", "They just haven't grown with the company" never was it "We failed this person, what are we going to do differently?"

Now an individual manager might do some introspection, but even then the change impact of the departure is insignificant compared to the change that can be wrought by being there and honing your persuasion skills.

And given that, the exit interview is a nop.

That's been my experience in academia as well: any person leaving can be rationalized somehow, and only individual staff personally invested in that person tend to do any introspection about what could've been done differently. Multiple departures can cause a shake-up, though, mostly because the higher-up administration that usually ignores such matters may feel the need to investigate if a trend seems to be developing. Of course, if the problem is the higher-up administration's own policies, that doesn't help, but it can help if the problem was unnoticed malaise in a department.

Different from what the two current sibling posts say, I've experienced a shift in the company's morale when a longstanding employee quit abruptly one morning after hearing about (drastic) changes he didn't agree with. Two weeks after his departure, another team lead left and within the span of three months, I believe five or six people quit. It was never the same after, and a year down the road would see even more turnover.

It honestly probably wouldn't have been as bad as it was if management hadn't tried to coddle the leftovers by telling them everything was going to be okay. Their acknowledgement of the loss made it apparent they were scrambling to figure something out.

That is a really good point, if you don't constrain the term change you have to include 'damage' as a form of change. Certainly it can be damaging to a company for an individual to leave. I've got personal experience with this and I am sure many people have a similar story in their history.

When I left Sun I got an email from another long time Sun employee who had just quit as well. They said that if I was leaving then the place must be irredeemable and so they were moving on as well. It left me feeling profoundly conflicted because while I had given up on the company by that point I had never intended to cause others to leave.

So I have to accept your point that a company can be changed by the departure of an individual. It may or may not be the change the individual was seeking however.

Yup, same experience here. If someone well respected leaves, moral can be completely destroyed. That person doesn't even have to be an important person.

One of the most interesting type of personality is the useless guy who brighten the office up, once they leave, the whole office can fall apart, especially if the office is full of strong personalities.

Yup. Yourdon (or somebody like that) noted the example of an apparently useless team member that had the notable property that whenever he/she joined a team, the project became a success. I've subsequently looked for such examples, and have spotted several likely instances. And perhaps more importantly, I've realized that I can try to be one myself (hopefully without also becoming "useless").

"An employee's departure can act as a wake-up call for a company's leadership"

I highly doubt it unless the employee was a C level. Even then, people come and go at companies. I have quit enough times to know that truth. Just as an example, I call up my old bosses or colleagues and I hear "Its all the same here. same shit different day"

The point is that if you do want to bring change which is extremely tough (even for obama :),you need to stick around and be the champion of change.

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