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Comment by charlie-83 | Hacker News Reader

It's possible to give feedback without burning bridges. At my last place I had a very long exit interview where I explained all the bad management decisions that led to me leading. I made it very clear that this was my account of events and focused entirely on how the decisions had affected me rather than saying what I think they should have done. They were really interested in the feedback and not remotely defensive.

Why do this? 1. I was leaving behind a lot of people I consider friends and wanted them to have a better experience. 2. I think it gave a good last impression which they might remember.

Obviously this was my specific situation and the managers were actually normal, nice people who could fathom that they may have made mistakes which isn't always the case.

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It's possible but it's not really up to you. I had an experience I could describe almost exactly the same as yours. I later found out from a friend who stayed that my feedback was used in some sort of failed management coup between VPs I had never met or interacted with. But it associated me with that conflict, and one particular side of it.

I've thought about this a lot over the years but I don't think I had any information I could have used to predict this outcome. All the people and relationships I could observe were healthy and professional. But it continues to affect me professionally; the company was large and well known in my area and industry, people who worked there then are all over now. I don't give sincere feedback anymore.

It's up to you if you decide it is. Failing to do your part in counteracting sociopaths in society is what allows them to flourish. If your feedback was honest, balanced, and constructive, but it caused blowback, that's a sociopathic organisation.

This stance, which has been espoused throughout these comments, is in the same conceptual space as "we should stop upsetting terrorists or we're causing the terrorism".

It's really not. Being a member of the working class, that is having to sell your labor to survive, constrains your freedom in certain ways. The specific ways, and to what degree, are variable based on your circumstances and to some extent your choices.

But if you need to work for money there is no absolute freedom, you will have some constraints. You can decide the consequences of violating the constraints are worth it in some cases, as you have in this one. But that may circumscribe your ability to work for money at all in the future, as people are saying here.

People making this choice one way or the other may be more or less moral depending on the specifics, sometimes the circumstances do require our blood. For example someone working for ICE just for the paycheck right now is choosing evil. But it is a fundamentally different choice than "letting the terrorists win" or whatever.

"Sociopathic organizations" exist, you can't just write them out of your reasoning like this. A little marxism goes a long way in understanding what is happening here and how to engage with it.

My wife was recently re-hired by a place she had previously left. The director who wanted her back was given a hard time by HR precisely because she had pointed out issues during her exit interview. She didn't feel like she was burning any bridges at the time.

You may have the best intentions but it doesn't mean the other side does. Lesson learned.

>>It's possible to give feedback without burning bridges.

Unless you are a coach, and your job is to give feedback. I would advice a) Don't give a feedback ever. b) If you are in a situation and had to give feedback, always say something positive.

Very few people are genuinely interested in improving and largely use feedback as a mechanism to see how people judge their work, and here a negative feedback is simply used to mark up people as enemies.

There are people who are exceptions to this, but this really is the rule.

The OP says there's no upside. I think that the OP is wrong and you're right.

Could there still be downsides? Yes. But I think that there are possible upsides if the people in the company come to realize that you were right. They may hire you back?

And so it's a gamble.

Did anything change as a result of this interview?

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