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Imagine getting punched in the stomach. And then, instead of recovering in a few minutes, imagine the shock and pain slowly turning into disappointment, anger

Imagine getting punched in the stomach. And then, instead of recovering in a few minutes, imagine the shock and pain slowly turning into disappointment, anger and dread. Don’t you realize how important you are to the team? How could you do this to me? It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. Umm, companies pull the plug on employees all the time. In most cases with vastly less forethought and regret than employees engage in when leaving their jobs (even jobs they hate). I guess it can sort of "hurt" on the management side, when employees leave. But given the pain that employees go through (hint: the immediate threat to their own physical safety, as well as that of their families) when they're let go, I'm not sure how one could begin to consider the two situations as remotely comparable. Let alone get so emotional, and feel such a sense of "despair" when an employee (even a particularly valued one) leaves.

tikhonj 11y ago
That quote is really out of context. His point is that this is the wrong reaction, but a very natural one. Here's what directly follows this quote: > It doesn’t matter that these questions weren’t the right ones to be asking. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t even remotely accurate, and frankly, incredibly selfish. It doesn’t matter that they run counter to everything I’ve learned about managing employee exits since then. It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. It's pretty easy to get overly emotional on anything that you've put significant amounts of time and effort into. The point of the article is that you shouldn't actually follow these feelings and that there are much better ways of handling it.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Your right it is -- I didn't quite catch that when I was pasting, but it does sound a bit unfair, out of context. So: apologies to the original author.
crpatino 11y ago
> I guess it can sort of "hurt" on the management side, when employees leave. I agree on the "hurt" part, but it is a well known fact that employees do change jobs in this industry. If a manager is not aware of that, and has not already made contingency plans for when that difficult time comes, then he is not very good at his job. I would go as far as to say that he could do worse than to look at what other parts of his job he might been ignoring (hopefully) without noticing. Maybe that would explain why the employees leave in the first place.

tikhonj 11y ago

That quote is really out of context. His point is that this is the wrong reaction, but a very natural one. Here's what directly follows this quote: > It doesn’t matter that these questions weren’t the right ones to be asking. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t even remotely accurate, and frankly, incredibly selfish. It doesn’t matter that they run counter to everything I’ve learned about managing employee exits since then. It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. It's pretty easy to get overly emotional on anything that you've put significant amounts of time and effort into. The point of the article is that you shouldn't actually follow these feelings and that there are much better ways of handling it.

kafkaesq 11y ago
Your right it is -- I didn't quite catch that when I was pasting, but it does sound a bit unfair, out of context. So: apologies to the original author.

crpatino 11y ago

> I guess it can sort of "hurt" on the management side, when employees leave. I agree on the "hurt" part, but it is a well known fact that employees do change jobs in this industry. If a manager is not aware of that, and has not already made contingency plans for when that difficult time comes, then he is not very good at his job. I would go as far as to say that he could do worse than to look at what other parts of his job he might been ignoring (hopefully) without noticing. Maybe that would explain why the employees leave in the first place.