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> Be honest every day, and do your work well. > Also important; don't be a dick. There's a difference between telling the truth to constructive ends, and being
by jldugger 5y ago
> Be honest every day, and do your work well.
> Also important; don't be a dick. There's a difference between telling the truth to constructive ends, and being a whiny critical negative contrarian
In that spirit of honesty: you really have no idea, and are extrapolating from a sample size of one. What feels good and righteous is not always what is most effective.
> 1) Being true to yourself is worth more than any of his purported wins
This advice is about being fully truthful with others. You can avoid exit interviews as a waste of your time, and still be "true to yourself."
> 2) Be your own merit, and don't rely on others for references or goodwill
You don't get a choice in whether employers use references, and in the he-said-she-said scenario, you lose against the candidate whose references weren't toxic. This is borderline "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" advice.
> If every exit interviewee states that the CEO is a dick, that can't be ignored.
It actually totally can. HR reports to the CEO, not the board. Bill Gross lasted 43 years at PIMCO, which is longer than your typical HR career. In fact, I'd almost bet "asshole" is a job requirement, based on stories we hear about CEOs. I've never personally encountered such a person professionally, but if you're leaving because they're an asshole, telling them that to someone who can make good on the classic "you'll never work in this town again" threat is doing yourself no favors.
> If you get in trouble for telling the truth, that's not a company you need to be at.
I feel like you don't understand what an exit interview is: it's somebody in HR interviewing you to protect themselves from lawsuits. They want to know if you are leaving due to harassment, or violence, etc. By the time you do an exit interview, you have already decided to leave the company, and unless the reason you are leaving has to do with illegal behavior, it's unreasonable to conflate the interview with HR changing anything.