It has to go both ways, though. At my last job, when I first talked to the CTO (my boss) about leaving, he asked me to think about it and talk again the next day. The next day he postponed the meeting. Then, at the day of the meeting, he was out of the office. It had been 5 days since the first talk so I chose to escalate the matter and, in an Arrested-Development-episode kind of situation, I learned that the CEO and the CTO decided to mysteriously leave for vacation because they felt burnout.
Resigning seems hard, but it's a little bit like giving regular feedback in my opinion. First of all it's best done face to face, because you don't want to be misunderstood, and you want to give the other party a fair chance at replying.<p>Second, you give the compliment sandwich. You start out with thanking them for the opportunity (any job is an opportunity, no matter how shitty it was, you made money and you learned something, sadder but wiser you may be). Then you tell them you would wish to quit your job after the contractual resignation period. Don't neglect mentioning that! If you just say you want to resign, they might just accept your immediate resignation and you'll miss out on the period you might have planned on. The final compliment has to make sure you'll be able to work together through the final period, just assure them you'll keep up your efforts and help transfer your knowledge to colleagues.<p>I'll do it for you for $450 if your employers speak English or Dutch ;)
I'm sure this is similar in other cultures but Japan still has a strong attitude that you're lucky to have a job. Contrast that to us (myself included) spoiled Silicon Valley type engineer who gets job offers often and companies trying to entice us with free food, game rooms, etc...<p>From that, people who have a job in Japan often feel obligated as in "You gave my a job and made it possible to live my life. You invested N years in training me. I'm now responsible for various parts of your business. If I leave it will feel like not paying you back for all you've given me. It will also put you out for weeks to months.".<p>Japanese have an acute sense of obligation as well. There's a reason why you say "Don't worry this is really nothing" when you give a gift in Japan as you're trying to avoid adding to the receiver's obligation to reciprocate.<p>Of course as a westerner that attitude used to bug the crap out of me. I knew a person who wanted to quit, their boss said "no, you can't quit", and they stayed on for several more months. At some point in my life my attitude would have probably been something along the lines of "If it's that important I stick around what's it worth to you?"<p>The longer I'm in Japan the more I'm mellowing on some of my western and spoiled engineer attitudes. Of course not totally but I feel like the it's "me vs them" attitude I see so much on HN leads to worse outcomes than the "we're all in this together" attitude or the "it takes a village" attitude I see more of in Japan. I think both extremes are bad but if my meter was pointing at the 100% me side before it's now around the 75% me side, 25% us side, now.
This sort of thing seems really sad to me,<p>From the site linked in the article, "Proper Etiquette for Quitting Your Job in Japan":<p><i>Show your appreciation to every member of the company, or at least those you have been working with directly. Sweets, small gifts such as mugs, tea sets, a thank-you card or other similar items will be appreciated by everyone. Prepare those for your last day on the job. Usually, Japanese companies will see you off by hosting a small party and presenting you with a flower bouquet, so having something to give in return always makes a good impression. You may also be asked to give a speech, so prepare a few farewell words just in case—but keep it short and sweet.</i><p>Skipping these niceties in order to save embarrassment makes the world a little colder.
I don't know why, but I found it really hard to resign at my old job. I actively disliked it and I didn't owe them anything. But still I found it really hard to resign and tell my colleagues that I was resigning, I didn't even care about them.<p>Most of the team only learned that I was leaving on my last week (I had given 3 weeks notice). I just felt really awkward telling them for some unknown reason. Funnily enough, I worked in a coworking space, and most other people in the space knew I was leaving before my coworkers. My coworkers only found out because they put my leaving party on the "this week" board in the kitchen.
I've never had any issue resigning, but perhaps this could be a new hire perk. "We offer free snacks, 401k matching, and previous employer termination service."
I'm conflicted -- mainly because this doesn't seem sustainable, but maybe it works in Japanese culture. Not only are you not quitting in-person, but you're not doing it <i>yourself</i>. If you think quitting over text is bad, how would they feel if you asked your old buddy from college to quit over text <i>for</i> you? On the other hand, I could see this being the norm in some dystopia where nobody talks to each other anymore or employees are just fluid hands.
Wow, hard to believe this is turning a profit. I definitely don't enjoy resigning but unlike other 'difficult' employment conversations I usually have a hard deadline to meet the start date of the next job and these things are never as bad as you expect.<p>Did once have to give it to my boss's boss though because it was an unexpected snow day and we were 2/3 of the people in the office!
I really love all the Japan articles lately because they're all the "Japan is weird" thing, but take everything totally out of context.<p>Customs, much like words, lose their meaning when taken out of the cultural context.
It's my opinion that how you manage career transitions, forgive me for using an unnecessarily gender-specific idiom, separates the men from the boys when it comes to professionalism.<p>The ideal is that you use things like exit interviews as a canvas on which to have a broader discussion about both career and business priorities that will leave them <i>very</i> interested in bringing you back on in an expanded capacity once you've grown in your career more.<p>This requires the ability to clearly understand and distill why you couldn't get what you needed out of your current job. Nobody's really expecting you to be unhappy, but at the same time, there's a kind of expectation that you raise issues and work them out before they reach the point where you go find another job.<p>Naturally, something like compensation isn't part of this expectation, if another company is offering you $30k more, you won't be expected to have asked for that before handing in your notice, because obviously you weren't going to get it. But if compensation is the primary reason you're leaving, then rationally speaking, you should be open to accepting a counter-offer. If you're not open to that, then you need to clarify more reasons why you're leaving.<p>My understanding is that it's best to tie what you want and why you couldn't get it to the business model of the company. That offers the least-offensive pathway through an exit interview that results in no legal issues and the utmost in professional candor. They can't change the business model, so another job is a perfectly appropriate pathway to getting what you want. This naturally requires you to understand the company's biz model and this is best accomplished by having discussions with your manager.<p>If you want career advancement, doing it through your current job requires you to wait for an opportunity to open up. I would have happily stayed at my last job if I could have led a team, but that wasn't in the cards. But it was an option that we explored.<p>If you have a personal problem with someone working there, then the expected resolution is to restructure the teams so you don't have any interaction with them. This one is a bit tricky, I wouldn't bring it up in an exit interview, but behind closed doors long before you start looking. This way you can simply hint at it in the interview and everyone knows what you mean without having to actually discuss it, while the surface discussion is about business priorities. A personal problem affects team cohesiveness though, and if management isn't willing to resolve them, then that points to a political problem with the organization.<p>Anyway, I hope this offers some frameworks and tools to help with career management.
I have quit jobs several times in Japan and while quitting was not difficult in itself, I did not like one bit the fact that resignations are almost kept secret to most employees. Like some of my more distant colleagues noticed weeks after I left that I was not in the office anymore and found out by asking around that I resigned. Always amazes me.
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Why in the world would you want someone else to do that for you? You are leaving for a reason and in my experience it was incredibly liberating to put notice in.
How many bullshit does Japan have, I wonder? for as much as I admire them for their achievements I lament them for these strange things.<p>My favorite method of quiting is the following: I enter the manager's office, I say, "I quit" (signing any documents required), then I leave and they never see me again.