How to quit your job: An Employers opinion

I know how you can get your desired behavior much more often, follow this guide as the employer:<p>Tell me as early as possible – Provide a policy that any employee who quits will be guaranteed to be paid for up to 4 weeks (or whatever time period you want notice of) after they quit.<p>Finish what you have started &#38; Don’t slack around – Tell your leaving employees how much you appreciate them working for you and remind them that you really count on them ending strong until the end.<p>Complete the paperwork - Make the paperwork as easy as possible. I'm not sure I have ever had to fill out paperwork when leaving a job.<p>No outbursts please – This should go without saying.<p>Give honest feedback – This isn't realistic and shouldn't be asked of quiting employees. It just makes the next point that much harder. As a manager/owner of a small company it is your responsibility to keep a constant dialogue going with employees, if you fail at that you will not know what is going on. Asking for employees to fill you in on what is happening is a problem.<p>Stay in touch – As the former employer, the street goes both ways. Send an email every once in a while.

Nice post, OP. Now let me tell you about those times when your suggestions are <i>exactly the opposite</i> of what you should do:<p><i>Tell me as early as possible</i><p>Why? So security can show me the door today and I'm unexpectedly without a paycheck for weeks? Although OP may not do this, lots of place do. Beware.<p><i>Finish what you have started</i><p>The more I leave unfinished, the greater my revenue opportunity (via consulting).<p><i>Don’t slack around</i><p>OK. As long as you pay me and thank me for all the extra work and overtime. Oh wait, that may be one if the reasons I'm leaving.<p><i>Complete the paperwork</i><p>"Paperwork" is your albatross, not mine, so I simply don't care.<p><i>No outbursts please</i><p>This should always be true anyway.<p><i>Give honest feedback</i><p>Be careful. "Honest feedback" is high risk, low reward. There's a good chance you're leaving because your "honest feedback" has been ignored before. Why should now be different.<p><i>Stay in touch</i><p>Pay me to. See "Finish what you have started" above. You're in business. So am I.<p>Frankly, if I was inclined to be nice enough to comply with OP's requests, I'd probably be staying on. Too many employers are in a time warp, creating situations that force good people to move on and then pretending they never happened with posts like this. It's too late for this, soon-to-be ex-employer. Better to just let lame ducks finish their commitment and focus on their futures.

I agree with all points except one thing: NEVER GIVE HONEST FEEDBACK.<p>When you are leaving, never, ever give honest feedback. Say everything is great, and you just wanted a change. Employers say that they want honest feedback, but they really don't, because the truth hurts.<p>Case in point, I left a previous company because the founders screwed up a potential acquisition. I had no confidence in upper managment, and I thought they were running the company into the ground. I had worked there 3 years and I gave them honest feedback as to why I was leaving. Not rude, mind you, but I told them exactly that I was leaving because I felt like upper management wasn't good enough to run the company, and that I needed to leave because I was worried there was going to be subsequent layoffs. I ended up being right on both accounts.<p>Recently, there was a drastic change in management, and I felt like the prospects for working for the company had changed, and I thought just for fun I would re-apply and see if there were any jobs that I would be interested in. I got only one phone screen, despite applying to a bunch of different areas, and in the middle of the phone screen, the interviewer had mentioned some of the things I had said in my exit interview. So it was obvious the exit interview was added to my employee file, and to some degree, I was "blacklisted".<p>I'm fine being blacklisted, I knew the consequences of being honest with my feedback, and I'm not owed anything, but my point is that there is no benefit to being honest EVER to your employer. It's much better to simply say everything was great, and to move on. It's to your advantage to keep all of your options open, and by giving honest feedback, you are closing out some of those options. The best you get by giving honest feedback is you get to temporarily scratch an itch, and you never know when in the future you might need to play those cards.

This is the thing.<p>I've seen many rounds of layoffs in different companies. I've been laid off once.<p>None, not one, of the people laid off were "told as early as possible" they were about to be laid off. Almost all of them were told 2 hours before they were shown out the door.<p>I will never tell my employer I'm quitting "as early as possible". I will them them only after I have the next job contract signed and I know my start date. And I will tell them at the last possible moment, so that when they escort me out of the office, as they VERY often do, I will minimize the disruption to my income.

I agree with everything except the first and possibly second points. It's worth pointing out that just as many employees don't do these things and it is disrespectful, many employers do not take their equivalent social obligations seriously. If an employer had a track record of making decisions that impacted me and only telling me after the fact, I would not trust them to suddenly take my well-being into account after I decided to leave - and I would make the decision to leave long before I told them. I would tell my current employer if I was thinking of leaving and I would change my plans to suit their needs, because they have always been very transparent with me and taken my career goals into account when making decisions. Being respectful gets respect in return.

I'm all for playing nice with your employer ... stayed late on my last day at previous client because they scheduled an install for the project I was the technical advisor for that weekend! Yes, really. Sigh. It went well in the end.<p>The problem is that my observations of corporate America leave me very cynical about your requests. After 23 years of seeing the exact opposite behaviour, it gets harder to believe that the company cares about what you think or feel. I have learned that when the words and the actions don't sync, you believe the actions.<p>Now, HN is likely mostly populated by young hipster developers who work at fun trendy places where playing nice is appreciated, so I'm just an old dinosaur roaring off in the distance. I accept that as my role. :-(

&#62; Tell me as early as possible<p>Nice in theory, but some employers will walk you out the door as soon as you tell them you're quitting, so you better have a good idea what kind of company you're working for before you do this.<p>&#62; Give honest feedback<p>this has been beaten to death. Don't do it. Its like breaking up with somebody, everybody wants to know why you're breaking up with them, until they actually know then they'll think you're an asshole for telling them. Human beings are just weird like that.<p>Stock answer, "its just a better opportunity for this point in my career", vague enough to make everybody happy.

I agree with everything except being "friends."<p>As an employee I am not your friend. I'm leasing you time out of my life to get your work done. Being polite and amicable is part and parcel of ensuring that transaction goes smoothly but do not be mistaken: you're not getting an invitation to dinner and we're not going on a camping trip together. The deal is in the contract and my obligations end there.<p>More often than not I tend to go above and beyond the letter of the contract but I've worked for employers who take it personally when I chose not to. I don't have the time or patience for such petulant behaviour and let those bridges burn. My advice to employers is to not get personally invested in your employees; anything beyond the contract is a bonus and you should never expect it. The contract is the contract and as long as everyone is doing their part there's nothing more to it than that.

Original thread: How do I leave a company?<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815</a><p>Found with: <a href="http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&#38;q=title%3Aleave&#38;sortby=create_ts+desc" rel="nofollow">http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&#38;q=title%3Alea...</a>

As an exceptionally loyal employee, I've been released to rejoin the workforce more times than leaving on my own accord. The first time I got the shaft, I tried to be courteous, but the employer (Fortune 500 co.) wasn't interested in feedback or anything other than the bottom line. The second time I was dumped, I was trying to be a good person and follow all of the author's recommendations.<p>IMHO, the linked article is good for an individual leaving a positive situation with positive experiences and positive opportunities, likely surrounded by positive people. Many commenters seem to be stating that most situations are not all win-win situations. Many times employees or employers are disgruntled at best, angry/fed up/desperate at worst. The article is great for situations where all is hunky dory; in reality, that's usually not the case. YMMV

"Give honest feedback" is the one that made me laugh out loud. If you, as an employer, have no idea what made the employee unhappy enough to want to leave, then you most likely didn't do your homework.<p>Exceptions exist, of course. For example, maybe you knew beforehand what was wrong but were either unable or unwilling to change it. Not much to do there, either.<p>All in all, "honest feedback" at the end of the relationship is a little too late.

When I quit my first job, my former employer made a point of conducting all exit interviews with someone who was in no way an authority figure for the person quitting (I did mine with the receptionist).<p>I was of course very polite, I didn't want to burn any bridges and could still consider going back there some day, but I also was honest when telling them that main reason (that was in their control) for me quitting was that there was no development process (i.e. scrum) and the first thing on their to-do list should be to hire a good head of development.<p>They did this a year after I left and from what I've heard they have kept the rest of my team and even attracted some new talent. Maybe there are cultural factors at play as well (I'm in Stockholm).<p>They invited me back later for beers and starcraft 2, so I guess they don't hate me too much :)

I try to treat employers with the courtesy I would like to be treated with. I also realize that employers may not alway return the favor. Just because someone is a jerk to you does not mean that you must be a jerk. In short, act like a professional even when your employer/client acts unprofessionally.<p>Here is a solution to the situation where your newly ex'd employer wants to march you out the door:<p><i>Arrange with your new employer to start as early as you can when you accept the job offer.</i> Most employers I've interviewed with would like you to start as soon as possible. When they ask "When can you start?" tell them that you can start no later than 2 weeks but depending on when you can wrap up stuff with your old employer, you can start earlier.

How, then, to reconcile the fact that your employers have taken the lion's share of the profit you have produced for them? Modern employment is inherently biased towards business owners. They take the vast majority of the fruit, they get to build assets as the business grows (unlike employees who are for the most part paying for liabilities - rent, food, etc), they have more mechanisms available to evade tax (again, since they can afford them).<p>If you want your employees to be nice to you, stop shafting them at every turn. If somebody works somewhere, then a fair percentage of the business should be owned by them. Level the playing field and there will be no need for articles such as these.

Does anyone have comments or thoughts on point #4: "complete the paperwork"?<p>Obviously, it makes sense to formally quit, and finish any tax and payment related papers. But is there a good reason why the employer should request signing any other lengthy contracts at termination? "Our legal department told us to" is the worst kind of argument - lawyers typically push to protect whoever is paying them from anything possible, not to clear up things in a balanced and reasonable manner. And if the employee is leaving, there should not be any loose ends that require additional contracts.

I quit my job a few years back. The HR exit interview was all but a joke. I quit on good terms, but was prepared to give some feedback on how things were in my team/organization etc. The lady was not interested in anything I had to say. She asked no follow up questions, or never noted anything down. She just nodded and it seemed like she just wanted to tick the box to complete the HR procedures. So after a while I just stopped talking and figured we'd get this over with. I think if employers want honest feedback, just implementing an HR procedure doesn't cut it.

The referenced AskHN thread: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815</a>

There are a few very high expectations of employees here.<p>(note: I'm not US based)<p>"Tell me as early as possible" - most of the time you'll get exactly the amount of time that is contractually obliged. If you want more, write it in the contract. Employees want their own flexibility and few people want to stick around after they have pretty much told their employer "I don't want to be here". Most employers don't like people hanging around either (they are likely to start encouraging others to leave too).<p>"Give honest feedback" - Its incredibly hard to phrase feedback (in a constructive way) without directly referring to people as the source (which nobody wants to do - burning bridges and all). If an employee finds a way to do this for you, it is pretty exceptional. If you are lucky, you might, after asking some pointed questions, get some short outbursts of "I don't like being managed by person X" or "company process Y pains me", and you'll have to do the hard work of figuring out what it means. Thats if you are lucky. Most of the time people will just rather not say anything at all.

Never burn your bridges. I couldn't care less if your boss is an ass and treats you like dirt. Rise above it and remember you're leaving and won't have to tolerate him/her for long. You never know when you may need to use that bridge again.

<i>Last week there was a very nice “Ask HN” on Hacker News where the person asking had stated that he had decided to move on to a new job and to do that had to quit his job</i><p>Could anyone post the link to that <i>Ask HN</i> post the OP mentions? I can't find it, but I'm interested in reading the discussion.