
Ask HN: When doing exit interviews, do you give honest feedback? - _tk_
I have handed in my resignation yesterday, because I&#x27;m starting a new job in two weeks. My boss and HR have asked me for exit interviews and both told me, that I should give them plenty of &quot;honest feedback&quot; and that this feedback would stay between us. How honest should I be?
======
mytailorisrich
You do exactly what you want, they are not giving you instructions to follow,
but in general it's best to avoid burning bridges so best to keep it nice and
bland.

Personally I think there is no benefit to you in giving "plenty of honest
feedback". If you're open to staying if they make you an improved offer then
you can try to politely explain your reasons in a way that leaves the door
open for them to make such offer if they wish. But if they wanted to keep you
your boss would probably have come to chat with you instead of calling an
"exit interview" with HR...

Good luck on the new job.

------
_tk_
To may expand on the OP:

As someone who is now in kind of a dysfunctional organization, I'm very
thankful for people who give honest feedback to management. If everybody who
leaves just says "It's not you, it's me!", how can management ever make
informed decisions about changing processes and decision-making? OTOH I
understand people's and my own urge to just play it nice, so people who will
soon become just nothing more than entries in a list of contacts do not
despise you. Especially if the scene of the city you live in is kinda small.

There's probably a middle ground here: give constructive feedback withouth
dragging others through the mud. But it's hard to hit this middle ground in an
exit interview that is scheduled on short notice. So what I'm doing right now,
is prepping myself.

~~~
mytailorisrich
> _As someone who is now in kind of a dysfunctional organization_

I suspected as much when I read that they explicitly asked you to give plenty
of honest feedback.

It means that they know it's dysfunctional, and they know why you're leaving.

It's not a question of telling them "it's not you it's me", but there is
nothing you can do. There's is no need to prep and get thing off your chest in
the interview. Keep it generic and short, move on.

You sound quite junior (no offence it's just that your question sounds like it
might be your first time in this situation). No feedback from a junior
engineer leaving a company is going to change anything, especially if they
already are fully aware of the situation. At most they want to use this to
build a case to get rid of someone they see as the issue, which is why to
develop your feedback might make you enemies.

(By the way, you cannot know if whatever you say will stay between you and
them, so keep that in mind)

