Generally spot on in my experience. I've only ever agreed to one, and it was a mess, with the interviewer getting very upset and pushing back on all of my answers. Since then I politely decline. I've had one boss tell me it wasn't optional, to which I responded that I'd be happy to leave earlier if he wanted to enforce the requirement. He swiftly backed down, as we hadn't yet finished knowledge transfer.
Hypothetically and assuming 1) at-will employment, 2) company policy requires exit interview and 3) they didn't care about the knowledge transfer, could the company then terminate you "for cause" because you refused to do the exit interview?
Yes, they could, that is the definition of at-will employment. As long as the termination reason is not illegal there is nothing stopping them. Some employers will escort you out of the building immediately once you let them know you plan to leave, I know multiple examples of this happening at Microsoft at least.
Yes, but there's a huge difference between termination and termination "for cause". The latter has specific meaning - it'll often trigger negative consequences like losing your vested equity. It usually only happens in egregious cases: fraud, harassment, punched a customer, etc. If you're merely refusing to do your job, you'd probably just be regular terminated (including if they decide to include "do the exit interview" as part of doing your job).
When I was at MSFT a little over 10 years ago the norm was that to be that if you gave notice, and said where you were going, and it was a competitor in certain industries, you would be escorted out immediately or same-day.
Our extended team was pretty collegial about this -- de facto, people could choose to work out their 2 weeks by keeping quiet, or to leave right away by naming a name. (I think this got you some extra vacation? Never quite sure how that worked out.)
this is not "with cause" though. They're always free to pay out your notice and have you finish immediately, but you can't be terminiated with cause after you've formally resigned.
However the definition of with cause varies by state.
Also, i genuinely dont know if refusing an exit interview meets that criteria.
Generally, exit inteeviews are:
- Not what you were required to to do in the first place
- Not a policy in the standard handbook
- Not a critical ad hoc work function
Therefore, the issue is murky and wouldnt pass HR review. I would bet most companies would let it go unless this decision came from ownership itself
