How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
I think the assumption that the only possible result of being honest in your exit interview is that everyone who becomes aware of what you said dislikes you are a result is weird. Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
How about another scenario: you later find yourself working under the same person, who you made like you by giving them useful feedback in your exit interview. Or you later find yourself working with one of your ex-coworkers again, who saw one of their major pain-points at that previous job go away because of your exit interview.
Sure, those things could happen. But those of us arguing against being overly honest in exit interviews would generally say, based on our experiences, those things are just very unlikely. Personally I find them so unlikely as to be in the "not even worth considering" category. Kinda like, yes, I could be killed by a meteorite smashing through my roof and striking me, but I don't spend any time worrying about the possibility.
Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?
I don't know anything about being "brutally" honest, nor am I suggesting that one must be a jerk about anything. But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
Like others have said... the idea isn't to be intentionally deceitful during an exit interview. At least that's not what I'm suggesting. But it's also not necessary to say everything you could say, or even you might want to say. Especially since the biggest gain is often just a momentary sense of catharsis.
That said, everybody has to judge their own circumstances and make decision based on their own values, goals, constraints, etc. "Do what you think is right, and hope for the best" isn't the worst strategy one could follow.
> But many (most?) people don't suffer criticism well in my experience - and this seems to be especially true of the people who are most worthy of being criticized.
This is definitely a cultural thing, I brought this up with my team recently, the concept of "negative feedback" and got two different reactions – my feedback to the team was about how we give negative feedback, and nobody at all agreed with that phrasing LOL
Either some people who heard what I said and thought, surely this means when you have done something wrong, and it's not actually negative feedback, but corrective feedback so that you know how to do that thing right in the future.
And the other reaction was, "negative feedback, positive feedback" no such thing it is all just feedback, but watch out for positive feedback because all of it is probably fake, and nobody is fooled by that "compliment sandwich" BS.
I don't think this is a problem for exit interviews, at least not exclusively; the point is that people are either receptive to feedback or they aren't. You can try to candy coat it, but if there's any chance that being direct is going to make the feedback more likely to land, I personally think I prefer the direct approach.
(Then again, I never notice compliment sandwiches, so maybe they work on me.)
I only notice shit sandwiches if the compliments are obviously bullshit. If they ring somewhat true, it’s just a balanced meeting with positives and negatives.
But the second I hear a bullshit compliment, I feel like I’m about to get a sales pitch.
I think the assumption that the only possible result of being honest in your exit interview is that everyone who becomes aware of what you said dislikes you are a result is weird. Is this the same confusion where assholes claim that they're just "brutally honest" making people think that being honest in your exit interview requires you to be a jerk?