Comment by lancewiggs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lancewiggs | Hacker News Reader

As others said - commit to Quit. Create two options for yourself - one job and one working for yourself. Staying will tar you with the brush of the company.

But before you leave write a very well considered and professional memo and send it to the CE/board/exec team, offering to meet with them as well. Keep it internal, and leave it there.

I would aim at communicating three things:

1: That a problem exists at your level, and give three examples of how this manifests. Focus on how things work rather than on people and personalities and the overall implications for the project and organisation.

2: Your understanding of the root causes of the problems. For this it's best to canvas other people but make sure the conclusions are your own and not blamed on others. Focus on causes that are not people but processes/structures that have et the organisation up to fail.

3: Your recommendations for the senior exec/board etc. Again I would give tangible things they can do that do not involve individuals, such as immediately de-scope the project, bring in certain external help, separate out this department and that and so on.

If they are smart they will meet with you, and even keep you on in a role where you can help make changes. I suspect they will not, but at the very least you will have tried, and they will have evidence that they should not ignore.

This is terrible advice. Don't send anything other than a neutral message to your immediate supervisor informing them of your 2 week notice.

I agree. When quitting, you have to be positive. Pretend that the workplace was the best you ever worked for and you regret leaving. "I'll miss everyone on this great team and the awesome office".

Think about your old workplace as your ex-husband in a divorce. Why would your ex be happy if you told him he has bad breath and would benefit from regular workouts? He will be offended and angry.

A company may say they want input from ex-employees, but it's a huge risk for the ex-employee to give it and there is no upside. Keep quiet, or lie if you must reply.

My advise is to send only a neutral written notice. If there is any verbal communication, keep it positive.

The only thing we always have is our reputation. I suggest that relying on others to be nice is a good way to lose it, and that knowing we didn't do the right thing in a certain circumstance is also bad for our own self-esteem.

If the poster would like a reputation as a nice guy - then sure, he could leave without saying much and hope that nobody says anything bad about him, or even remembers that he worked there.

If he'd like a more proactive approach, then he could try to leave a reputation as a nice yet strong person, a competent person who was brave enough to try to help, but also polite enough to escalate it quietly.

Imagine being were offered a job at Enron, or with Bernie Madoff, knowing what we know now. Who would take it? Who would steal away into the night if we found ourselves there? Who would first try to do something about it or at least document that we saw things were wrong and/or try to escalate?

I would hope I would be firmly in this camp, trying to be someone who is unafraid to live to my own values, not those of others.

To reply on the divorce example: A thoughtful discussion about why things are not working out between two partners is always in order, even after the divorce. We are all trying to learn. But just as the example of bad breath is not the root cause of a divorce, some of the symptoms in the original post are not the real problem.

My advise is to send only a neutral written notice. If there is any verbal communication, keep it positive.

This.

The organization isn't going to care about your feedback. They're not going to change things.

Best thing to do is just save your breath and move forward.

It's their problem now, not yours.

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