The Boomerang Club, or How to Quit Your Job, Part II
The Boomerang Club, or How to Quit Your Job, Part II
My post last week on How to Quit Your Job has generated about two dozen comments as well as a really lengthy thread on Y Combinator’s Hacker News. My various replies to comments are worth summarizing here – this is a reprint of my comment on Hacker News:
First, my post was not intended to be general advice to employees of all companies on how to handle a situation where they’re starting to look for jobs. Of course, many environments would not respond well to that approach. My point was just that that’s how we encourage employees to handle the situation at Return Path, and we have created a safe environment to do so. By the way, it doesn’t happen here 100% of the time either, by any stretch of the imagination. But I wish it did. When it happens, it’s better for everyone — the company as well as the employee, who either (a) ends up staying because we resolve some issue we weren’t aware of, or (b) has a less stressful and more graceful transition out.
Second, the way we run our business is around a bit of a social contract — that is to say, a two-way street. And just as we ask employees to start a dialog with us when they are thinking of leaving, we absolutely, 100% of the time, are open and transparent with employees when they are in danger of being fired (other than the occasional urgent “for cause” situation). We give people ample opportunity to correct performance and even fit issues. In terms of someone’s question below about lay-offs, we fortunately haven’t had to do those since 2001, but if I recall, even then, we were extremely transparent about our financial position and that we might need to cut jobs in 30 days.
But I wanted to take this post to emphasize a related, second point. If it’s a given that you are going to quit your job, then HOW you quit your job becomes super important. And this is general advice, not something specific to Return Path. Even if you’re unhappy – even if you feel totally wronged or burned in some way – there is never a good reason to burn bridges on the way out the door. In fact, the opposite is what I would consider best practice: make the transition as easy as possible for your company.
Document your job really well, including specifics of all open projects. Work with your manager and teammates to hand off all responsibilities. Be frank and constructive in your exit interview. Make the extra effort to leave things in good working order.
We have a long history of hiring back former employees here. We proudly call it The Boomerang Club, and there have been a dozen or so members over the years. We try to make it easy to come back if you leave. First, we celebrate the return of a former employee pretty widely, and we obviously modify our usual extensive interview process. If you come back in less than a year, we pretend that you never left in terms of giving you credit for continuous service. If your gap is more than a year, we don’t give you credit for the time you were gone, but we do give you full credit for the time you’d been here before you left.
But you can’t really be a member of The Boomerang Club if you leave your job in the wrong way. HOW you do that says a lot about you, and everyone at your company will take note and remember it.