A sudden exodus of employees is causing leadership to panic and suddenly puts me under a microscope with questions like:

  • Are you going to leave?
  • What can we do to keep you from leaving?
  • Do you see yourself here in 1 year?

These are all semi valid questions to ask in the best interest of the company. But I’m curious how this information could be used.

This all got me thinking – at what point could – “no - I don’t see myself in a year” be used as a resignation with a 1 year notice – and then terminated after ~3 months and be ineligible for unemployment since you “technically” resigned.

  • @orcrist@lemm.ee
    6•5 months ago

    All of those questions are entirely unreasonable, because they’re all manipulative.

    Many years ago my old boss gave me an interview before I got a promotion and he asked me if I was still going to be working for the company in 20 years. And I lied and said that I thought I probably would. But why did he ask me? I believe he was trying to pressure me into saying that I would be there, knowing that I have integrity, knowing that if I said it then I might be less likely to quit.

    Except that he didn’t have any integrity, and he had on other occasions promised employees that they would get promotions and then delivered them nothing, or even let them go when the contract ran out.

    And that’s normal. Every medium to large sized company in the world has bosses like this.

    Anyway, so if you’re in a situation where they make you lie, then you lie, and then you ask them to improve the quality of the workplace. You just said that you’re planning to stay there for many years into the future, so now you’re wondering what concrete steps the bosses are going to do keep your wonderful co-workers happy enough to stick around and build that bright future together with you, bearing in mind that the best way to retain employees is to pay them more.