My Exit and the Questions

Last Friday was my last working day at my organization. Whatever I had faced in the last six months, I didn’t have any thought regarding blurting it out to the HR during the exit interview. It never helps. Very little or close to practically nothing happens and it is just a formality. But when I went in there, I don’t know why and how, I felt like telling her every bit of all that, upon being asked “What do you feel can help us do better?” I love giving advice and I advised her….

1. When I was chosen miraculously ( I put it that way because a reason was never provided) and put into a different technology and project and business unit, the day I was supposed to start with my sessions for the new team, we had an IJP (Internal Job Posting) as per my eligibility. My manager was fine if I apply but my executive manager said “Give your manager six months time and don’t apply for any that come.” The day I resigned, my manager and my executive manager, the same persons offered me different projects and asked me to apply for IJP’s that are floating around. My Question: Why does a resource have to resign to get the freedom to change his project and apply for an IJP? Is it a requirement that if I don’t resign, I don’t get anything here in this place or is it that I don’t choose to serve the organization by doing that? Why everything comes when you are done mentally and officially?
2. When a resource resigns, meetings happen with the senior management. If the resource has already decided, no one can stop him to quit and the exit process starts. When a resource applies for an IJP and clears the interview and the new manager is ready to take him, the present one may scarp the whole thing saying that he is critical to the project and the team needs him and on doing that, his application for the IJP gets cancelled. Why so? How is the decision to quit and work for another employer different than the decision to work for another project and product? If the former has freedom of choice and decision, why do the latter suffer from bureaucracy and managerial dependencies? Isn’t the whole process wrong?
3. Being a three year old guy in the industry, can I really talk someone to resign? “No” comes her answer. My Question: My manager met me on the stairs and told me “You are leader of the people moving out”. Now was I supposed to take it in a humorous tone? And if not, what should I have done or what should I do? A ten year guy behaves in such an unprofessional manner and he is a manager and we are supposed to report him and I am supposed to grow under his guidance and someone out there thought all this is possible and got him in. And I am asked “What can we do to make things better?”
4. My manager told one of my colleagues “You know how the market is outside now-a-days. So you have to come to office on Saturday”. My Question: Why do I need to think of the markets outside and what is implied when someone is told like that? The market isn’t good and so I should work on weekends. I shouldn’t work for passion or for the product or for the challenge. If that is how it is, and that is how it works, then now the markets are up and it doesn’t surprise me at all when I hear that 225 people resigned in the last three weeks. I am happy for all of them. I think I know what they faced.
5. There is too much security amongst the people. Firing never happened. Poor performers were never caught and questioned. People working here feel the years they carry with themselves here is all that is required to rise and gain. People who are the technical leads never care to prove their creditability to that position. If termination isn’t a way, why can’t demotions work out? People who fail to prove themselves as what they are should be demoted irrespective of the number of years they have stayed in the organization. And to the point, here is a joke which I used to say a lot to my friends over at the work place…..”If my lead is able to code a HTML page with a single drop down with his name as the only value in it without an internet connection and books using a notepad in twenty minutes, I would take back my resignation” and we all knew that I was correct. I can understand the position of a manager not having worked on the system directly for years and now messed up with all implementations and processes and new initiatives, but a team lead, with five plus years of experience has to deliver and prove himself if he thinks he is any good for guiding or leading the team. The initiatives and efforts of higher management never boil down to the ground employee level because it is these people at the middle who mess it up. All they have is the years behind them. You question that and it crumbles.
6. If a person is a newcomer to the organization, and has come from some different or small background or organization it isn’t an issue. But having stayed here for more than a year should have made some changes in him. Sadly, it isn’t the case. The workplace now is full of people who are egoists, selfish, jealous and aim to be one man army to get the goodies. It is difficult to put up with these people. If they don’t stand corrected or don’t bend their ways, others have to. It is a failure to have such type of people on board for more than a year.

All these didn’t exactly push me to resign. I needed a promotion and a senior role with some extra bucks and that still remains my main motive behind my decision to quit but when you have them also with you, they certainly make things look worse and you end up looking for a change more badly and aggressively.