Careers

Exit interviews collect the safe answer. The person has nothing to gain from candour and something to lose, and the conversation is run by the organisation being evaluated. For a related reference, see the guide.

Three stages want three different things: early career wants skill building, mid career wants visible trajectory, late career wants to remain relevant. "Where do you see yourself in five years" is a mid-career question asked of everybody.

A job description reveals what it did not mean to — twenty bullet points means nobody has decided what the role is, and a missing reporting line omits the most consequential fact in the posting.

Most negotiation advice assumes a competing offer. Without one there is still asymmetry, their cost of not hiring, the timing, and the fact that the entry number compounds. Almost nobody negotiates the reporting line.

Promotion is one of five directions and the only one with a structure, which is how skilled people become mediocre managers — two losses from one promotion.

And the internal move nobody offers costs a fraction of a departure and almost never happens, because the releasing manager bears the cost and another team gets the benefit.

• The Internal Move

  Moving within an organisation is cheaper for everybody and almost never proposed. Why, and how to ask for one.

• Negotiating Without Leverage

  Most advice assumes a competing offer. What is actually available when you do not have one, and what to ask for instead of money.

• Paths That Are Not Upward

  Promotion is one of five directions and the only one most organisations offer. What the other four look like in practice.

• Reading a Job Description

  Six things a posting tells you that it did not mean to reveal, and the three questions that settle everything else.

• What People Want

  The same development conversation fails three groups in three ways. What each career stage is actually asking for.

• Why People Leave

  Exit interviews collect the polite reason. What the data says about the real one, and why pay is rarely the answer.

For additional context on this topic, see CNN.