Leaving in Anger? No.

Suppose you ignored my advice from a few months ago and actually landed that job. That’s a real achievement, but it isn’t what I want to write about. In most cases, what you leave behind matters more than what lies ahead of you.

Your current job probably doesn’t compare with the likes of Googamazbook, and that’s fine. Or maybe you feel you didn’t accomplish everything you hoped for when you signed up for the role you’re about to leave. That’s fine too. Let’s go through some common frustrations.

You feel you deserved more, and you were passed over for reasons that seemed unclear or even unprofessional. That may well be true, but it isn’t always about you as an individual. It’s about how companies work.

In the companies I’ve worked for, most employees sat somewhere in the middle of a Gaussian curve when ranked by seniority. On the left were people in their first jobs, such as recent graduates, who tended to move up quickly toward the bulk in the middle. On the right were senior managers and people with “principal” in their titles. Middle management sat in the middle too. The name says it all.

In short, there isn’t much room for natural movement if that shape is to be preserved, and it has to be preserved if the company wants to survive in the market. Add the people hired from outside, and there are always more candidates than seats at the front of the room. That’s why you need to prepare to secure a promotion: you have to look better than the others competing for the same seat. Professionally better? Probably not, but that’s how it works.

You think your latest 3% raise was dreadful and didn’t reflect your performance. Complaining openly about it just before you leave will fix… well, nothing. Companies operate by different rules.

From the company’s perspective, pay should reflect an employee’s market value: what no other employer would beat, plus the risk your employer is willing to accept. That figure is only loosely tied to the internal ranking described above, because some people care more about their title than their salary. Companies know this and act accordingly.

Overall, companies pay the minimum needed to keep a particular person. Normal companies are for-profit businesses and follow market rules. Public-sector organizations are different. They pay in close relation to internal rank, because individual performance almost never brings in more business, only bigger budgets.

Bosses are judged within the company’s internal management policy. Very few companies act on individual complaints from the minions, but all of them watch trends, statistics and overall scores gathered through anonymous surveys.

Since your direct boss is your main point of contact with the company, they end up absorbing everything positive and negative the company projects. They rarely decide how promotions and pay adjustments are handed out. They can propose changes and fill in positive feedback on forms, but as individuals they are judged on end results alone, and those results are always capped by the company’s budget.

You may leave feeling disgusted by the company culture, but the culture itself usually isn’t the cause. Many companies paint slogans on walls and doors so that people won’t forget them.

The unspoken problem is that culture isn’t passed on by wall messages. It spreads more subtly, from managers to employees and between colleagues of different tenures. Periods of rapid expansion promote managers who aren’t properly grounded in the founders’ vision, and before long ideas like “the sole purpose of this company is to fill the owner’s bank accounts” become universally accepted. Then again, making money is one of the core purposes of any company.

If any of this sounds familiar, remember that it isn’t about one person casting spells from an ivory tower, and you weren’t singled out. And if things really don’t work out, leaving is sometimes the only option.

So why not vent your anger on the way out? Because it only upsets individuals instead of fixing procedures or redistributing budgets. You may need one of those individuals as a good reference when you pass the onsite at Googamazbook, or even to get considered for an interview in the first place. Be human, and respect the humanity of others.