We’ve talked about how to quit before, but let’s look a bit closer at reasons for quitting, and what to say about them.

Presumably if you’ve handed in your notice, you’ve got a reason for it. Sometimes your reason is innocuous and inoffensive:

• Got offered something much higher paying.
• Relocating for personal reasons.
• Pursuing further studies.

And sometimes your reason is… less innocuous:

• Co-workers are assholes and/or morons.
• Management are assholes and/or morons.
• The job just sucks.

If you’ve got a Type A reason on your hands, your life is easy. If you’ve got a Type B, however, you’ve got some tricky moves ahead of you. The vital point is: Try not to burn too many bridges. Or, ideally, don’t burn any.

The asshole you’re escaping today might be the hiring manager at a later job. Or might just be playing golf with the hiring manager at a later job. Or you might need a reference from him. Or — more likely — any negative feelings will just suffuse randomly through the web of faint connections that is the tech industry, and people will have a vaguely bad feeling about you without knowing why.

So, you don’t want to leave on a sour note. If possible, you want everything to be amicable, and for your ex-boss to provide you with a positive — if not positively glowing — reference. But how do you do that if you hate your job, or the people you work with are assholes/morons? Here’s my advice: Treat it like a relationship break-up.

Key phrase: “It’s not about you, it’s about me.”

Don’t say: All the other programmers are assholes.
Try this instead: I don’t think this team culture is right for me.

Don’t say: You’re making us work on laughably obsolete technology.
Try this instead: I’m looking for opportunities to increase my skills.

Don’t say: Working with this legacy code is like kicking dead whales down a beach.
Try this instead: I don’t feel like I’m achieving much here.

Of course, you need to balance your “I feel…” talk with your own personal comfort levels. I’m not saying to lie about your reasons for leaving. I’m just saying, if you can’t resist saying something, try not to be too confrontational about it.

Plenty of people will tell you never to say anything about your reasons for leaving, especially not in your resignation letter or an exit interview. The theory is that nothing good can ever come of it. Companies routinely ignore criticisms expressed by staff who’ve quit, and let’s face it, if they didn’t listen to you before you left, why would they listen now?

Me, I prefer to face up to reality. You can’t see out your 2-4 weeks’ notice in complete silence. Chances are you’ve got some friends at the office, or even get along quite well with your boss, and your urge is to want to communicate with them. So I say, go for it. Just tone down any negatives as much as you can, pad them amply with positives, and don’t put anything nasty in writing.