In my 10+ years of working at Aquent, I've seen a number of goodbye missives from colleagues around the world. If you stay with a company that long, you're bound to see a number people come and go, right? (Unless you're working on an Amish farm, I'm thinking.) Most of them say how much they enjoyed their time, what they've learned, and what they'll miss. Sometimes it's odd because, say, it may be a person in one of our German offices, who I've never spoken to.
I imagine, in the state of this economy, a lot of people are seeing more goodbye emails floating around, and the fact is, if it's due to cutbacks, they might not be so cheery. It does beg the question, what exactly does someone expect to accomplish by sending a nasty missive to 1,500 of their coworkers?
When I read this article in the LA Times about goodbye emails, it made me think of the recent goodbyes from all the radio personalities at KLSX 97.1 (aka Free FM) who recently said their farewells on the air. I'd heard that they'd made a deal to have a day or two to wrap up before the format changed. This would be instead of the usual case where a radio station format changes and the audience has no idea what happened. (I don't know if you've ever woken up to your station playing country instead of classical music, but it's pretty jarring. "Why the hell is that man singing about his truck?") Leaving on good terms left the door open for all those radio personalities to work with their former employer, CBS, in the future. Heck, the terms were so good that the old Website is still live and has links to all their podcasts and Websites.
The LA Times article makes a lot of good points: losing your jog is a very emotional time, especially if you think your management has made some really boneheaded decisions. But it begs the question, do you really want to sent that kind of messaging to a couple hundred or thousand people? Folks who may be your Manager, CEO, or the HR Director somewhere down the line?
Consider this scenario: you're up for a job and it's between you and another candidate. Your resume has been passed up to a few more managers. One of those folks was a recipient on your Parting Shot Email (maybe the subject line was "So long, suckers!") What do you think their reaction is going to be? Do you really think you'll get the interview with them? Turn the situation around, would you interview someone who sent an email like that around? Both candidates look good, but one of them sent this angry, vitriolic email to everyone at their former company. Do you really want to take the time and energy to bring them into your office and spend an hour or two to interview them?
I like the advice from Alison Doyle, a job search expert on About.com, "You can have all these feelings but you shouldn't necessarily share them.
If you don't have something nice to say to 1,500 people, I'd caution you to not say anything at all.
I mean, what would Mr. Rogers do?
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