Giving feedback
Updated 24 September 2026
You signed the offer a fortnight ago. You start in four weeks. Nobody at work knows, and every morning since you have walked past Kenji's desk carrying it. You have run the conversation in your head at the bus stop and in the shower: the first sentence, his face, the moment he asks what it would take to keep you.
This page is about how to tell your boss you are leaving. It is not about the letter, the notice period or your contract. It is about the ten minutes in which you tell a manager you like that you are going, and what tends to happen when he does not simply wish you well.
On paper this is the easiest hard conversation there is. You are not delivering bad news about him. You are not asking for anything. You are telling him a fact about your own life, and the decision is entirely yours.
The difficulty is that Kenji will not hear it as a fact. He will hear it as an opening position. A good manager's first instinct when someone good says they are leaving is to ask what would change your mind, and he will ask it warmly, because he means it. Is it the money? Is it the project? Have you talked to anyone about a different role here?
Every one of those is a door, and you decided a fortnight ago to walk through none of them. But you like him, you are mid-project, and part of you wants to be talked into staying just so the conversation can end well. That is the trap: a decision you have already made, quietly reopened by someone being kind to you.
Settle three things.
The decision. You accepted the other job. If you are still hoping Kenji will make an offer that changes that, you are not resigning, you are negotiating, and you should be honest with yourself about which conversation you are walking into. This page is for the first one.
The facts. Your start date, and from it your last day here. Where the piece of work stands, what finishes before you go and what will not. Not a handover plan, just proof you have thought about the six weeks of work and the four weeks you have left.
What you need to leave with. Kenji knows you are leaving, he knows the date, and he knows it is not a question.
This page is about the conversation, not the paperwork. How much notice you owe, what a resignation letter has to contain, and what happens to your unused holiday are matters for your contract and for HR. Read the contract first, so that when the notice period comes up you are giving him a fact, not a guess.
Say it in the first sentence. Not after asking about his weekend, and not with "I've been thinking". The longer the run-up, the more it sounds like something he could talk you out of.
Kenji, I have accepted a job somewhere else. My last day here will be four weeks on Friday.
That is one version. Yours will sound like you, but it should carry the same two facts before anything else: you are going, and when. Notice what it does not carry: a reason, an apology, or a list of everything you will do to make it easier for him. The date is what makes it real.
Knowing what to say when resigning is the easy part. What you cannot write on a card is what you say after he asks what it would take to keep you. That is the part worth practising out loud.
This is the counter-offer, and it may not arrive as a number. It arrives as a question: is it the money, is it the project, is there a role here that would work? He is not being manipulative. He is doing his job. The answer is the one you settled before you walked in: you have accepted the other job, and you are not here to negotiate. Say it once, and do not explain what would have been enough. Every specific you give him is something he can fix by Friday, and then you are back in the same meeting with a worse hand. Whether you should accept a counter-offer is a question you answered a fortnight ago. The kindest thing is not to let him make one.
A fair question, and you should have an honest short answer. What you do not owe him is the full account. It was a role you could not turn down, and that is enough. The traps are the two extremes: a grievance, which he will remember long after you are gone, and a reassurance so warm it sounds like you could be persuaded. You like him and you are not leaving because of him. Say exactly that, once.
Sometimes the warmth goes and something else arrives. He goes flat, or says he wishes you had come to him first, or that the timing could not be worse. It is not your job to make him feel better, or to absorb it. Acknowledge what he said, hold the date, and let a short silence do the work. Most of the heat is about the six weeks of work, not about you.
The questions turn to the handover and who to tell. This is the conversation going well. Answer what you know, say what you have not decided, and be clear about which day is your last. Do not, in the relief of the moment, offer to stay an extra two weeks. Offer that tomorrow, if you still mean it.
Give the date once, and then keep giving the same date. Not a softer version of it, not a maybe, not "let me think about it" to be polite. The debrief in FirstSpar calls this holding your ground under pushback, and here the pushback comes dressed as generosity. Someone you respect is offering you more, and the way to honour that is to answer it plainly, not to leave him a thread to pull for the next four weeks.
Clarity. He knew inside the first sentence that you were leaving, and inside the second when. Nothing you said afterwards sounded like a condition.
Holding the line. The counter-offer was made, or nearly made, and the date did not move. You did not name the number that would have kept you, and you did not agree to think about it.
Empathy. You heard what the timing does to him and to the project, and said so, before you repeated the date. Empathy here is not softening the news. It is letting him be annoyed about it without making that your problem to solve.
The odd thing about resigning well is how flat it feels. You expected relief and got a strange quiet, and by the evening you are replaying whether you were too cold, or whether the pause after the counter-offer was too long. Write down what he asked and what you said while it is still accurate; you will want it if the offer comes back in writing. Then let the four weeks be four weeks of work.
If it does not settle, talk to someone at neither company. FirstSpar is practice, not support, and this conversation can deserve both.
You face Kenji, your manager.
You have accepted another job and you start in four weeks. Nobody here knows. You are in the middle of a piece of work that finishes in six weeks and your leaving makes it harder, which you know. You like Kenji, you are not leaving because of him, and you decided a fortnight ago.
Objective: Give the date, and do not reopen a decision you have already made.
Written at Realistic · Delivering hard news · Holding your ground
Three spars a week on your own conversation, no account needed. The written scenarios and the harder pushback are Pro.
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