[HN Gopher] Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice w...
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Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
Author : user052919
Score : 181 points
Date : 2023-04-20 14:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (davidlaprade.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (davidlaprade.github.io)
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I've done this, and it's always worked out well for me. My past
| three jobs received a 1 month notice. The one before that, I told
| the hiring manager up front that I'd work for them for exactly 1
| year.
|
| Most of the comments here are against this, many saying they were
| prematurely removed, some immediately. Perhaps it is different
| for FAANG and other SV companies typical of HN?
|
| Possible reasons why my experience has been different:
|
| - I've never worked in a role that is easily replaceable. I've
| worked mostly consulting for the past decade. The industry has a
| lot of hiring friction, like extensive background checks, making
| it hard to give up and replace quality workers. In most cases,
| even my long notices did not give the employers enough time to
| find a replacement for me to train.
|
| - My direct supervisors, managers above them, and myself, have
| always shared mutual respect - even when they are difficult
| people. We all also understand our compensation is mostly related
| to what customers are paying, so there is no expectation that our
| salaries can be magically increased.
|
| Granted, I did leave one employer over a decade ago with just a
| day's notice. The company had a lot of problems and hadn't paid
| me for a few months already, so quitting was well overdue.
| forinti wrote:
| I once cut my holiday short so that I could have more time to
| pass on knowledge about my projects. I left everything documented
| and up-to-date. Nobody gave me much attention and a year later a
| new employee was asking me to come by and give a hand.
|
| So that's something I'm never doing again.
| deeviant wrote:
| I feel this advice ignores the most common scenarios in which one
| would need to give notice in the first place.
|
| If you want to a make a move, you interview, see if you get the
| position, then give notice. You're not going to want to give
| notice before you know you get the position, and if you do get
| it, you're new future employer is unlikely to want to wait
| months.
| a3n wrote:
| Or, you can give two weeks notice, and then be fired for
| quitting.
| pengaru wrote:
| This is highly subjective as in it depends tremendously on the
| role, employer, and the given employee:employer relationship.
|
| At one startup where I played workaholic for several years
| establishing substantial leverage and dependency on my presence,
| I didn't just give heaps of notice; I plain asked the CEO how to
| gracefully exit the company.
|
| Right thing to do, yeah?
|
| Except he disastrously mishandled the situation by insisting I
| stay "until the end". Neglecting to take advantage of the
| opportunity to tell me exactly for how long and with who the
| knowledge transfers should occur. Instead it just turned into a
| sort of pissing match where leadership was acting like they owned
| my autonomy/called my bluff, insisted on paying me for a month+
| without coming in "for me to think about it". It was just a
| ridiculous calamity on their part, culminating in my leaving
| anyways without any transfer at all. (They eventually went
| bankrupt after burning >$100M, go figure)
|
| In hindsight that experience alone discouraged me from ever
| letting myself work hard into such a role again.
|
| And if you're not in some high-impact, difficult-to-replace, bus-
| factor role, giving notice really isn't all that important IMO.
| cde-v wrote:
| Bootlicker
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| fwlr wrote:
| I think there's a kernel of truth in this post, it does make the
| correct observation that 2 weeks is not always the correct time.
| I think it's deeper than that, there are multiple correct times
| that are incompatible with each other.
|
| This is because there are multiple ways you are integrated into
| the company and the correct wind-down period for each is
| different. A few months to find and train a replacement, a few
| weeks to document all your organizational knowledge, a few days
| to say goodbye to your colleagues - and for companies with
| valuable secrets it's obviously desirable that your access to
| their information is revoked instantaneously.
|
| Ultimately, for a senior software engineer, quitting is just
| complicated. I think if you want to try a variable-length notice
| of resignation you need to find someone in the chain of command
| you trust to be level-headed and pragmatic, approach them with
| your _thoughts_ of leaving, and (matching their level-headedness
| and pragmatism) discuss how to make your departure as successful
| and effective for the company as possible - maybe you start
| documenting knowledge now, wind down day-to-day fire-fighting
| responsibilities a week from now, and formally announce your two
| weeks notice a week after that.
|
| But you have to go into that discussion prepared to roll with the
| decisions they make, all the way from "immediate dismissal and
| escort from the building" to "they do not want you to quit and
| try to offer you more money or different responsibilities". If
| that gives you trepidation, maybe it's better to stick to the
| business standard of two weeks notice. It's not optimal, but it
| is well-trodden ground.
| MDGeist wrote:
| I gave a month notice at my old job so I could close out a
| project for a client before I left. In the end I don't think
| anyone but the client cared and it meant I had very little time
| off before the next job started (three days lol). They also had
| me train my replacement who spent most of those sessions bitching
| to me about how he also wanted to leave...
| ghaff wrote:
| This hasn't been mentioned much in the comments but it's a big
| factor for a lot of people. You're probably going to have
| trouble pushing a new employer out much beyond 4-6 weeks. And,
| has been discussed here previously, there's always some risk
| that the further you push out a start date, the more chance
| there is that something could go sideways in the interim. So,
| if you want to take off 3-4 weeks between jobs, you really
| can't give too much notice.
| oofta-boofta wrote:
| Companies will drop you in a moment like a freshly pooped turd
| into a toilet bowl. Give them MORE notice?!?! Lol GTFO.
| [deleted]
| seu wrote:
| >> How Much Notice Can You Give? >> It depends on a lot of
| things:
|
| The list misses what's most important for me: depends on how good
| am I feeling at the company, or I appreciate its people. Then, I
| want to make it also easier to transfer knowledge or help them
| finish things that were dependent on me, etc. Especially on
| project management.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| I've quit all jobs with 1-2 months notice and can wholeheartedly
| agree with the author's narrative. I am still on good terms with
| my ex-managers and colleagues.
|
| There's another plus to this: when your ex-manager moves to
| another company and starts hiring there, they'd likely want you
| again.
|
| On the vacation before your last day bit: labor law in most
| places dictates that employers must reimburse you for any unused
| vacation days. Unless there's an "unlimited" vacation policy,
| which typically caps this at 2 weeks, less any vacation days you
| take.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| One time I even got offered a "bonus" for staying on longer
| than the notice period. I got to focus on the things that
| excited me and piece were generally nice. Another time they
| threw me an expensive send-off - I saw the CEO sign a $800 bill
| for the ~6/7 of us (a decade ago when the world wasn't so
| expensive). Goes to prove the author's point about this being a
| win-win.
|
| Of course - you probably shouldn't do this if your boss is a
| dick and your mental health is at stake. Give this courtesy to
| those you can see yourself reaching out to in times of need.
| paulcole wrote:
| This is lovely sounding advice until you get burned by it.
| mbfg wrote:
| "I'll give my future company a month or two to rescind their
| offer."
|
| horrendous advice.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree entirely.
|
| It's rare that I've ever given less than a month's notice when
| leaving a position. My instinct is to give as much notice as I
| possibly can. In part because it's just professional, and in part
| because I'm still a part of the team until I leave, and giving
| the maximal amount of notice is in the team's best interest.
| nilram wrote:
| I've given two weeks notice to employers I didn't like, and had
| immediate layoffs from employers I liked exceptionally, so I
| don't feel I should have any obligation in that regard except to
| myself. I'll the factors that the author mentions and plan ahead
| (like, taking vacation or exercising options if I care to), but
| negotiate the rest to my benefit.
|
| Based on the article and some comments here, I realize it could
| be quite valuable to resign early in the month--like, in the
| first week. For my jobs (in the US), if they take the resignation
| and walk me out the door immediately, my health insurance would
| still be in force until the end of the month.
|
| My direct experience is that its important to have a week of
| vacation in-between jobs, just to clear my mind and prepare for
| the new work. I had an employer who found it urgent that I start
| ASAP. I tried to negotiate away from their insistence, but
| eventually gave in to their request. It was the worst starting
| week ever in terms of my focus and comfort with the new job.
| Might have been better if I'd taken it as the bad sign that it
| was and declined their offer.
| [deleted]
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I disagree, often times for myself and many others I know they
| just walk you out the door that day, or in a few days, they
| rarely let you leave on your terms. This advice assumes your
| employer will act honorably, many, err most, dont.
| paxys wrote:
| Advice like this is great when you are working for a competent
| engineering organization and have a great relationship with your
| managers and peers. The thing is, this isn't applicable to the
| majority of employees out there, and especially not ones who are
| quitting their job.
|
| The most sensible generic advice is simply - do whatever leads to
| the best outcome for yourself. If that is achieved by giving
| extra notice, great! If not, don't feel any guilt in quitting
| with 10 minutes notice. Your company would certainly do the same
| without a thought if they had to. Only you know the details of
| your own situation.
| lumb63 wrote:
| What? The company gets 100% of the benefit. Chances are, if
| you're leaving a company, you want to leave, and if you're
| starting a new job, you want to start it. Why would you want to
| delay that any more than necessary?
| grimraxaphon wrote:
| When you've been laid off, how much notice did your employer give
| you?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| For me, it was:
|
| - accounts locked moments before the layoff announcement.
|
| - kept on payroll until the next month, so we'd get another
| month of benefits
|
| - given about 6.5 weeks of severance
|
| - allowed to keep my computer
|
| It was really nice of them.
|
| My only sadness is that there was no chance to say goodbyes,
| which sucked because we had a wonderful team. I finally
| realized this downside of team building.
| asciimov wrote:
| Real Career advice: Do NOT give any indication of leaving to
| anyone until all your digital stuff is backed up offsite and you
| know where all your physical things are located.
|
| Maybe like the writer, you work for some unicorn with nice and
| generally well meaning people. They might let you do this. It's
| more than likely however that your two week notice will be
| immediate termination.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Having this legally set up in France (typically to 3 months)
| makes it easier for everyone. As an employee you do not get to
| choose, as the former employer you know exactly what to expect,
| as the new employer you know you will need to wait.
|
| This time can be negotiated down by mutual interest of both
| parties. It is usually the employee who would initiate the
| discussion.
|
| The calculation also takes into account vacation time so it may
| be much shorter from the perspective of the employer.
|
| Finally, the employer can forbid the employee to come to work and
| get back all the equipment, but still has to pay them for the 3
| months.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Sounds very navie.
|
| Many companies walk you out the door the moment you give notice.
| If anything you should give at MOST 2 weeks notice.
|
| Nothing bad happens if you only give 1 week, or even if you just
| walk out.
|
| Remember, they reserve the right to terminate you without cause
| at any time.
| brazzy wrote:
| US corporate culture is such a horrifying shit show...
|
| Where is live, 3 months notice from both sides is a typical
| contract clause, and walking people who resign out of the door
| is unheard of.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| To be fair, tech wages are much higher here. You can make
| 200k a year as an IC which is unheard of in Europe
| lmarcos wrote:
| Narrow perspective. What about all the other non-tech jobs?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Unemployment tends to be lower here than in say France.
| Don't get me wrong, it's not the best system here in the
| states ( mainly since healthcare is tied to your job),
| but it has its upsides .
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Bad advice. I've seen people give notice way in advance, being
| terminated on the spot.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Yeah, how about no?
|
| My employer behaves exactly as it's laid out in my contract. I
| will behave exactly as it's laid out in the contract. If it says
| 2 weeks, that means 2 weeks, not one day late or early.
| ghaff wrote:
| 2 weeks in the US is commonly a customary thing as opposed to
| anything contractual.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| When they notice I'm gone they've had all the notice they're
| gonna get.
| jmclnx wrote:
| This depends upon your situation in your work.
|
| But if you feel your managers and company have been good to you
| or even neutral, then I fully agree with this. Plus it keeps
| options open for you since things go sideways in your new
| position.
| ExFunctionalNot wrote:
| I've done this many times, I know for a fact that almost NONE of
| the prep work, training, file organization, email handoffs,
| exit/handoff plans, and so on...were ever used except to allow
| somebody to make excuses on their 'delays' in the first few
| months after I left.
|
| I've also worked in industries for many years, and was told this
| line about 'leaving on good terms'. Honestly though, you could
| just about nearly commit murder - your 'name' and 'reputation'
| don't matter if there money / a deal to be made. And you'll
| almost never meet ICs again, so why are you bothering to 'leaving
| on good terms'. Its a fantasy. Grab names and emails on the way
| out, though, might be handy.
|
| And, sometimes, you should just go. Seriously. If _you_ didn 't
| care so much trying to make it all happen and work and 'meet
| timelines', all that would happen is something would fall behind
| and the management would finally do their job and give relief to
| the team you think you're helping by doing so much work to
| 'offramp' - and perhaps get the people they refused before
| because you were handling it. Seriously, just dropping your shit
| where you stand and walking out into the sun one fine day may be
| the greatest gift you give that 'team' of yours.
| tomwheeler wrote:
| My goal is to ensure that the company is in a position to carry
| on with as little disruption as possible.
|
| I've always given at least the (US standard) two weeks, and
| usually three, but much longer than that can be counterproductive
| because one can become entrenched in current projects instead of
| wrapping things up and transitioning them to others.
|
| Even when I've been at the same company for many years and have
| been involved in a lot of projects, this never took more than two
| weeks because throughout my tenure I do my best to document
| things, cross-train my co-workers, and ensure that others could
| take over for me if needed. That last two weeks is usually just a
| matter of making sure that all my documentation is up-to-date and
| that people remember what I've taught them.
| hnrodey wrote:
| Speaking as a manager who has managed numerous people through
| their exit as well as a job changer.... I have to say I disagree
| with the advice to give extended notice.
|
| Proper notice (in US at least) without severe mitigating
| circumstances is two weeks and that's what you get. If the
| employer wants to it to be less then so be it. FWIW I've changed
| job 5-6 times over my professional career and every single time
| it's been a cordial exit where I've worked out my final two
| weeks.
|
| As the employee submitting your notice - have your ducks-in-a-row
| before turning in your notice as it maximizes your chance for a
| smooth exit.
| ghaff wrote:
| >As the employee submitting your notice - have your ducks-in-a-
| row before turning in your notice as it maximizes your chance
| for a smooth exit.
|
| Right. If you have vesting events, expected bonus payouts, etc.
| wait until after those happen before giving notice as opposed
| to just assuming the employer will keep you on the payroll as
| an employee for those two weeks.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If you gave two weeks notice and got terminated immediately
| to prevent you from benefiting from something that would have
| vested in that two week period, you have an _excellent_ legal
| case. Very few businesses of any reasonable size would pull
| that stunt, it isn 't worth the headache. Some very small
| businesses might try it, because they may not have competent
| legal counsel to warn them away.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why take the risk of needing to pursue legal action? Would
| waiting a couple more weeks kill you?
| refulgentis wrote:
| This is awful advice.
| olliej wrote:
| While giving notice is polite, it's important to note that it is
| just a courtesy in most places, and you're providing that
| courtesy to something that will happily fire you with no notice
| if it benefits them. If you're somewhere an employer can treat
| you as having quit the day you provide notice, then you should
| give minimal notice to maximize stock vesting, benefits, etc.
|
| So you don't need to provide "more notice (a lot more notice)" as
| the benefits listed just aren't real. I've replaced bullet points
| with numbers for ease of reference: 1. Do only
| the parts of your job you enjoy the most 2. Eliminate
| ~all stress from your job 3. Get paid the same 4.
| Extend your benefits for longer 5. Take unused vacation
| time 6. Vest more stock 7. Get your bonus
| 8. Leave on a positive note 9. Be thanked and appreciated
| by everyone
|
| Of these the only a few are unequivocally true, and most are just
| false or unnecessary, or even contradictory. The true ones are
| (3), (4), and (6), and only if you live in a place where an
| employer is not permitted to terminate your employment upon
| notice.
|
| Your primary goal in providing this courtesy is (8) leaving on a
| positive note, but if you're trying to do that then (1) and (2)
| are out. You're employed, you have to do your job, and if you
| shirk that then you're not leaving on a positive note. At the
| same time if you've announced you're leaving the company has no
| reason to continue being nice/trying to keep you.
|
| So we're down to (5), (7), and (9). In most countries (5) is some
| variation of "earned income", that is you've earned that money
| and they have to pay you out when your employment class. In many
| countries sick leave is also earned income and must also be paid
| out. Hence (5) is unnecessary. If you aren't in such a state or
| country, then you're beholden to "can I be terminated immediately
| upon notice", in which case you're better off going on vacation,
| and then handing in notice.
|
| (7) isn't going to happen once you hand in your notice. Either
| you've already been awarded your bonus, in which case they can't
| claw it back, or there's no reason for them to give you one -
| you've given notice so giving you a bonus isn't going to benefit
| them.
|
| Finally for (9), you don't need more than 2 weeks notice. You
| don't really even need a week for that. This particular point
| feels like it's part of the "your job is your family" nonsense
| that is routinely exploited by employers.
|
| There is no benefit to extended notice unless you're trying to
| ensure that (8) will leave you the option to return or work for
| the same group of people elsewhere in future.
| ghaff wrote:
| >In most countries (5) is some variation of "earned income",
| that is you've earned that money and they have to pay you out
| when your employment ceases. In many countries sick leave is
| also earned income and must also be paid out. Hence (5) is
| unnecessary.
|
| Yes, but if they let you have a "last working day" and then
| take vacation, you're getting both your salary and your
| benefits (like healthcare) for that time. Depending on the
| circumstances--i.e. retiring or taking time off between jobs
| anyway--this may be the better deal. Even if they say no, you
| still get the money.
| olliej wrote:
| That's (4) I think -- extending benefits, rather than being
| needed to get your vacation time. It falls into where I said
| "you're better off going on vacation, and then handing in
| notice". Handing in notice pre-vacation gives them the
| opportunity to say "well you're resigning anyway so today is
| your last day" in many jurisdictions, or simply inviting
| pettiness: a boss just refuses to approve your vacation
| request after you hand in notice - it doesn't save them money
| to refuse it, it's just being petty.
|
| The whole point of the article is that you benefit from
| giving lots of notice, but that's just not true. Say you want
| to quit in 8 weeks, you could give 8 weeks notice today, or
| you could give 2 weeks notice in 6 weeks. In both cases you
| get employee benefits for the same amount of time, you have
| the same opportunity to use vacation time, etc. But in the
| former case you also have the option in many places for them
| to just say "ok, today is your last day" - I _think_ in less
| anti-worker areas such a dismissal would not be valid (e.g.
| the company can stop you entering the premises, but would
| have to consider you still employed, _or_ they would have to
| report you as being terminated rather than resigning which
| has legal implications for them), but even then you aren't
| getting any real benefit from the early notice.
|
| Honestly the only people who gain anything from you giving
| advanced notice is your employer, and these are the same
| employers who can (and do) fire you essentially without
| notice.
| olliej wrote:
| Another point, this person has what to me is inverted
| priorities: they say give more notice to a bigger company than
| a small one. If you are leaving a company, the impact of
| missing an employee is inversely proportional to the size of
| the company.
|
| If you quit a company, which company will find the missing
| employee harder: the one with 10 thousand employees, or the one
| with 10? Who will be more impacted by losing and engineer or
| artist, EA or some indie gamedev?
| methods21 wrote:
| The rule of thumb is expect to be off-boarded the minute you give
| notice. ie. don't expect that if you give X days of notice that
| you'll be working those X days.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| The one time I tried to do this my employer would no longer
| approved vacation requests and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of
| unused vacation.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of unused vacation
|
| That is overtly illegal in most/all of the US. Accrued vacation
| is like money, it is already yours. It's why so many companies
| have now switched to unlimited vacation, to get that liability
| off the books. The icing on the cake being that most people end
| up taking less vacation, not more, when you remove the limit.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Same experience as many here for me when leaving two companies
| with a quite long but somehow standard 3 month notice here in
| France: it felt nice to give my managers/coworkers some time, but
| overall it wasn't useful. Most of the 2 first months was "as
| usual" and the real information sharing was done somewhere during
| the last month. The last week or two were absolutely useless for
| me and others, as it's just wandering around without any precise
| task, and everyone being like "oh, you're still here?"
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| It's interesting to me to read through this thread and see the
| stark differences between the US & Europe.
|
| Work culture in the US is pretty awful. It truly is every-man-
| for-themselves, and I find it deeply saddening.
| Thaxll wrote:
| 3 month notice, lol wtf.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Guess I must be in the minority because I've only worked jobs
| where I've left on good terms and have always given a month's
| notice. Don't know if it's luck, or many of you suck at picking
| good places to work at
| darkerside wrote:
| I'd say, don't tell HR anything, and only tell your manager if
| you have a great relationship with them, and tell them only that
| you're _thinking_ about leaving so they have plausible
| deniability.
| saulpw wrote:
| I've generally given a lot of notice as an IC, 2-3 months in some
| cases. and I have to say, I think it's not been appreciated, not
| even once. I've tried to spend the time wrapping things up,
| communicating my tacit knowledge to my coworkers, and writing
| documentation for things that I've done and created and am
| responsible for; I'm fairly certain that no one has given my
| opinions and thoughts any more than a cursory amount of
| attention.
|
| Now, I absolutely loathe the modern corporate culture, which is
| happy to escort you out of the building the moment your
| employment is terminated, without giving you a chance to even say
| goodbye to your colleagues, who you might have been working with
| extensively for years. It's deeply traumatic and it contributes
| to an overall sense of fear and "screw teamwork, it's everyone
| for themselves".
|
| But now when I "give notice" and they don't even let me try to
| work the next 2 weeks, I'm grateful. I don't want my coworkers to
| ignore or patronize me while I sit idle or do make-work. I don't
| want to have to put on a show about how wonderful the company and
| team are, and why I'm leaving anyways. Nor do I want to expose my
| true feelings to my co-workers and infect them with my bad
| attitude--even if the writing is on the wall for the entire
| enterprise. It's like a breakup: the best thing for everyone is
| to make it clean and crisp, say "it's not you, it's me", make a
| sincere statement to the effect of "let's be friends", and then
| see each other roughly never again.
| matwood wrote:
| Like most things, it depends. I've given employers no time up
| to 4 weeks. Smaller ones will definitely receive more grace if
| they have been good to me. And, when I was an employer I tried
| to do the same for others.
|
| Another note is that I'm _always_ succession planning.
| Document, share what I 'm doing, etc... I learned early on that
| if I couldn't be replaced, I also couldn't be promoted.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| not a lot of companies seem to recognize this pattern and
| encourage it.
|
| benefit from it, sure.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I learned early on that if I couldn't be replaced, I also
| couldn't be promoted.
|
| Even as someone who has zero interest in being promoted, I
| think this is good practice. It's part of helping to maintain
| a healthy organization. If anyone is actually indispensable,
| that's a very dangerous situation for the team and the
| company.
| falcolas wrote:
| > I learned early on that if I couldn't be replaced, I also
| couldn't be promoted.
|
| Nailed this on the head.
|
| At the same time, the extra work this requires is often not
| appreciated by management either - I've seen some (admittedly
| poor) managers comment on lower productivity due to the
| documentation efforts.
| projectazorian wrote:
| It may not be appreciated by management in terms of someone
| saying "wow, your documentation was incredible, here's that
| raise/promotion." But the people who interact with your
| documentation will appreciate it, which raises your stature
| in the organization long term.
|
| And management priorities change over time, it's not
| uncommon for companies to emphasize documentation more as
| they mature.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Totally agree. Two weeks for knowledge transfer should be it.
| Remember that most leadership view all engineers as replaceable
| cogs. Just wrap up what you can and loop others into the things
| that can't and move on with life. Big companies probably don't
| want you around from a liability. Small companies want the
| knowledge transfer because you have "blind-sided" them.
| (Despite asking for a raise for the last two years and told no
| chance.)
| ghaff wrote:
| My experience is that two weeks is probably about right most
| of the time--especially for ICs. The company expects it as
| the norm. And it's either enough time to do a reasonable
| handoff or no sensible length of time is going to be enough.
| (And I'll always answer the odd "help!" question for the
| coming month or two.) Go much beyond that and you're in this
| odd extended winding down situation where you can't really
| take anything new on and you're increasingly checked out.
| And, in a physical office environment, you're probably also
| increasingly just a distraction.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I gave 6 weeks on my last one to a fanng, Never again. That
| was when the project I was working on was slated to finish,
| and I continued working on it until then. I but it was a bit
| unexpected for me and I had a 4 day weekend scheduled to take
| my kids on a school trip.
|
| Came back on Monday, incompetent fuckers had locked me out
| and terminated me as a no call no show. lol, uh, it's in the
| fucking time off tool you fucks. The thing that really sucked
| was that I was a high preforming employee, I canceled a
| promotion review to give notice. 7 years in and some jerkoff
| needs your seat and 6 weeks isn't appreciated. The got me
| reconnected after a couple days and then my manager never
| talked to me again. that was a long three weeks there at the
| end.
| indymike wrote:
| > But now when I "give notice" and they don't even let me try
| to work the next 2 weeks, I'm grateful.
|
| Life hack: Put your resignation in writing with a date in the
| future. In many states, if the employer attempts to move the
| termination date (without compensation), they will award wages
| until your resignation date... I've used this twice, and in
| both cases, I was sent home, but HR told the manager that any
| severance would start after my resignation date which in one
| case led to a really awkward call when my manager tried to get
| me to come back for a month after having me pack up my desk and
| leave.
| cassac wrote:
| I don't know they'd have to award you wages, but the only
| alternative to that would be firing you. Some might try to do
| that out of spite but it would be far worse for them than
| you.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| They'd usually have to prove they fired you with cause not
| because you said you quit.
|
| i.e. if you get caught stealing or are sexually harassing
| your co-workers, they can still fire you. They are not
| however required to let you work. They can revoke access
| and continue to pay, they can give you a package and
| terminate you employment. If you don't want to take the
| package, they can just walk you out of the building and
| terminate your employment two weeks later.
| cassac wrote:
| I'd guess most people, in the US at least, are employed
| at-will and could be fired right on the spot with no
| cause given. The problem with that though is you could
| turn around and file for unemployment which might end up
| increasing the associated taxes for them with increased
| headaches.
|
| I'd agree that most reasonable HR departments wouldn't
| let it go that far but some people like to play dirty
| irrespective of the costs.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| If you put in 2 weeks notice and you get fired on the
| spot its a slam dunk un employment claim. (assuming you
| can show that yes you gave notice and you weren't fired
| first) Most places would rather just pay you the 2 weeks
| if they really dont want you around than deal with
| unemployment. Lots of corporate environments firing
| people takes more than 2 weeks anyways, and you would
| just be creating extra work for HR for what would seem
| like no reason.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Unemployment is like $350 - $550/week.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean by "slam dunk un employment
| claim"? Do you mean you'd be able to get unemployment
| benefits (which come from the state, not your company)?
| Or do you mean you'd have a claim against the company?
|
| As a former lawyer (US-based), my sense is the first is
| true, and the second is not. As long as they're not
| canning you for being in a protected class, they can fire
| at-will employees whenever they want.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Yes, but you generally can't get unemployment for
| quitting. You have to get laid off or fired by the
| company to be eligible for unemployment benefits. It's
| especially easy to get benefits if you were fired without
| cause. There's no legal protection in cause/or no cause,
| but it will be the difference between an easy
| unemployment claim and a contested one.
|
| Most employers get their unemployment insurance rate set
| by the number of people that require the service just
| like any other insurance. When an employee can prove they
| quit (probably before you started 'performance managing'
| for a with cause termination), then it makes it much
| simpler to just let them leave then to do the paperwork,
| eat the unemployment insurance adjustment, risk a
| possible 'wrongful termination' lawsuit (regardless of
| merit or ability to win).
|
| Transferring their work and letting them dick around for
| a week is going to be considerably less work and risk
| then terminating them before the date. So as a general
| rule, when you give advance notice, in writing, there is
| a very good chance that they'll just let you leave on the
| day.
|
| Additionally, if you fire everyone immediately when they
| give notice, then people stop giving notice all together,
| so you just come in some days and are a person short.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Dumb question: why would you get severance if you resigned?
| indymike wrote:
| For the right to call me about past business, and a
| guarantee I will help.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Because of resigned effective of a future date. Any
| termination of employment before then is either a with-
| cause firing or a layoff where severance is required.
|
| Seems like an interesting idea. Give as much notice as
| possible and then see if they bench you until then.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Any termination of employment before then is either a
| with-cause firing or a layoff where severance is
| required.
|
| If they're paying you until that future resignation date,
| it's not a firing or a layoff, is it? The part that your
| employer is responsible for is your salary, not providing
| you with things to do.
| mecsred wrote:
| I people usually don't keep getting paid after a
| "termination of employment"
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| Severance is often paid (in at-will employment
| jurisdictions) just as a way to get the departing
| employee to sign a document agreeing not to sue, and
| possibly agreeing not to disparage.
|
| I'm not an employment lawyer (but am a former lawyer),
| and I would think that if someone said they were going to
| quit way in the future, and was then fired, they would
| have a pretty poor case if they tried to sue. The company
| would credibly claim that it was not based on
| impermissible discrimination or retaliation, but was just
| because they assumed the employee would massively slack
| off.
|
| There's also the question of damages -- if you were about
| to quit anyway, then your damages would be relatively
| small because it would only be the salary that would have
| been paid between the time you were escorted out and the
| time you planned to leave. It could be $100k if you're
| very well-paid, but that pales in comparison to what you
| would get in a discrimination lawsuit (which is what
| severance agreements are seeking to avoid).
|
| It would also be relatively difficult to find a lawyer
| who would take a case with a relatively small amount on
| the table, and an uphill battle in terms of proof.
| ghaff wrote:
| I would definitely want to talk to an employment lawyer
| familiar with the laws of the local jurisdiction before
| making any assumptions.
| refulgentis wrote:
| This isn't accurate, might have worked in one-off situations
| but, given at-will employment, this was at best a confused HR
| employee trying to help, not a legal conclusion. Note the
| obvious edge cases
| indymike wrote:
| > given at-will employment, this was at best a confused HR
| employee trying to help
|
| US centric advice: Most states will automatically award
| unemployment to the employee if they are termed before the
| resignation date. In some cases, a dated resignation when
| combined with an email chain about "how to get rid of them"
| it will turn into a genuine legal risk. Most US HR people
| will advise to just respect a reasonable resign date or
| offer a severance agreement to avoid risk. Source: aside
| doing it myself with a couple of employers, since then I've
| owned four companies and dealt with the aftermath from
| managers who think they are smarter than HR.
| robocat wrote:
| If it works, you win $$: why be so negative? Maybe some
| downsides if they make you work longer, but that is a
| judgement call to make depending on context.
|
| Factually it worked twice for them, versus your theories
| that it shouldn't work.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Comments are packed full of 'em, downside of
| preannouncing you're quitting months from now is you get
| 0
| kqr wrote:
| > Life hack: Put your resignation in writing with a date in
| the future.
|
| This sounds like such a neat way to deal with it. I wonder if
| it's legally valid in my jurisdiction (in Sweden.) I have
| never heard of it but yet again, why not?
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I always do that, draft the email to my boss and hr, walk
| into my bosses office, send the email saying:
|
| "I will be ending my employment with ${company} effective
| ${two_weeks_from_now}. I'm giving ${X} weeks notice to
| afford ${company} the opportunity to transition my work and
| knowledge to other employees as they see fit. I appreciate
| the opportunity ${company} has given me and wish you all
| the best as you continue to advance ${company mission}"
|
| Then I say, "I'm quitting, my last day will be in
| ${two_weeks_from_now}" and there's already a record of how
| that conversation came about. No one's going to walk out
| and say they fired you and you're pretending to quit or
| strange shit like that.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Termination dates are in the employment contract 99.9% in
| Sweden. At most you'll get a "lmao, no".
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| Notice periods are, as far as I know and in my
| experience, the _minimum_ number of weeks or months to
| give notice. Nothing is stopping you from giving notice
| earlier.
| psychphysic wrote:
| The question is can an employer truncate it?
|
| It seems like you could really harm a company by forcing
| them to pay you to nothing if because they don't want to
| start someone on a project they will definitely leave
| half way through.
| eckesicle wrote:
| No it's not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The date at
| which your resignation starts to count is the date that
| your employer learns of your intent to leave. You are
| however free to agree on an arbitrary date with them as
| your last day.
|
| It's not the date you put in the letterhead. That would be
| insane.
| indymike wrote:
| > It's not the date you put in the letterhead. That would
| be insane.
|
| Clarification: I put in the body of the letter the
| effective date I will be leaving. Something like:
|
| "My final day will be December 12, 2018."
|
| The date in the letterhead has nothing to do with it.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _No it's not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The
| date at which your resignation starts to count is the
| date that your employer learns of your intent to leave._
|
| "or anywhere else" is an exceedingly broad assertion. For
| Canada:
|
| > _Yes, you do have to give notice of your resignation in
| Canada. The common law imposes a duty to provide notice
| of resignation on all employees._
|
| > _However, you don't have to give two weeks' notice of
| your resignation in Canada_ per se. _Rather, you have to
| give a "reasonable" amount of notice of your resignation,
| which may be more or less than two weeks' notice. The
| amount of reasonable notice an employee has to give will
| depend on their specific circumstances, as discussed
| below._
|
| > _The obligation to give reasonable notice is a general
| common law obligation of all employees. In_ Sure-Grip
| Fasteners Ltd. v. Allgrade Bolt & Chain Inc., _[1993] 45
| C.C.E.L. 276 (Ont. Gen. Div.) at pages 281-282, Justice
| Chapnik found:_ [...]
|
| * https://duttonlaw.ca/do-you-have-to-give-two-weeks-
| notice-in...
|
| During the 'notice period' you still have a job, though
| the employer may tell you to simply stay at home (and
| rescind access, _etc_ ).
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| I think that's not what was meant. You _can_ hand in your
| notice earlier than contractually necessary. If your
| notice period was 2 months, and you let your employer
| know, that you are quitting in 3 months, that's perfectly
| legal. Its not changing the date of the document, it's
| about the date of your intended departure you mention
| within it.
| [deleted]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| In the U.S., an employee that resigns is not entitled to
| severance. In this case, you would only have received
| severance if you had been terminated before your resignation
| date. If they sent you home but continued to pay you for that
| month, you would not have been entitled to severance.
| indymike wrote:
| This is correct, unless there's a reason why they should...
| and if they are smart, the severance will include setting
| the term date to the severance date.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. The only circumstances
| in which a resigning employee is entitled to severance is
| if they have an employment contract entitling then to
| severance in the event of a voluntary departure.
|
| Even executives don't get that. A run of the mill
| employee definitely won't.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| What state is this? This would only apply here if you already
| had a contract for a fixed term. Most employment here is at
| will and so this won't work.
|
| Everyone else: please talk to a lawyer in your state familiar
| with employment law before banking on this.
| 93po wrote:
| One time I gave 4 week notice and my lead HR person (~2000
| person company) who I have never spoke to before called me very
| upset and yelled at me for several minutes about how rude I was
| being by doing 4 weeks instead of 2.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I completely agree. The part about infecting people with my
| attitude is especially relevant. It's normal that we talk. And
| when they ask "why?", it feels awkward. If I tell them all the
| reasons, it will influence their perception of their situation
| (which might be quite positive) and I prefer not to do that.
| But if I avoid answering, I will be perceived as dishonest or
| hiding something. So usually I invent some excuse so that
| nobody feels bad.
| itronitron wrote:
| I once shared an office with someone in order to take on
| their work because they were retiring early. I got/had to
| hear about all of their gripes with our employer and within
| six months I was in complete agreement with them :)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > But if I avoid answering, I will be perceived as dishonest
| or hiding something. So usually I invent some excuse so that
| nobody feels bad.
|
| So you avoid the perception of being dishonest and hiding
| something by actually being dishonest and hiding something?
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't need to lie. There are plenty of generic reasons
| you can give why you're leaving that probably even have the
| virtue of having some truth to them. (Was time to make a
| change.) No reason to get into a blow-by-blow of why now
| and what all the things that made the situation less and
| less tolerable were.
|
| It's not lying. It just not telling the truth, the whole
| truth, and nothing but the truth.
|
| ADDED: Companies can also obviously be in a place where at
| least some of your reasons are so blindingly obvious they
| don't need to be stated.
| brookst wrote:
| This is the way. You can be honest, and authentic,
| without running down the company or your coworkers.
| projectazorian wrote:
| "Love it here, just looking for a new challenge" or "Love
| it here, but I couldn't pass this opportunity up" have
| gotten me far. You can always be more honest behind
| closed doors if you want.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| I'm impressed (and a bit envious) you were able to say
| that first part. I wish I'd worked at place where I could
| honestly say the same.
|
| Every place I've left, the best I could muster with a
| straight face was a bland tautological platitude --
| something like, "Oh, you know, just going to do something
| different."
|
| I don't exactly have tons of experience quitting jobs or
| ending relationships, but I've never understood the
| relentless navel-gazing of "why" that seems to come along
| with most people quitting their jobs. And, besides,
| what's the point of expounding on how things could be
| better (in an "exit interview" or otherwise), when
| everyone knows all that feedback will have no impact?
|
| It seems to me the practical part of the conversation is
| simply, "I'm ending our relationship." And then --
| everyone moves forward from there.
| projectazorian wrote:
| > And, besides, what's the point of expounding on how
| things could be better (in an "exit interview" or
| otherwise), when everyone knows all that feedback will
| have no impact?
|
| Many employers do listen to exit interview feedback, and
| if themes are consistent, changes do get made. Have seen
| it happen more than once, although it usually takes
| multiple departures or the loss of a key person.
|
| Of course not all employers are like this, but if you're
| willing to give yours the benefit of the doubt, it can be
| worth paying it forward to your colleagues by giving your
| feedback in a professional way.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's mostly just a ritual. After you've gotten past
| whatever pressures and inducements your management offers
| (or not) for you to stay, the exit interview is you
| pretending to seriously answer the "why" and HR
| pretending to care.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I've never given less than a month's notice, and the notice has
| always been tied to the end date of whatever project or current
| workload I happen to have. My direct bosses have always
| expressed appreciation for this, but then again, I've only ever
| left a company once because I was dissatisfied working there.
|
| Culture and relationships are a two way street, and you are
| always responsible for your own part in building it. You might
| have a shit boss or work for a shit company and it's not going
| to end well, and if that's the case and there's nothing you can
| do, then all that's left is to look out for yourself. I
| wouldn't ever advocate for that to be the default position,
| though.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Question: Are you in Europe? I get the feeling this sort of
| thing is much more common there (or at least "not the US")
| ysavir wrote:
| Maybe not. I'm in the US and this is generally my practice
| as well. Unless I'm dying to get out or have other
| circumstances encouraging a quick exit, I offer a month at
| least. Sometimes more.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Not the parent, but I have always given long notice periods
| in the US. Typically 3-4 weeks.
|
| In all cases, they have been appreciated, and it gave me
| the opportunity to wrap up projects.
|
| In several cases(the previous three jobs), I have been
| retained in a 1099 capacity at rates that far exceed my
| salary(3-5x) for consulting on projects and ongoing
| expertise of archaic systems. Typically that arrangement
| winds down to very little work after the first year.
|
| In all of these scenarios, my manager was aware I was
| looking for months before I put in my notice. My reason for
| moving is a combination of environment(outgrown the scale
| of the company, or looking to relocate) and pay.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Nope, midwest US. Two weeks notice is social etiquette as a
| minimum to avoid burning a bridge, so to speak. There's
| nothing against giving further notice.
|
| Thinking back on it, though, I would absolutely not give
| further notice if I was only doing "busy" work (as someone
| suggested elsewhere). I try to maintain a good relationship
| with my employers as a professional courtesy. Putting out
| notice beyond what active work I have would, I think, send
| a signal that I'm looking to collect an easy pay check and
| disconnect. Lining up my resignation with my active work
| sends a message that I am still invested in contributing to
| my team's success, and that's a good way to have people be
| more than happy to give you referrals or networking
| opportunities in the future.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I absolutely loathe the modern corporate culture[...]
|
| If you've been on the other side of that - having employees
| sabotage or steal in the process of leaving - you'd at least
| understand it. Not many people do that, but it's always the bad
| apples who ruin it for everybody.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > and I have to say, I think it's not been appreciated, not
| even once.
|
| This mirrors my experience, but for one time where my manager
| had been a friend for some years prior to me reporting to him.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I gave several months notice one time. They didn't use any of
| the time to onboard someone else, and afterwards talked about
| how I left them high and dry.
|
| From now on I'm giving 2 weeks and getting the fuck out of
| there.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm doing wrap up now, and I've only just started job hunting.
| You don't have to tell them that's what you're doing.
| pfranz wrote:
| I completely agree. I've been asked to stay on an extra week or
| two and I think it was a terrible decision. Nobody really cared
| or paid attention in hand off meetings (I'd like to think
| careful documentation was later appreciated when someone had to
| take those things on later) and I was interested in moving on.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I've generally given a lot of notice as an IC, 2-3 months in
| some cases. and I have to say, I think it's not been
| appreciated, not even once.
|
| I personally think it's the right thing to do, not for the
| company, but for your colleagues. If staying longer can help
| your colleagues to take over your stuff, some will be grateful
| and will remember it if your paths cross again.
| lumost wrote:
| Something I realized. After you give notice, at most, the
| business needs about a week to decide what to do with the work
| you were handling. In tech, most projects can be deferred, and
| most services can go into KTLO.
|
| After the week is done to figure that stuff out - no one really
| cares about you anymore. There is likewise a tacit assumption
| that you won't deliver anything again (why would you?). As such
| it's usually best to let someone out the door after a week.
|
| Typically when I give notice, I simply state that the employer
| can do whatever over the next 2 weeks. 70% of the time, when
| given the choice, they will decide on a fast transition of 1
| week. There hardly is anything to do the second week.
| onion2k wrote:
| _After you give notice, at most, the business needs about a
| week to decide what to do with the work you were handling. In
| tech, most projects can be deferred, and most services can go
| into KTLO._
|
| Ideally, sure. In real life the employee needs to do a brain
| dump of handover documents because no one writes anything
| down.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| On the day I give notice, there is a bit if a shock and a
| "what are we gonna do now?" attitude. On the second day, word
| has got around and everyone wants to know where you're going,
| etc. On the third day, i brief whoever will take over my job.
| On the fourth day I am no longer invited to meetings or
| really have anything to do for the next several days until I
| leave.
|
| In practice, even two weeks is more than enough for your role
| to be taken over by someone. I really see little value in
| giving more notice that that for either the employer or
| employee.
| [deleted]
| locusofself wrote:
| Totally dumb advice. I've tried to be the good guy several times
| and give my current employer a month of my time to crunch and
| write docs or whatever. It's usually stressful and doesn't make a
| huge impact in the end. Better to just offer 2 weeks and move to
| new role as fast as you can. Your new employer usually wants you
| to start ASAP, and they are what matters now that you already
| made the choice to move on.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| Coming from EU, one month notice both ways is the norm (a lot of
| people get hired on temporary contracts 6/12 months before
| becoming full time employees)
|
| Only once I've given ~ 3 months notice simply because I didn't
| think I was a good fit in the company long term and I didn't have
| anything lined up yet.
| yobert wrote:
| I gave 2 years notice at a software job I'd been at for 10 years.
| It was great! I said I was going to go do something new when I
| turned 30. The boss appreciated it and we had a lot of time to
| adjust the direction of the company in the meantime.
|
| This was at a very small, tight-knit place though. I'd never do
| this at a big company.
| edandersen wrote:
| Nobody gave this person this advice because it is bad advice,
| period.
|
| Give your contractual notice, whether thats 2 weeks in the US, or
| a month or 3 months in the UK or whatever and be prepared to
| actually leave at the end of it.
|
| Any other advice is actually harmful to the majority of people.
| notservile wrote:
| There is no contractual notice required to be given in the US.
|
| 72 hours notice in some states if you want to be paid out for
| everything they owe you on the spot.
|
| But otherwise I give them about as much notice as they would
| give me: at 4:59PM on Friday I send an email to HR informing
| them that today was my last day.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Can your contract state otherwise?
| JohnFen wrote:
| IANAL, but I don't think that a contract can force you to
| give a particular amount of notice no matter what (I think
| that would be considered "unconscionable"). But I imagine a
| contract could specify that if you don't give a certain
| amount of notice, you won't get severance or similar.
| addaon wrote:
| Disagree with this on several levels.
|
| One specific challenge comes as tech companies push more and more
| compensation to bonuses and other must-be-present-to-win
| approaches (RSUs, etc). If you leave shortly before a trigger
| date, you've essentially been working the entire previous year at
| a discount, since your contractual bonus for the time you worked
| will never be paid. If you continue significantly past a cliff,
| then your transition time is being worked at a discount.
|
| If you give significant notice, one of two things can happen. If
| you give notice before the cliff, planning to depart after the
| cliff (that is, maximizing the percentage of the time worked
| where the company actually pays you what they agreed you were
| worth), the company can accelerate the departure schedule and
| avoid paying out; if you give notice after the cliff, you're
| inherently volunteering for discount work for a company you
| didn't even want to work for at full price!
|
| In practice, I think at this point that companies that choose to
| put a large amount of compensation behind a cliff this way are
| responsible for understanding the consequences of that choice. If
| you pay 30% or my annual comp, and that of all my peers, on
| Monthuary 15th, then you should assume that you will get a
| cluster of resignations on Monthuary 16th each year, that those
| departures will happen in the standard two weeks, and that
| because they are clustered you will be unlikely to hand off as
| easily and fully as if they were scattered. But hey, you managed
| to screw some of my coworkers who had to leave mid-year for
| family reasons out of a few bucks!
| gnicholas wrote:
| I've heard of employers paying signing bonuses to make up for
| the fact that an employee is leaving a partially-accrued bonus
| on the table at the employer he's leaving.
| addaon wrote:
| Sure, getting your bonus bought out provides some superficial
| relief for this problem. But if your next employer thinks
| that your value is high enough to buy out your bonus, they
| likely think that independent of the current date (modulo a
| special case where your value /now/ is significantly higher
| than it would be in another quarter or whatever). Your next
| employer gets no value from the fact that you're leaving
| previous money on the table; if they offer to buy out a
| bonus, stay, get that bonus, then remind them that they
| thought you had that additional value and you'll take at as a
| signing bonus now, thank you very much.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but it could just be a way for a
| new employer to say "we have a policy of treating people
| fairly. We know that some new hires are going to lose out
| on bonuses depending when they join, so we have a policy of
| compensating these new hires for this loss".
|
| I wouldn't want to start off with a new employer by
| negotiating for a bonus buyout and then staying long enough
| to get my original bonus (and expecting the buyout anyway).
| I would be interested to know if anyone has done this
| successfully. If I thought I had the upper hand in
| negotiations, I'd just ask for more pay, or a signing bonus
| independent of my foregone bonus.
| addaon wrote:
| If an employer offers a bonus buyout during negotiations,
| that's a straight-up offer of more compensation, in the
| form of a signing bonus. It's hard to come up with
| scenarios where an employer would offer you a certain
| total compensation, and then revoke that offer because a
| different, previous company paid you a bonus. Would you
| expect your employer to reduce your compensation if you
| refinanced your mortgage, in the name of fairness, since
| that portion of your salary was "intended" to cover
| housing costs? Compensation is about estimation of value
| (expected to be) delivered vs costs (expected to be)
| incurred, in the presence of highly asymmetric
| information. Previous bonuses might give nice framing for
| certain points during the negotiation, but that's just
| storytelling; the real negotiation doesn't care about
| them, and only slightly cares about start date in most
| circumstances.
| jefftk wrote:
| Say the company hiring you agreed to pay relocation
| expenses from NYC to SF. If they then learned you were
| actually already living in SF they wouldn't just give you
| the money.
| addaon wrote:
| If the company went through the approval chain and got
| everyone to sign off on you being worth $comp + $relo,
| and you're value isn't effected by not choosing to $relo
| (because, in this case, you're already there), it should
| be pretty trivial to get everyone to approve a change to
| call that $comp + $signing_bonus since everyone involved
| already agreed to spend that portion of their budget on
| you. The case this doesn't apply is if their assessment
| of your value changes because they no longer trust you as
| much -- which does hint at an underlying rule of "even
| during a negotiation, don't be a dick" -- but the failure
| risk here is that you're providing symmetric access to
| the information that you're an asshole they might not
| want to work with, not that you asked for the
| compensation to be categorized differently.
|
| So, yeah, I definitely have never solicited a bonus
| buyout and then done a bait-and-switch. But I've never
| actually solicited a bonus buyout -- I negotiate in terms
| of compensation I receive, not labels on it. I've had
| companies offer me bonus buyouts before, sometimes quite
| significant, and I've always taken that as a direct
| indication of their assessment of my value, not as
| something specific to the time of year.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What you're doing sounds fair. My reading of the upthread
| discussion was that someone who had asked for a bonus
| buyout should delay their departure until they could
| double-dip. That would be a huge red flag to me, if I
| were a new employer. But if it's all just part of comp,
| there's no specific issue.
|
| Of course, the new company can say "you get X signing
| bonus if you join this calendar year, and x/2 signing
| bonus if you join next calendar year, since time is of
| the essence".
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The most important thing is not to give a lot of notice when you
| quit, or to give a crap about how much notice you give them at
| all. It's when. If at all possible, you should give notice at or
| slightly beyond the first of the month. That way, when you leave,
| you will most likely retain your benefits through the rest of the
| month.
|
| If your last day is say, the 28th, and you don't start a new job
| til the 2nd, then you're gonna be without benefits for the entire
| month.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| Sure, give lots of notice but be prepared to be walked out.
| brundolf wrote:
| Never thought about it this way, but makes a lot of sense. I gave
| 4 weeks notice one time because I had an especially large amount
| of knowledge-transfer to do, and it worked out about like
| described. And the "fun"/QOL aspects probably are reproducible at
| the right companies, now that I think about it
| sigstoat wrote:
| >"Everyone will thank you and appreciate you because you are
| really doing them a favor.
|
| working is a business transaction. "appreciation" comes in the
| form of cash. if you're not being offered more cash to stick
| around (beyond the wages that were clearly insufficient
| motivation), then no, they don't appreciate it.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Echoing all the previous statements, I gave two weeks' notice
| when I left my first real job (Microsoft), and they immediately
| walked me out the door. In this case they weren't jerks about
| it-- my manager even apologized to me and said if it was up to
| him they'd've let me stay, but said it was absolutely iron-clad
| policy that he couldn't change-- but yeah, giving _even more_
| notice than that seems to be advice that could only come from
| someone tremendously naive who has never actually worked in tech.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The article is so idealistic that I'd call it delusional.
|
| Rule 1: Know exactly what your employer's policies and past
| practices are. Ditto local culture. There is ~zero chance that
| you actually are Mr./Ms. Special, who your employer will happily
| treat differently.
|
| (Exception: If you have to leave for an extremely sympathetic
| and/or involuntary reason - fatal cancer diagnosis, drafted into
| army, etc. - that _may_ actually get special treatment. Even
| then, such treatment is far more likely at smaller firms, _if_
| management cares about maintaining a "good guy" reputation.)
|
| Rule 2: If you have some latitude, be considerate with your
| timing. Giving notice right before the big crunch or busy season
| will endear you to no one.
|
| Rule 3: _Never_ assume that your employer is going to be nice
| about it. Ditto for them being rational about it, unless
| currently-in-place management has a long and distinguished
| history of that.
| bostik wrote:
| > _There is ~zero chance that you actually are Mr. /Ms.
| Special, who your employer will happily treat differently._
|
| Except when you are.
|
| When I turned in my notice (in writing), I noted that according
| to my contract my notice period was X days, but that I wanted
| to ensure a proper handoff and would voluntarily extend my
| notice period to X+Y days. The employer was happy to accept
| X+Y, without arguing. HR even stated that they appreciated me
| doing it.
|
| Then again, I'm not in the US.
| [deleted]
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Reading the comments in this thread really feeds into my bias
| that worker rights in the US are ... n't? I vividly remember a
| job posting from last year that listed '15 allowed sick days' as
| a benefit. What does that even mean?
|
| In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both
| parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For
| IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months. This gives both parties
| ample time to adapt.
| lifefeed wrote:
| American worker rights are very low compared to Europe. But in
| certain industries, such as software, our benefits are in line
| with global averages.
| 0xBDB wrote:
| "What does that even mean?"
|
| It means you get 15 paid days a year to be sick. Beyond that,
| you have a certain number by law (I think 60) which you can
| take unpaid without risk of being fired. After that, sickness
| is theoretically grounds for termination, but very few large
| employers would do that because of the bad publicity. Also most
| IT workers here have long-term disability insurance for 'free'
| from their employers, meaning that they're still making 50 or
| 60 percent of their usual total comp for as long as they're
| sick after being fired.
|
| "In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both
| parties when signing the initial contracts to start working.
| For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months."
|
| I will gladly take a capped number of paid sick days to be able
| to leave in 2 weeks on good terms, and whenever I want
| otherwise. I will also take the lower unemployment rate that
| comes as a result of employers being unafraid to hire because
| they can easily fire. People seem to think labor flexibility is
| purely for the benefit of the employer. Not so. Short notice
| periods _are_ a worker right, one Americans have and Europeans
| don 't.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Are things really as bad as they sound online?
|
| No, online rhetoric bears only a passing resemblance to
| reality. Especially on HN, where most folks these days get
| unlimited vacation and work less than 40 actual hours per week.
| If you're in a low skill blue collar job you will definitely
| struggle more than someone in the skilled trades. And if you
| went deeply in debt because someone convinced you that a four
| year degree in business would pay for itself, I'm sorry.
| aplusbi wrote:
| You are correct, the US has very few rights for workers, at
| least federally. Different states have different work
| protection laws, California has a lot of well known work
| protection laws.
|
| 49 states out of 50 are what are known as "at will employment"
| states (Montana is the only exception). "At will" employment
| means that the worker or the employer can terminate employment
| at any time with no notice. There are some restrictions on
| this, for example an employer can't fire someone because of
| their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Additionally there
| are laws about how larger companies have to handle mass
| layoffs.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| >you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when
| signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs,
| the standard is 2-3 months. This gives both parties ample time
| to adapt.
|
| That sounds like a nightmare to me. Sometimes I want to quit
| immediately. I should be able to rather than stay in a
| miserable job for 2-3 months.
| SuperCuber wrote:
| my contract has a month notice, but if I don't work then they
| don't have to pay me. One month notice is pretty standard in
| my country, but the wording also gives me an effective way of
| "no notice" quitting, obviously that's far from the norm here
| so it burns quite a lot of bridges.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| You can, you just sacrifice the salary you'd otherwise of
| received
| twobitshifter wrote:
| At my last job I gave a month to upper management and two weeks
| for those that I was supervising. This let management come up
| with a plan on how to reshuffle roles to fill the gap. I also
| created a transition document listing my responsibilities,
| suggested surrogates, and current statuses of projects I was
| managing and involved in. Why did I do that? Not really to get
| something out of it in the future, but because I didn't want to
| leave a mess for my coworkers.
| waboremo wrote:
| A transition document seems reasonable. Anything more would be
| straight up people pleasing.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is incredibly dependent on your working relationship with
| your employer, and even if you think you know... sometimes
| they'll surprise you.
|
| If you work at a very large company (hundreds of employees) do
| not do this. Even with a good working relationship terminating a
| quitter on the spot can often be security policy. I've quit a job
| and wasn't even allowed to touch my computer, just walked right
| out the door (before you give notice, back up your personal files
| and build your portfolio if they're on there).
| dreen wrote:
| Don't know about US, but I don't think anyone can actually force
| you to come to work after youve given notice. The most they can
| do in UK is not pay you for the notice period. And since the only
| reference they can later give you is "they worked here", working
| through your notice period is kinda optional.
| Simulacra wrote:
| When I worked for a Microsoft contractor in 2015, the owners took
| it very personally whenever someone wanted to leave. If you gave
| any notice they would accept it without question, but a couple of
| days later security would suddenly show up and escort you out of
| the building. That taught me that when I do give notice to
| prepare to be let go immediately, have everything wrapped up and
| ready to go.
| proxyon wrote:
| This is such bad advice. My last career move I 2Xed my income.
| This guy is advising me to lose thousands of dollars so I can be
| more well liked at my previous company and stick around for
| longer? Cmon.
| klyrs wrote:
| I gave 4 months notice once, at a 15-person company where I was
| the lead of a 3-person team responsible for everything technology
| at the company. My boss was the sort who would tell people to
| leave immediately, and happily pay the 2 weeks they intended of
| notice. But I was critical to the functioning of the company, and
| I was able to hire and onboard a successor. I continued
| consulting part-time for a while past the end of my employment,
| it was good for everybody. I've never worked at a job where I
| would afford the company such a luxury of my time.
| user-one1 wrote:
| This is terrible advice, the company will never give you a heads
| up if they are going to fire you. Do what's best for you. Keeping
| a good relationship with your current employer comes second.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Not only will they not give you a heads up, they'll outright
| lie to you about lay-offs right until the moment they happen.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| The article is precisely about how the extended notice period
| is good for the employee, not the employer.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The company doesn't care, but your manager and you team might.
| It is maintaining those relationships that works to your
| benefit in the future. Burning bridges just because you can is
| a pretty reliable way of limiting your future career prospects,
| at least in your local area. Word gets around.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Would the company give you a lot of notice if they decided to
| eliminate your role? If so, extend them the same courtesy, if you
| can. Chances are, most companies wouldn't.
| ppljudge wrote:
| A note on the last paragraph about being a "lazy engineer": this
| shouldn't be a factor. Being lazy is subjective and the same
| engineer can be seen differently depending on the management,
| team, moment, etc.
| enginaar wrote:
| I've given a small e-commerce company 1 year notice. It was the
| best year of my professional life.
|
| I've given 2 weeks notice at a large corporate, they showed me
| the door next day.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Contrary to some opinions here, I think this is very good advice.
|
| I am always giving as much notice as I can. And also try to
| finish my projects and accommodate my employer/client as much as
| I can at the end of the project.
|
| Regardless how unprofessionally they may act, I resolve to always
| act professionally myself.
|
| I think it is more about the attitude rather than simple
| cost/benefit calculation.
|
| But even if you are just looking at cost/benefit, after two
| decades of doing this I am finally seeing people noticing and
| coming back to me. I have my past bosses bringing new work to me,
| I have my colleagues spreading information about me by word of
| mouth. I have CEOs of unknown companies reach out to me because
| they learned about me from somebody who worked with me in the
| past.
|
| Maybe you will not get noticed when you are junior level but when
| you get a bit more exposed position it starts becoming more and
| more important.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Giving notice? Be ready to be walked out of the building, which I
| believe would be as likely as the Pollyanna scenario outlined in
| the OP.
|
| {In which case the part about 'get benefits longer' goes out the
| window.}
| geocrasher wrote:
| This article assumes that you are working for sane people. I left
| a job after 9 years. I gave 30 days notice. The reason I was
| leaving? My manager was micromanaging me and threatening me
| daily.
|
| I felt the obligation to give longer than 2 weeks notice because
| I've been there for so long and was a key employee. Instead of
| appreciating it, the manager decided that I needed to source,
| higher, and train my replacement within that 30 days. And then
| they actually made my life even worse. I ended up quitting two
| weeks in. I couldn't take it.
|
| So yes if you have a wonderful work environment and people who
| are totally normal and are glad you are there, then giving 30
| days notice is great. But if you have that environment, why would
| you be leaving?
| nick__m wrote:
| >But if you have that environment, why would you be leaving?
| One possible reason would be: you want to do something else
| because you are bored (ex: you are tired of transforming
| baroque rules designed by bussines analysts into code) and you
| don't work in a company where you can transfer laterally.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Yeah, I said that somewhat halfheartedly. Brain foggy. I'm
| just glad my words came out legible.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Will a company give you notice when they fire you? Especially if
| it's a toxic company? No.
|
| You don't reciprocate (as long as you're okay with burning some
| bridges - which should be fine with above criteria).
| lmarcos wrote:
| Even though I know OP lives in US: in Europe you get written
| down the notice period on your contract. If you decide to quit
| or if your company decides to fire you, both parties have to
| honor the notice period (usually between 1-3 months).
| lannisterstark wrote:
| I personally am okay with the American model tbf.
|
| When I want to quit immediately, I don't want to stay
| miserable in the same job for 1-3 months. 3 months would be
| insane for me. As long as it works both ways (I can quit
| whenever, and you can fire me whenever) - it's fine.
|
| Acceptable. Preferred even.
| philwelch wrote:
| They'll often pay severance, which is the part of the job the
| employee materially benefits from.
| robomartin wrote:
| I think commenters might not be aware of potential legal
| consequences of various approaches to quitting your job.
| Employers might no option but to get you out the door
| immediately. It depends on the domain. IANAL so I will not
| comment on specifics only to say that, as an employer, I've had
| to consult our attorney in cases where we were working on
| government/aerospace programs.
|
| On the other side of the equation, years ago I had one of our
| engineers tell me he was starting a business and would likely
| have to leave in three months (over the summer). As much as I
| didn't like the idea of him leaving, I thought it was a fantastic
| move for him. I am 100% pro-entrepreneurship and fully supported
| his decision. In fact, during the that summer --the last three
| months he worked for us-- we all went out of our way to help him
| in any way we could. I wanted to personally make sure he launched
| into his new business with a solid footing.
|
| As a result the transition was beautiful. We even threw a party
| in celebration just before he left. We still keep in touch. He is
| doing well. After he left he was happy to come over a couple of
| times and help resolve things we missed during the transition.
|
| If you treat people like human beings and show them you truly
| care for their wellbeing everything is better. Companies come and
| go. People, and their relationships, tend to stay. If sometime in
| the future I closed-down my business and needed a job, I know I
| could reach out to him and get hired if he needed help.
|
| I don't say this in a religious sense: Treat others the way you
| would like to be treated.
|
| To answer the obvious question: In the couple of cases where the
| attorneys said immediate release was required, we went way out of
| our way to explain why this had to be. We also provided a solid
| financial cushion in order to ensure the person leaving didn't
| jump into a vacuum. It sucks when legal-crap gets in the way of
| considerate, compassionate human relations. Sometimes you have no
| options on the table.
| glonq wrote:
| I actually regret spending a lot of time documenting the system
| and fixing critical bugs before leaving one of my jobs. The owner
| was a jerk and ended up screwing us over on final pay. If I
| hadn't been so professional, the system would have failed within
| a few weeks and he would have paid dearly for us to fix it.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| The posted article presents a naive point of view.
|
| In tech, it's very common for those who resign to be walked out
| of the building immediately.
|
| In corporate America, the idea that you'd give THEM more notice
| than they'd give YOU in the event of layoffs is one-sided.
|
| By all means, plan your exit carefully. Ensure your own security.
| If it's an amiable parting, try not to leave them in a lurch. But
| all of that is you being nice, not something you have to do. If,
| as is often the case, you're leaving because you're very unhappy
| with your situation, there's no point in prolonging it. Go.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, two weeks is customary in the US and most employers will
| either take you up on the offer or walk you out the door but
| pay for the two weeks anyway because it's not a lot of money in
| the grand scheme of things and it's just easier that way. (and
| if they weasel out of that two weeks pay it's not a lot of
| money from the employee side.) I did give 2x longer notice once
| and it ended up fine but wasn't really necessary.
|
| What is important is that if there are vesting dates and things
| like that, wait until those happen rather than assume employers
| will let you mean employed through notice periods, vacation
| days, etc.
|
| And, yes, there are doubtless circumstances where "I won't be
| working here as of next Monday" is probably the prudent
| approach.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Given the recent round of layoffs when employee access was
| terminated overnight with no warning or conversation, I think
| employees should treat the employers the same. Now, I am not
| saying you just stop showing up one fine day but I am merely
| saying that I would give my notice, do my 2 weeks and leave. I
| wont spend time writing any docs for knowledge transfer (been
| there done that and honestly no one cared) but I will try to wrap
| up stuff I was working on only because I usually care about what
| I do.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| > 2 weeks notice is the gold standard
|
| In the US...
|
| In most of the rest of the world 1 to 3 months is normal and
| expected.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Upon receiving notice of intent to leave, one of my previous
| employers would walk you out the door same day. In their
| judgment, removing quitters immediately was worth the loss of
| organizational knowledge and team planning challenges that
| resulted.
|
| Needless to say, their code was full of people papering over code
| no one understood anymore, duplicated features that interacted
| poorly, and so on.
| anon223345 wrote:
| Giving advanced notice has backfired every.single.time
| dbrueck wrote:
| I dunno... be careful with this advice - a long exit ramp can be
| shortened by the company, or they can make your life miserable
| during that time if they don't.
|
| I once worked at a place where notice was neither expected nor
| tolerated: the moment you decided to leave, you were done - a
| quick exit interview with HR, grab any personal items from your
| desk, and out the door you went. I think the time between
| informing my boss that I was quitting and permanently driving
| away was about half an hour.
|
| I don't know if I'd argue that their policy was "best", but there
| is some logic to it - once a person has decided to leave, they
| are often mentally already out the door anyway, and having them
| stick around can be a pretty big drain on everyone who is still
| there, especially with the tendency for some people to need to
| justify a decision in the eyes of other people. Some people can
| be really good about a long goodbye, while others will just sort
| of poison the well the whole time and drag down morale.
| theodore9dy wrote:
| Big fan of advice like this.
| repeek wrote:
| Lets assume you gave notice because you're moving to a new job.
| I have a hard time imagining a scenario where your new employer
| would be OK with a multi-month delay to your start.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I saw many times notice longer than 6 months; the record so far
| is more than 2 years, but these are special cases: - very high
| level people like VP level or above - 6 months during which they
| fully onboard a replacement - a former colleague that was past
| retirement age, but they had no replacement for him so they
| convinced him to stay longer (he gave 2 years notice) - my boss
| is on notice for retirement in more than 18 months from now (he
| can retire any day he wants, he was the age and he is meeting all
| criteria)
|
| But other than that, I don't recommend a notice longer than 1
| month, that is enough for almost any case.
| sage76 wrote:
| It's weird, in India, most companies have 2 month notice periods.
| Many have 3.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| There's no Field in the global Google doc Who To Hire for "they
| were nice and gave a lot of notice before quitting"
|
| +
|
| but I can see how giving a lot of notice will make your manager
| happy, and could lead to a job lead later in your career. It
| happened to me.
| baerrie wrote:
| The main issue is that even if you give them two weeks or more
| notice, they can let you go effective immediately leading to lost
| income. Depending on the company, giving no notice may actually
| be the better approach.
| autokad wrote:
| I completely disagree. in the long run, a company is not going to
| remember you gave them a lot of notice before leaving. your
| coworkers aren't likely to remember either, at least in terms of
| your ability to get references.
|
| at the same time giving a long notice has a lot of downsides.
| your offer can get rescinded and now you are either jobless or
| have a very awkward conversation. your managers in this time will
| not respect your time, they will pile on all the work no one else
| wanted. 'lets put so and so on call, they are leaving in a month
| anyways'.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Everyone thinks they're irreplaceable. I'm still honestly
| shocked my last company didn't collapse when I left. And yes
| with 2 weeks notice
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Nope. If you give a lot of notice before quitting "permanent
| employment" they will walk you out immediately.
|
| It's OK to give a few hints you will not renew a contract as long
| as you are clear that you still like them and plan to be friends.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Some firms will walk you out immediately, but many won't.
| Hopefully you know which kind you are working for.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| No, no, no, no a billion times no to this absolutely not no
|
| The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds your
| company will say "we accept your resignation effective
| immediately. Goodbye." Sometimes it's a blanket company policy to
| do this, sometimes it's because they know you're going to a
| competitor and they don't want you to start training for your new
| job, sometimes they were on the fence about you staying anyways.
|
| Do not do this ever end. There is a significant chance you will
| be instantly fired with no income for months. Don't.
| EliRivers wrote:
| _The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds your
| company will say "we accept your resignation effective
| immediately. Goodbye."_
|
| Genuine question; is this a US thing? I've never, ever seen
| this or heard of it happening. I don't think I've ever worked
| at a company that didn't state in the contract the notice
| period. I have seen companies decide they don't want that
| person on site anymore when someone quits, but they gave
| "gardening leave"; the person goes home and is effectively on
| holiday, paid as usual, for their notice period.
|
| _There is a significant chance you will be instantly fired
| with no income for months._
|
| US "at will" kind of thing? Must be.
| jjav wrote:
| > > The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds
| your company will say "we accept your resignation effective
| immediately. Goodbye."
|
| > Genuine question; is this a US thing?
|
| At least in California/Silicon Valley I have never seen or
| experienced such a thing in almost 30 years, so I can say
| confidently it is not common.
|
| Of course it _can_ happen, there are zero employee
| protections in the US. But it 's not common.
|
| People generally give 2 weeks notice and keep coming in to
| the office (pre-pandemic) for those two weeks to meet with
| others and help transfer knowledge, hang out, do farewell
| lunches etc. Only on the end of the last day is your account
| access revoked. That's the expected convention.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| US person here who has participated in a lot of online
| advice/mentoring forums. I've never once seen a tech company
| immediately "fire" someone who says they're resigning like
| the parent comment claims.
|
| The only exceptions I can think of were when people gave
| multiple months of notice that they were going to quit _and_
| already had declining performance due to e.g. unhappiness
| about the job. If you 're not performing well and you tell
| your employer that you're quitting in a few months, they're
| not really interested in giving you more paychecks to perform
| poorly. IMO, that's not exactly unreasonable either.
|
| Some companies will restrict the employee's access for the
| notice period and remove their work as a way of protecting
| company information from last-minute exfiltration (it happens
| a lot more than you'd think), but those employees are still
| paid during this time period. They're also obligated to
| answer questions and attend meetings about handoff, although
| in some cases this may amount to zero work.
|
| But no, it's not common for US tech companies to fire
| employees immediately for resigning. I don't know where the
| parent commenter got the idea that this is common.
| com2kid wrote:
| > US person here who has participated in a lot of online
| advice/mentoring forums. I've never once seen a tech
| company immediately "fire" someone who says they're
| resigning like the parent comment claims.
|
| I've seen it happen multiple times. Microsoft has a list of
| competitors that if you say you are going to work for them,
| your access to everything is immediately revoked.
|
| Managers at MS ask their employees to NOT SAY where they
| are going, so a proper off-boarding can take place.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I think this MIGHT work at a lot of smaller companies, but
| BIG tech companies tend to have a policy that you are a
| security risk as soon as you admit you're quitting. I
| suppose that falls under the umbrella of "working for a
| competitor"
|
| If you work for Microsoft (for example) pretty much EVERY
| tech company is a competitor of theirs because they have
| soooo many products and services.
|
| I saw this happen multiple times. You tell them you're
| leaving, and get escorted out by security. It's just not
| worth the risk for them.
| jefftk wrote:
| As a datapoint, this wasn't my experience at Google. Both
| times I left I gave notice and continued working (with
| full access) up until my negotiated last day. I don't
| remember anyone else getting escorted out for giving
| notice either; in management conversations it was always
| "how much longer can we convince them to stay around to
| facilitate a handoff", as this post discusses.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Anecdotally, this was not my experience at Microsoft in
| 2013 or Google in 2017.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I saw this happen multiple times. You tell them you're
| leaving, and get escorted out by security. It's just not
| worth the risk for them.
|
| Right, but did they cut off paychecks too?
|
| Being walked out of the office is equivalent to having
| your access removed like I said above. It doesn't mean
| the person is fired, it just means they don't have access
| to sensitive information.
|
| In practice, it's not really a big deal. If someone is
| going from a high-paid FAANG job to another high-paid
| FAANG job, the new company is usually eager to have you
| onboard. They can move your start date up. New
| compensation might be higher, too, so it's a net win.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| For some companies, when you give notice, you are flagged as
| a security risk. e.g., high chance you will take/steal IP.
| They will lock down your account, investigate your recent
| activities, and escort you out the door.
| gedy wrote:
| Happened to me last year, US startup said "let's wrap this up
| today and not drag it out".
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've never had it happen to me, though in particular
| circumstances I've seen it happen with other people. But not
| with an immediate termination, just walked out the door --
| they still got paid for the two weeks of notice they gave.
|
| Mostly it was so we could find out if any ostensibly
| automated tasks were in fact dependent on their ongoing work,
| while they were still reachable to answer questions. Perhaps
| related, this was all during my time as a unix admin, before
| I officially converted to a pure software development role.
| I've never personally seen a developer walked immediately out
| the door.
| tyfon wrote:
| Here in Norway, if they "let you go" immediately they still
| have to pay you for your contract notice time which is
| usually three months.
|
| There are some with six (my last job) or some with one. In my
| last job I was able to negotiate it down though as I wanted
| to quit earlier, it was the employer that wanted the six
| months in my contract. I was a key person in a start up bank
| so it's not a normal term to have.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Two of my friends did this and were immediately terminated
| and ushered out of the building by security. Both were very
| large companies in the US.
| gnicholas wrote:
| When their former colleagues found out what happened,
| didn't that cause them to think "I guess I'll give zero
| notice when I leave"? I would think this would be a net
| loss for most companies, due to the predictable effect it
| would have on subsequent departures/handoffs.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general AFAIK they'll typically pay out the customary
| two week notice period but take away your physical and
| computer access. (By no means universal but plenty of
| examples in this thread of where it happens.)
| gnicholas wrote:
| If so, then no problem, right? My reading of the "two
| friends" anecdote was that it was somehow a problem that
| they were canned on the spot. If you take away my
| physical/remote access, I can't even be asked to help
| with handoff.
| ghaff wrote:
| >If so, then no problem, right?
|
| I agree. It's the company's decision not to have you help
| with handoff. Not your problem. In fact, all the more
| reason to give two weeks notice as you'd be paid for
| doing nothing. (If they _were_ immediately fired with no
| payout, they 'd probably actually be eligible for
| unemployment though that's irrelevant if they have
| another job lined up.)
|
| I didn't take the same conclusion from the parent who
| didn't say anything about payments. In general, the norm
| would be to pay for two weeks--and maybe benefits to the
| end of the month. Someone can be terminated on the spot
| and still paid. (In general, they have to be paid out for
| accrued vacation time in any case.)
| scarmig wrote:
| I did this in my first job, giving two months of notice
| because it was the right thing to do for my colleagues and
| the company since it'd allow transition time and continuity.
|
| Then I was let go immediately. Which was an unexpected hit,
| though luckily the new company let me move my start date up.
| This was a tech company with around one hundred employees,
| and I was in good standing (my then manager later recruited
| me for a position at a different company).
|
| The best approach is to always give two weeks formal notice
| on a Friday morning, with the expectation that there's a
| chance you'll not be coming back on Monday. Best to do all
| the transition preparation work before that moment. If I've
| got a manager that I trust, I let them know with a bit more
| informal advance notice.
|
| ETA: on the other hand, I gave a month or two advance notice
| to Google, and they were happy to have me stay until my
| resignation date. My sense is that it's smaller companies
| that tend to do the immediate layoff.
| bityard wrote:
| No, it is not standard in the US.
|
| It generally only happens in exceptionally paranoid companies
| in sensitive industries or government organizations, which
| clearly exist but are already atypical workplaces.
|
| I've never seen the point in treating your employer as an
| adversary, as the OP of this thread clearly does.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Depends on the company but this is the default most client-
| facing jobs. It removes the possibility of a representative
| from passing along info to company clients and also
| eliminates the ability of reps to copy client data to take
| with them to new jobs.
| watsocd wrote:
| You are not technically fired. At the company I worked for,
| you are immediately walked to the door and you will not be
| able do any more work for the company. You will get your two
| weeks pay.
|
| I am not sure what happens when you try to give more than two
| weeks notice.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Am I missing something, or is this simple? You give the
| standard 2-week notice (or whatever your contract said), and
| they either ask you to hand off the work or say not to come to
| work. In maybe a smaller company that really wants you to stay
| longer, they might negotiate, but you don't have to accept.
| That's it.
|
| Idk what the alternative is. You tell them you want to quit in
| 2 months?
| ugh123 wrote:
| Sounds like you don't have a good relationship with your
| company and/or manager, and a lack of trust and thats whats
| driving your "no, no, no...".
|
| What i've learned is if I can't have some kind of conversation
| with my manager about possibly leaving or being unhappy in the
| role, unhappy with compensation, etc.. then that is partially
| on me having let that relationship sour.
|
| _Obviously_ a lot of this depends on the kind of manager you
| have, and situation with the company and loads of other
| factors.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This doesn't seem correct to me. I've been in the industry
| coming up on 20 years, and I've never seen a company send
| someone home after putting in notice of resignation. Perhaps it
| happened and I didn't know about it, I can't rule that out, but
| I know that the majority of cases have not worked this way.
|
| It's difficult to imagine why they would do this, since it
| would remove all the cushion that 2+ week period would provide
| the company for getting projects closed and documented, and
| bringing new people on to take over the employee's projects. It
| turns an unfortunate situation into an immediate crisis.
|
| I have seen (recently) a company say "please, we are begging
| you not to resign, would you like to take a sabbatical and we
| can talk about it when you're back?"
| locusofself wrote:
| > I've never seen a company send someone home after putting
| in notice of resignation.
|
| only for people really underperforming, or going to a
| competitor
| jjav wrote:
| > or going to a competitor
|
| Never say where you are going when you resign. That's
| standard practice (California, anyway) and nobody will ask.
| mcherm wrote:
| > I've been in the industry coming up on 20 years, and I've
| never seen a company send someone home after putting in
| notice of resignation.
|
| I have worked at a company that had a blanket policy of
| always doing this.
|
| Let me be clear: it was a dumb policy. It resulted in
| employees waiting until their last day to tell the company
| that they were planning to leave. It created all kinds of
| havoc with the lack of knowledge transfer and handoff. And if
| it was intended to prevent exiting employee from taking
| malicious actions, it was completely ineffective at that
| since the employee would know about the policy and would
| choose not to disclose that they were leaving until after the
| head undertaken any malicious action.
|
| But, I can say with some confidence that there are some tech
| companies that do this.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > there are good odds your company will say "we accept your
| resignation effective immediately. Goodbye."
|
| No, it's not common practice for tech companies to immediately
| fire anyone who resigns.
|
| A 2 week notice period is basically standard in the US tech
| industry. Some companies will take resignations and then remove
| the employee's access to sensitive material (code, chats,
| documentation, etc.) but require them to be available for 2
| weeks to participate in handoff conversations. They continue to
| be paid, however.
|
| It _does_ happen that companies will immediately fired people.
| However, companies rarely do it because they stand to lose a
| lot of transition information and it also poisons the well for
| any future resignations. It also sets a precedent for remaining
| employees to not give any notice, which means everyone is going
| to start quitting without any notice in the future. This is
| bad, and companies want to avoid it.
|
| Giving extremely long notice periods (e.g. "I plan to quit in a
| few months") could push the company to move up your departure
| date, though. The only time long departure notice is really
| warranted is for executives and truly key employees. Most
| people over-estimate their importance to their company and
| their project, IMO, but in some rare cases a single person can
| be instrumental to a company. It's nowhere near as common as
| people assume, though.
|
| In practice, it's not really a huge loss even if it does
| happen. Most people get raises when they change jobs and the
| new company is often willing to move start dates up if you ask.
| paulcole wrote:
| > No, it's not common practice for tech companies to
| immediately fire anyone who resigns
|
| It doesn't matter if it's a common practice. It's whether you
| want to deal with the uncommon outcome.
|
| The odds might be long but the stakes are high.
|
| Imagine in the United States giving 2 months notice thinking
| you're a good guy doing a mitzvah for your employer and then
| getting walked out the door and having to figure out COBRA
| insurance and getting by on unemployment and maybe a PTO
| payout if you're lucky.
| uriah wrote:
| It's a pretty common practice to walk people out the door
| immediately if they are known to be going to a competitor.
| They would still be paid for the 2 weeks though
| banannaise wrote:
| The response to this is "What you mean is that I'm fired, and I
| will be contacting the unemployment office immediately."
| bityard wrote:
| Most companies have a standard resignation policy, if you don't
| know what the policy is at your workplace, you should really
| find out. Usually, you can also get the big picture by watching
| other people who have resigned before you.
|
| I have worked at a company where the moment you signal your
| intention to resign, HR cuts you a check for your remaining
| PTO, your manager goes to your desk to collect your things in a
| box, and security escorts you out the door. But this was all
| well-known to everyone who worked there, so every departing
| employee made sure to say goodbye to their (trusted) co-workers
| before telling their manager.
|
| The company I am at now, they let you stay on for basically as
| long as you want, but one to two weeks is typical. Most people
| don't make their departure fully public until their last day.
|
| If your current company is the latter, then jumping ship
| without giving your manager and co-workers any kind of heads-up
| is a great way to burn bridges you might need in the future.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I have literally never experienced or witnessed this for any
| company I've ever worked for. This is just /r/antiwork leaking
| again.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I love when someone has an experience which is rather unique to
| them (or at least definitely not universal) and vehemently
| shouts in absolutes.
|
| I definitely agree with the article. I've given extended notice
| for many jobs I've left (again, usually on the order of several
| months). I had a good relationship with my manager, and I like
| to leave stuff "tied up with a bow". Similar to the experience
| in the article, it was good for both me _and_ my employer.
|
| I'm sorry you didn't have a relationship with your employer
| where you felt this was possible. And to be clear, I don't
| believe my experience is universal, but I think if most people
| stop to think about it, they will be able to figure out how
| their employer will respond.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| This. 100%.
|
| You never let someone who gives notice keep their badge. You
| just say, "Congrats, there's the door. Cheers!"
|
| You have no control over someone who has given notice. If they
| do good work... that's great. But if they do shit work, what
| are you going to do, fire them?
|
| The liabilities are outrageous, and the payoff is only 2-weeks
| dev time (if you're lucky)... at the regular rate... Nah, not
| worth it.
|
| And you have that person in the office talking about how
| they're moving on to a better role, with more pay, and it can
| quickly turn into a cancer for team morale.
|
| I have never seen an article with such horrible career advice
| on Hacker News. This is bad advice.
| TomasEkeli wrote:
| here in Norway the standard is 2 weeks in the first 6 months of
| employment, after that: 3 months.
|
| this goes both ways - for quitting and firing.
| LazyMans wrote:
| I had a great relationship with one of my previous companies, my
| boss, and team. I gave them about 8 weeks notice. It was
| certainly appreciated. There was no reason to blindside them, nor
| were they going to can me early for putting in my notice.
|
| I know plenty of people may do this and it not be appreciated,
| and that just might happen. I think it's good to at least
| consider if you have a fairly transparent relationship with your
| boss.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Agree with others that it's bad advice. At my last job I gave
| about 5 weeks notice which my manager convinced me to extend to 6
| weeks. I was a manager and timing at the end of the year was not
| ideal due to performance review schedules and holidays.
|
| Never again. Everything was much more dragged out. Lots of idle
| time. Lots more "so I hear you're leaving" conversations. Next
| time, I might do one week notice since this seems to have become
| a lot more common.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| I've seen people give management 1-2 months notice and only
| make it broadly known for the last 2 weeks. Obviously depends
| on how much you trust management, but it can avoid that
| awkwardness.
| icey wrote:
| As an employer, the flipside of this is that there needs to be
| some value in having someone there that you know is leaving. If
| someone has been halfway checked out because they've been
| interviewing elsewhere, it might not be worth keeping them around
| for six weeks. They can't start any long-running work, or
| anything with any dependencies, and many people's work quality
| drops significantly after putting in their notice.
|
| It's a nice idea, for sure; but most jobs can be transitioned in
| 2 weeks. Anything longer than that and all sense of urgency is
| lost ("We can transition that in a month", etc).
|
| I've quit both ways -- with a long notice period and a short one,
| and short notice periods are the only times that there's been an
| actual transition plan.
| pnathan wrote:
| If I believe I have a lot of knowledge to transfer, I'll do a 2
| week + X notice. I've done 1m notice, and that was excessive I
| believe. Otherwise, 2 weeks is standard in the US, and I have no
| reason to deviate. Nor would I conventionally just walk out that-
| day, as that leads to a bad odor.
|
| If I was waiting for a bonus or cliff, of course I'd wait until
| after the date before formally giving notice. Because, of course,
| that would be a problem if the Management decided to terminate me
| immediately.
|
| It's quite contextual, of course, but I prefer to follow local
| standards.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Lol 'gold standard' _please_. This _is_ management PR.
|
| I've only ever seen 2 week notices screw the workers over- it
| happened to me several times (to the point I will never do it
| again no matter the employer).
|
| Businesses don't give you notice, you don't owe them a single
| day.
|
| No one owes a company any more than required for their paycheck,
| stop giving loyalty where none is given.
|
| Also- can we please start calling 'layoffs' what they are-
| _firings_.
|
| Layoffs are done as restructuring, and used to be done in
| bankruptcy filing, or they used to mean you'd be brought back in.
| Now companies call every permanent firing 'letting go' or
| 'layoff'.
|
| Stop letting companies re-define words for PR speak.
|
| Edit-spelling
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Key part of the headline is "advice no one gave me." Yeah,
| because it's bad advice! Even for the usual management propaganda
| on HN this is obviously on its face bad.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| LOL, I tried that at Apple, was immediately made to pack my stuff
| after watch of a security guard and escorted off premises. As if
| I couldn't copy their stuff first and give notice later if that
| was my intent.
|
| Now obviously, in a mom and pop shop, I would discuss my desire
| to leave before I even started looking and help find/train my
| replacement, while they would likewise help me find a new job
| that better fits my life situation. But that's just not how
| corporate America works.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Yep. This is how it works in any corporation that has higly
| sensitive secrets -- regulatory, risk, trade, or otherwise --
| that they are highly keen on keeping safe. As soon as you
| signal your intent to quit, if you were privy to any of those,
| you are a risk, and the priority is getting you off-boarded and
| your access revoked ASAP. That's just how it goes
| smitty1e wrote:
| This is a strong point: context matters.
|
| I signaled I was on the way out for quite a while ahead of
| putting in two weeks, and it was abundantly clear they'd take
| me back quite readily.
|
| But that situation doesn't generalize.
| Arrath wrote:
| > This is a strong point: context matters.
|
| Absolutely. I've been at places where I was escorted out five
| minutes after I gave my notice, and at places where 10 years
| later they still call me every 8 months or so.
| baby wrote:
| ^ this is it. The advice of this post is so dumb. Unless you
| have a good relationship with your manager and your skip and
| maybe skip skip you're looking for trouble by giving any
| notice.
| brink wrote:
| Same thing happened to me - told my boss on a Friday that I had
| received a job offer with a 55% pay raise and was probably
| going to take it, so we should think about off-boarding. Later
| that day my admin rights to the gitlab org were removed, was
| told that "it was a mistake", and was fired the following
| Monday.
|
| They also took my $20k bonus that I was supposed to receive
| months earlier and used it as a carrot on a stick to get me to
| sign a bunch of legal paperwork releasing all my rights. At
| least I got the much needed money. I was really underpaid
| there.
|
| I also lost my best friend who also worked there that decided
| to side with my boss and the company. lol It was a bad time.
| roflyear wrote:
| I love the "it was a mistake" "we're looking into it" "not
| sure what happened..." responses.
|
| Not even just in this context, but in the context of
| everything. Corporate America is absolutely about deception
| and politics now, it isn't about working at all.
| zeku wrote:
| If your best friend abandoned you because you got a 55% raise
| and tried to give lots of notice, then your best friend was a
| jerk.
|
| Good luck seriously in finding new and more quality friends!
| You'll find some!
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| Any company with so little money they are forced to use
| _gasp_ gitlab strikes fear into the heart
| henry2023 wrote:
| Is this the new "Android people are poor"?
| the_jeremy wrote:
| I also categorically disagree with this advice. The people who
| benefit are not the ones in charge of the decision, and the
| benefit to your reputation for the ~5 people it really impacts
| does not outweigh getting to take a stress-free, risk-free
| sabbatical in between jobs. I have always asked to extend my
| start date out as far as possible and the new company always
| pushes back and I end up taking off a few weeks between jobs at
| most. I am not sacrificing that time for the potential of better
| parting feelings for a handful of coworkers who take over my
| stuff, when you should be working toward that lowered bus factor
| day-to-day, regardless of whether you are planning to leave.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _If they do not understand and MUST HAVE YOU NOW, that is a red
| flag... Most companies, though, don't have a problem with
| delaying someone's start date._
|
| This is not true at all in my experience. _Very_ often companies
| are hiring to expand a team in order to hit a certain deadline,
| whether it 's back-to-school or a big conference or a signed
| contract or whatever. Or to cover for someone taking maternity,
| etc.
|
| If you can't start on the required date, the offer will
| frequently go to someone else. This is not a red flag at all, but
| rather simply a reflection of the business world.
|
| _Sometimes_ companies are hiring in a more leisurely way, but
| that is the exception rather than the rule.
|
| So really this is what invalidates the entire article for me. You
| don't want to quit until you have a new job lined up, but that
| job very frequently will require you to be starting the Monday
| following two weeks from accepting (assuming it doesn't involve
| relocation).
| ghaff wrote:
| Generally speaking (small sample size), I've been able to move
| things out a few more weeks because I've wanted to take a
| vacation or hit a vesting date. But I agree in general. You
| can't usually move a start date out months.
| sdze wrote:
| I think this mostly depends on the then current employee market
| situation.
| monster_group wrote:
| This is terrible advice. Great that it has worked for the author
| but it does not mean it's a good idea for everyone. 2 weeks is
| the standard and as long as you give that you maintain good
| relations. Most people are not as valuable or important as they
| like to think they are. I have seen very important people leave /
| fired and things still go on. (Twitter is still working - isn't
| it?) Once you tell that you are leaving, everybody's attitude
| towards you changes. You want to minimize that awkward period.
| There's nothing to be gained by staying longer than 2 weeks. If
| you have stock vesting, wait until stock vests before giving 2
| weeks notice.
| passwordoops wrote:
| In my experience it's really situational and depends on the
| relationship with _co-workers_ more than managers. I 've given
| as much as a month at places I liked and where knowledge
| transfer will be useful to those who will pick up my slack.
| Others, I simply said "I'm done" and spent the remaining days
| posting GIFs and XKCDs on Slack
| projectazorian wrote:
| There's a lot of merit to taking a week or two beyond the
| standard. 2 weeks isn't a lot of time to hand off all your
| work, go through the usual HR bureaucracy, and make sure you
| have contact info for anyone you might want to stay in touch
| with after leaving.
|
| If it's an amicable departure 3-4 weeks can be a lot less
| stressful for everyone.
|
| 6-8 weeks is kinda weird though, unless you're extremely senior
| and on critical path for a lot of things, or you're using up
| accrued PTO.
| mikehollinger wrote:
| > 6-8 weeks is kinda weird though, unless you're extremely
| senior and on critical path for a lot of things, or you're
| using up accrued PTO.
|
| If you're a leader in a team, definitely give more notice.
| It's the professional thing to do. Something that the post
| -doesn't- say is that you should have a transition plan
| written down before you tell your boss, just in case you get
| cut off.
|
| Of course they can still summarily kick you out the door, but
| it's a chance for you as a leader to do right by the team.
| hinkley wrote:
| Two weeks is all most recruiters have ever offered me, and some
| did so begrudgingly. Which is weird because if I say yes that
| actually makes me a worse hire.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Interesting, I was able to get a couple months when I
| switched jobs a while back. I think recruiters probably
| figure the longer the window, the more chance you go do
| something else instead.
| projectazorian wrote:
| Recruiters don't like people who want >2 weeks because it
| adds risk that you will renege on the deal, which means they
| lose out on their payday. But the recruiter isn't the other
| party in the negotiation, the hiring manager is.
|
| So don't negotiate start date until you have an offer and are
| talking to the hiring manager. Save it to the end and you can
| say "well, I'm still not 100% sure about this offer, but I
| think this would work if you could push my start date out a
| bit..."
| xtracto wrote:
| I have resigned for two different jobs where I was the highest
| tech leader, reporting to the CEO (basically CTO role without
| the title). Both times I gave 1 month of notice. Both times all
| the "transition" work was done during the first 2 weeks, and
| afterwards, I basically sat at meeting listening without say (I
| pushed for my "replacement" to be the one making the decisions
| as if I wasn't there) and even the CEO asked me to stay at home
| in one of the two jobs.
|
| My thought is that if that worked for me for 2 weeks, it should
| also be more than enough for an IC.
| ngc248 wrote:
| Yep, everyone is replaceable. 2 weeks should be enough. What's
| the use in staying more? Anyone who wants to get KT by then
| should be able to get it.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| It is terrible advice and especially if you are an at-will
| employee. 2 weeks is fine, but as others have mentioned, most
| of the time you get put into a hermetically sealed jar once you
| give notice.
| jeffwask wrote:
| It's so bad it feels like straight up management propaganda
| baus wrote:
| As a manager I can tell you having a team member leave is not a
| "get out jail free card."
|
| First you will have to explain why X person is leaving, and it
| will generally be considered your fault.
|
| Second if your team isn't resistant enough to absorb the impact
| of one team member leaving, this will also be scrutinized and
| viewed negatively.
|
| Managers are responsible for their team's performance and not one
| individual
| sitkack wrote:
| How many times has David resigned this way? Twice!
|
| I have seen probably close to 100 people give notice in my life.
| Many get the door as soon as they resign. Many get 2x the
| workload while the wrap things up. This is straight up naive
| advice.
|
| One guy gave his 6 weeks notice, his last day would be two weeks
| after bonus payout. He was a super critical eng on a component in
| a system that brought in a couple hundred million in revenue. He
| had started documenting the systems, setting up meetings. HR
| informed the team that his last day would be the following
| friday. In 5 working days. It screwed the team and it screwed
| him. There was no backsies.
|
| Why anyone would trust a corporation not to fire them immediately
| is being willfully naive. If one does do this, have all your
| ducks in a row and expect your last day to be the moment you
| submit your resignation.
|
| Check with local labor laws and structure your resignation for
| maximum "impact" for whatever your definition of that word is.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Big companies I've worked for won't allow a long notice period.
| They don't want the risk.
| honkycat wrote:
| It is not your job to put yourself out there in order to finally
| get your company to do the shit they should have been doing all
| along.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I think you need to feel out the culture of the company and how
| knowledge transfer would work out to determine how much notice to
| give.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| I gave two or three months notice once to finish up a project.
| Never again. As soon as you announce that you're leaving everyone
| (rightly) treats you as if you shouldn't be there.
|
| Bloomberg's policy is that your last day is the day you give
| notice. You know it going in and it works really well. Get people
| to document as they go so there's no need for much of a handoff
| at the end.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| They ask me that in the interview when they ask where do you see
| your self in 5 years. I say "not here" and everybody laughs
| kaon123 wrote:
| 2 weeks is the standard? I am amazed.
|
| In Switzerland where I live, it is 3 full calendar months. And I
| thought Switzerland is very similar to the USA...
|
| My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next day.
| How is this legal?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next
| day. How is this legal?
|
| You're not even required to give two weeks, though that's
| widely considered to be a courteous thing to do. If it's
| employment at will (as most jobs are in the United States), you
| can put down your tools and walk out the door with no notice of
| any kind. The other side of that coin is that the employer can
| fire you/lay you off, also with no notice.
| adastra22 wrote:
| You can ALWAYS just put down your tools and walk out the
| door. "At will" laws have to do with the employer firing you.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| > And I thought Switzerland is very similar to the USA
|
| What?
|
| I suggest you come and visit.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Switzerland is more similar to the US than the rest of
| Western Europe in a lot of ways. This is not one of them.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| I thought it was well known that employment law and customs
| differ greatly between US and Europe.
|
| For example the difficulty in firing someone in France was a
| plot device in "Emily in Paris". In most states in the US you
| can be fired with immediate effect from a non-government job at
| any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Poland has 3 months for some cases. It is unusual in the rest
| of the world.
|
| In Romania you give 2 weeks notice as an IC and 4 weeks as a
| manager. It can be shorter if the company agrees, but it cannot
| be longer by law: you can tell them in advance if you want,
| they cannot force you to stay if you don't.
| hinata08 wrote:
| I'm also amazed by the stories of managers who immediately
| layoff workers who said they will quit.
|
| Why ?
|
| Is this like some "Oh no you're not deciding to quit, I decided
| first you're fired, I call dibs !" ?
|
| The dude said they will leave anyway. And doing the layoff will
| just allow him to leave without extensively teaching someone
| else.
|
| This should be illegal as well.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| That might actually be doing the employee a favor.
|
| In many jurisdictions you can start collecting unemployment a
| lot faster if you're laid off rather than quitting.
| Loughla wrote:
| It really depends on the worker, in my experience, and their
| approach to the situation.
|
| I had one person who gave a full year's notice, so that we
| could hire, train, and integrate the new worker before she
| left. It was glorious and resulted in zero down time.
|
| I have had another who gave one month's notice, and spent the
| entire time being toxic. Digging out from under that took the
| better part of three years. The overlap for technical
| knowledge was just simply not worth the headaches in the
| team.
|
| It's highly subjective, but it really does depend on the
| person, in absence of a clear "they're out immediately
| policy". But as a manager, my preference is to select a date
| roughly one week out from the notice and use that as the exit
| day. That way the worker can close any relationships they
| have, positively, but if they go sour there isn't really
| enough time to screw up the rest of the team.
|
| In the context of your statement, we only hear one side of
| the argument. Remember that there is always a second
| perspective. I know that I have had folks who I have told to
| just go the same day they gave notice who tell their friends
| that I'm an uncaring asshat. The reality is that I fully
| expected them to be toxic in their remaining time.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >I had one person who gave a full year's notice
|
| I don't understand how anyone could do this with exception
| of retirement. Who will hire you with one year long
| advance?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Someone on my team just gave a 1-year notice a couple
| months ago. She hasn't lined up the next gig, and won't
| start seriously looking until later this year. She has
| more than enough cushion to cover a gap, and she feels
| some loyalty to the team to make it a seamless transition
| (she's been here quite a long time).
| mym1990 wrote:
| I could see this happening in a project based environment
| or with someone who has a long term plan to pivot away
| from work(travel/family/having kids/etc). If you're
| working on something pretty big, you might be willing to
| see it through, and quit before moving on to the next
| thing.
| vivegi wrote:
| 25 yrs ago, I did something similar.
|
| I worked for a systems integrator that developed a
| turnkey software system for a client. It was a massive
| project (a systems migration) and ran for 3 years until
| handover. I was the lead on the project.
|
| A couple of years later, I left my employer and joined a
| startup. 10-11 months later, the startup was looking to
| cut its burn rate and the CEO asked me to look for a job
| outside as revenues were not coming in as planned. He did
| promise me one thing. I could come back and join them
| after they became cash positive. He expected this to
| happen in 12-18 months. I trusted the CEO.
|
| By pure coincidence, the client I worked several years
| ago was completely exiting operations from one of their
| operating locations (employees were offered to move to
| another city or leave with severance pay). The entire
| team that we had handed over the new turnkey system was
| being let go and none of the opted to move to a different
| city.
|
| I applied for the job and got it. I told the management
| (they were from the other city) that I will de-risk the
| transition for them completely since I knew the system
| like the back of my hand and laid out one condition. I
| will stay for 2 years and will need a replacement to join
| in the 2nd year (there were some intricacies in the
| system that had daily, weekly, monthly and yearly
| processes) and I wanted my replacement to be trained on
| all steps. So, a year of overlap was justified. The
| hiring manager and the division VP, both interviewed me
| and agreed to this.
|
| I did my job true to my conscience. As planned, I let
| them know at the end of the first year that a replacement
| needs to be brought in. A lateral hire came in as my
| replacement and I trained him and completed the knowledge
| transfer.
|
| I quit after the second year as originally planned. My
| startup CEO rehired me back into their company which was
| now revenue-generating and cash positive. I joined in a
| senior leadership position.
|
| That was one of the most intricate knowledge transfer of
| my career and I have been very happy. It wouldn't have
| been possible without the various parties trusting each
| other.
| ska wrote:
| I wouldn't assume they were planning on a new job
| immediately. Could be maternity/paternity leave, a plan
| to sail around the world, whatever.
|
| Could also be an in demand skillset. If you get interest
| every week, you're probably not worried about being able
| to find work in 10 months or whatever.
| ghaff wrote:
| >you're probably not worried about being able to find
| work in 10 months or whatever.
|
| Which carries some risk. If you've had a dream to sail
| around the world, hike the Appalachian Trail, etc. and
| you have some decent money in the bank, it may be the
| right call. But you can also return to a more challenging
| employment environment.
| ska wrote:
| Obviously; lots of things have risk, that's part of life.
|
| I was just suggesting plausible scenarios where someone
| might have decided the risk/reward was right for them.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Who will hire you with one year long advance?
|
| They probably hired them ahead of time and had both
| working for a time. It can also take a long time to find
| someone.
| Loughla wrote:
| She was quitting because she was going to be a stay at
| home mother.
|
| We hired the replacement and they worked side by side for
| ~ 10 months. It was amazing.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This is sometimes done as a security concern to keep
| employees from swiping data or causing havoc. An employer may
| also assume that an employee with 2 weeks left will have
| tanking productivity, so why keep them around? The good
| employees will try to wrap things up and do knowledge
| transfer, but this certainly isn't going to be the majority
| of people.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| You can swipe the data and leave havoc causing traps before
| giving notice, right? what am i missing?
| mym1990 wrote:
| The part where the employee has self-selected themselves
| as a risk. Lots of the major companies have capability to
| identify when an employee is downloading tons of data and
| files, but for the less sophisticated ones, you pretty
| much just have to look out for motive, and an employee
| giving notice is probably disgruntled...which is at least
| a little bit of motive.
| Insanity wrote:
| I would think that labour laws most definitely are different in
| those countries. Although USA does have variability by state
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I once quit a job by saying "I don't want to work here anymore"
| and then walking out the front door. 2 weeks' notice is just a
| custom.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| In the US, it's generally considered important to the economy
| that employees have good job mobility. There's plenty of
| stories of awful employers / managers; so job mobility is
| generally considered how workers protect themselves.
|
| In general, because workers can pretty much leave whenever they
| want, employers need to make sure there's good financial
| incentives and good working conditions. Some employers will
| provide things like retention bonuses, stock plans tied to
| staying employed for a certain length, or other incentives that
| employees give up when they quit.
|
| As far as a mandatory 3 month notice period: As an American,
| the few times I've been in a "bad" job, I've just wanted to
| leave. A 3 month period would just make me miserable. I'd
| rather have some kind of financial incentive to stay to a
| certain date.
| lmarcos wrote:
| If you get fired in Switzerland, your employer gives you a
| notice period of 3 months as well. Which is nice because it's
| plenty of time to find another job.
| myko wrote:
| We also cut staff without notice in the US
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In most US states, you can go into the boss' office and say "I
| quit" and walk out the door.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| Or some variation of that like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_This_Job_and_Shove_It
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Or just not show up for a few days if you really want to
| tiahura wrote:
| All states
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yeah, unless your job is the military. This is a 14th
| amendment issue.
| adastra22 wrote:
| *13th amendment.
| [deleted]
| mym1990 wrote:
| The same way that when someone fires you and you're gone the
| same day?
| yakubin wrote:
| The 3 month notice in Europe goes both ways. You can't be
| fired on the spot, unless for gross misconduct.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next
| day. How is this legal?
|
| How is it legal for this not to be the case? We have
| constitutional laws against enslavement or indentured servitude
| here. Nobody can force you to work if you don't want to. You
| can quit right now if you want to.
|
| What happens if you stop showing up to work in Switzerland? Do
| you go to prison?
| notch898c wrote:
| You can be held in contempt for leaving your job in the US.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-
| wisc...
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| adastra22 wrote:
| Uh, your link seems to be about the judge ruling that the
| workers _can 't_ be prevented from leaving their job.
| notch898c wrote:
| If I sent you a link about a person's funeral to show a
| person had been born, would you not accept that either?
| The article is about the funeral of the order.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The workers were not held in contempt though.
| notch898c wrote:
| What do you think happens if you violate a court order?
| That's the threat behind violating the order of a judge.
| That it didn't happen doesn't mean my statement was
| incorrect. If they had actually left in contempt of the
| order, I would have said it did happen rather than it can
| happen.
| bolanyo wrote:
| To be fair, this is Wisconsin. The judge is probably the
| guy that runs the hospital's brother-in-law.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I have never understood this "slavery" argument. It's not
| enslavement, it's fulfilling a contract. They won't put you
| in jail if you don't show up, you're simply in breach of
| contract.
|
| It's like if you're a freelance and you accept a project.
| They can't force you to work on the project until completed,
| but they can certainly levy financial penalties against you
| if you don't.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > They can't force you to work on the project until
| completed, but they can certainly levy financial penalties
| against you if you don't.
|
| There are very few circumstances in the US in which an
| employer can do that. It is considered wage theft, which in
| many states is a criminal offense that pierces the
| corporate veil. If you worked hours you get paid for those
| hours and the company can't avoid paying you (with fees or
| whatnot).
|
| If you are forced to work because if you don't then you
| will be fined for breach of contract, then that is
| indentured servitude with extra steps. That is illegal
| everywhere in the US after the 13th amendment. That's why
| in the US employment contracts are generally enforced with
| rewards (aka golden handcuffs) rather than punishments.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Does that mean that any contracted work is indentured
| servitude? That sounds really broad. If I hire you to
| build a website, and you bail out halfway through and the
| liquidated damage clause kicks in, I don't think that
| makes you my indentured servant.
|
| I was most likely confusing with "financial penalties",
| mostly it means not paying you after you stop working,
| and in some specific circumstances you can sue for
| damages. They can't fine you.
| adastra22 wrote:
| There generally aren't financial penalties of any sort in
| those cases, except that you just don't get paid the full
| potential value of the contract. You are generally paid
| hourly for the work that you do in a freelance gig (if it
| is an hourly contract) and paid a bonus on completion. If
| you fail to complete there is no bonus. Or in the case of
| a fixed price contract you are given a small amount
| upfront, and the full payment upon completion. You are
| never penalized for breaking contract---you just don't
| get paid the final amount.
| bolanyo wrote:
| What happens in Europe if you're supposed to work out 3
| months notice and you stop showing up:
|
| - you stop getting paid. - you probably will have a hard time
| dealing with your former employers if you need something from
| them. - they think you're a dick, and tell other people, if
| asked, what an asshole you are. - potentially if they have
| nothing better to do, they get a lawyer to write you a
| threatening letter, then do nothing.
| adastra22 wrote:
| So exactly the same thing, except for the threatening
| letter (the lawyer would tell you there's no grounds for
| it).
| henry2023 wrote:
| "and tell other people"
|
| Nobody cares enough to go tell other people. Just try to
| picture the super awkward conversation between executives
| about and IC who resigned and then did noting during the
| notice period. In fact, they'd probably do the same.
| bolanyo wrote:
| "if asked"
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Same for me in the UK - 3 months seems to be standard for
| people that have institutional knowledge. I know other
| positions have shorter times.
|
| Edit: although I'm not sure how it would play out if I decided
| to just do nothing for those 3 months if I were to leave
| Leherenn wrote:
| It's only 3 months if you've worked for over 10 years at the
| same place (or you have a different contractual agreement of
| course). Otherwise it's a week during the probation period
| (usually 3 to 6 months), 1 month the first year and 2 months
| between 2 and 10 years.
|
| Also it's symmetrical. Switzerland is "at will" (in the sense
| that they can lay you off at any time for any reason), but they
| have to follow the same notice period. In essence this is
| mandatory minimum severance.
| tristor wrote:
| I think this is very dependent on the company and your role. I've
| given as much as 2 months notice before, and typically it's
| closer to 3 weeks than 2 weeks, but I don't think this is always
| appropriate. In fact, I'd say it's a bad idea more often than
| not. You should ensure you're not leaving people in a lurch that
| you may later use in your network to further your own career (I
| now work with people I last worked with 9 years ago, as an
| example, which is an eternity in startup-land). But you also
| shouldn't extend your notice so long it becomes an imposition.
| You're leaving, so sort things out and leave.
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