Ask HN: How do you leave a job?

I am surprised by the amount of selfish responses. To me it comes down to professionalism and not treating the people I work with, with disrespect.

1. Find out your company's policy. For a lot of companies in the US it's 2 weeks, for a lot of Indian based companies is 3 months. So figure out how long ahead of time you need to let them know. (let's call this X)

2. Figure out how much PTO you have. (let's call this Y)

3. Do you have a new job lined up? When is their start date? (let's call this Z)

4. Ideally you want X + Y Personally I don't like taking an extra break between work, so I have my last day on a Friday and then on Monday I am starting the new job. If you have PTO time you can at least get paid for not working. I have had about 11 different jobs and I can still contact old co-workers and managers and get recommendations when I need them. No reason to burn bridges.

Even in very toxic environments there are still some co-workers that I appreciate, or as a manager people that worked for me that I appreciated.

Having said all of that to respond to your question

> Do people generally just abandon the work in progress that they're doing or do they finish it out?

There is always a work in progress. Isn't that what working is? This is why you give your 2 weeks notice or whatever. If it's not time sensitive you can talk to your manager, tell them that you are going to quit, but work with him on the exact date. What you do in that 2 week time frame is either finishing what you want finish OR documenting / training the next person to take over.

One of the personal things I do, and I am probably a rare case, is to give everyone that mattered me to a hand written note of what I like about them, anything I am thankful for etc. With my direct manager I do the same, but I will add what I feel was the most frustrating point of working for them. There is no menace there, but more like a "hey I am leaving, here are my honest thoughts". I tend to do this the last day, drop things on people's desks, preferably when they are not around.

> Other people seem to move jobs a lot more than me.

I was that person, I moved jobs, a new job every 2-4 years. Any of the 4 year spans usually involved some internal move. Now that I am older, and perhaps wiser I have realized that if you find a company you like, it's fine to stick with it and grow with them. I have been with my current company for 8 years and I haven't really thought about leaving. I have changed 4 titles though, Jr Dev to Dev Lead with everything in between.

If your company decided that your employment was no longer in the best interest of that same ongoing project, do you think they would blink before letting you go?

No, it’s just business. It’s not your project, it’s the company’s project, and it’s their responsibility to ensure the project continues to run smoothly. What is important is that you cooperate in the ways they ask and make sure you prepare your colleagues as best you can to continue on without you. Most people will have no hard feelings and will even be excited for you. It’s not personal.

That is a great way to burn bridges. Must have been a horrible place to work.

I understand your point and to some extent I agree. One thing I didn't mention was I was "upstairs" and not in the field due to health issues. Believe me when I say I wasn't putting any undue burden on anyone by going this route.

The other thing is we were allowed to take as much vacation as we had saved up. The only criteria to take it was you had to schedule it more than 7 days out AND only a certain amount of people could be off at anyone time. Scheduling time off was automated so it would only could get it if you met those 2 criteria.

There were many people who thought it was a horrible place to be (in the field). I was not one of them. It was probably the best 14 years of my life. But I could not wait to get away from being "upstairs".

If this had been a traditional 9-5, office setting then I definitely would not have done it this way. And honestly no one bats an eye at this at this department. It wasn't that long ago if you turned your 2 week notice in and they found out you were going to another department they would usually just tell you not to show up the next shift. That was a different time with different management.

I make sure I leave the work well documented for the one who follows, but I do not put in more effort and time than contractually obliged. I also push back on everything new, and give the reason above. This leaves me without stress, and since I'm leaving, they cannot really do shit about me declining new tasks. If questioned by someone, I ask whether they want to inherit two half-done projects when I'm gone or just one. That puts an end to requests. If at any time some manager's manager tries to strongman me around while on notice period, I delete their emails, block their IM and pretend I haven't seen what they sent me.