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Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

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Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#31

Post by nickff »

jedberg wrote: post #21

I usually work harder during that period than any time before, sprinting to finish every project I started while documenting everything and training my peers. At one job I pulled an all-nighter on my second to last day finishing up a project. This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression.

>"This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression."

This leaves a great impression on your manager(s) and co-workers, the latter of which is often more important (thought people neglect it).

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#32

Post by spike021 »

Last time I did it, not much apart from some code reviews and discussions. I also filled out a minimal knowledge transfer doc and asked my team to put in questions that they thought I could answer for them. I had a project I had started before, but I was pretty burnt out and it wasn't close to being finished. So I didn't do any more work on it. In some ways that may burn a bridge because it meant disregarding previous responsibility, but on the other hand I knew I wouldn't be able to make a good enough dent in the two weeks of notice. Not only that, but I figure that someone on the team would be more ideal to finish it because it would mean that knowledge remains, versus it disappearing (other than docs) when I leave on my final day.

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#33

Post by DocTomoe »

jstx1 wrote: post #11

As much as I need to wrap up current work, write docs, hand over stuff etc. > It's only like day 4 and there's six more You're in the land of 2-week notice periods. The most recent company I joined has a 3-month notice period (it's in my contract) which is kind of ridiculous. I'll probably try to get it waived down to 1 month when it comes to it.

Heh, I once had a "three months to the end of the quarter" contract, meaning if I timed that wrong, I had essentially a 183 day period. Needless to say, no employer is going to wait half a year for you, so going job searching was risky.

Location: Germany

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#35

Post by uranium »

jleyank wrote: post #2

What is necessary. Sometimes, I've worked overtime the last day. Sometimes they want me out of the building. Professionals bring their A game with them, and reputation spreads way faster than demonstrated success.

This.

I've worked past the point that my access started expiring and I had to make sure not to reboot anything important so I could keep making progress, even after they came and took my chair away [yes, seriously]. When I absolutely had to reboot the dev system to continue, I sent off my final notes and left.

I do agree that knowledge transfer is top priority, but sometimes there's also work I'd really like to hand off in a completed, easy-to-take-on state, that will save the next engineer ever more time than another few hours of brain dump.

Still, try to do the brain dump first.

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#37

Post by uranium »

euroderf wrote: post #15
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. When I left my last job (team lead), I did the best I could to leave my team in a good position for the future. Got my code into a working state, documented everything I could, including stuff I hadn't touched in months. Made sure I left a time-critical project in a good enough state that they could demo to the client. Even after all that, I still got a panicky call a couple weeks ago about a project that…

Did you answer it with a freebie or with the billing clock running ?

For former colleagues I'm personally always willing to answer a reasonable number of questions for free. But after leaving one particularly-unpleasant situation, I did barter that I'd give a friend a brain dump if we could do it over dinner and he'd expense it =*).

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#38

Post by unfocussed_mike »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #28
onion2k wrote: post #8

I usually switch from 'work' to 'dumping everything in my head that I haven't already documented in to a doc'. I've never really been sure if anyone ever reads the doc. I guess that means I stop working. EDIT: You're on day 4 with 6 more to go, so that means you're giving 10 days notice? My current contract says I need to give 3 months. Most roles prior to that have been 4 weeks. What sort of job has such a short not…

> 3 months That's ridiculous. What if you gave 3 months, and then 1 month in said, "Nah, F this, I'm out" and just bailed?

That would be unprofessional.

On the other hand you can often negotiate a shorter exit period; it will depend in some sectors _when_ you are leaving as much as how much notice.

e.g. as I understand it, in government sectors in the UK, you might find your notice period runs out at the beginning of any new Budget regardless, or you might find yourself on gardening leave.

And if you travel into London you might find your final date has as much if anything to do with your travel season ticket loan period!

Cuts both ways, too: longer notice periods for employees resigning are matched by longer notice of redundancy (and statutory pay), as well as other redundancy protections, like they can't make you redundant just to hire someone else they prefer. It's a very different world to the "at will" states of the USA.

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#39

Post by globular-toast »

Whatever they need you to do. The point of a notice period is they get time to prepare for your departure. If nobody is asking you to do anything then there's not much you can do. I would begin preparing for my next role.

I've been on notice periods of 2-3 months for the past 5-6 years. Generally it involves finishing projects, training others and writing documentation for whoever takes over your work.

Re: Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

#40

Post by PeterisP »

nickff wrote: post #31
jedberg wrote: post #21

I usually work harder during that period than any time before, sprinting to finish every project I started while documenting everything and training my peers. At one job I pulled an all-nighter on my second to last day finishing up a project. This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression.

> "This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression." This leaves a great impression on your manager(s) and co-workers, the latter of which is often more important (thought people neglect it).

IMHO it's quite important in the long run - I have often seen people get jobs or sales or consulting projects in large part based on referrals or reputation from peers they have worked with 10 or 15 years ago. The guy or gal who's your junior hire today may well be a purchasing manager or tech lead somewhere interesting in a decade or two.
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