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Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

davidlaprade.github.io

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Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#3

Post by legerdemain »

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.

Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#4

Post by olliej »

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.

Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#6

Post by pengaru »

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.

Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#7

Post by saulpw »

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.

Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#9

Post by monster_group »

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.

Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

#10

Post by olliej »

olliej wrote: post #4

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…

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?

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