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...
Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
101–110 of 405 posts
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#102I'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 a…
> 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.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
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 c…
This is the way. You can be honest, and authentic, without running down the company or your coworkers.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
You can swipe the data and leave havoc causing traps before giving notice, right?
what am i missing?
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#105Echoing 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.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 over…
>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?
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.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#107This 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 leavin…
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.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#108This 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?
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#109I 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...
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.
Re: Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit
#110Giving advanced notice has backfired every.single.time