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

davidlaprade.github.io

181–190 of 405 posts

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

#181

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 leavin…

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…

> 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.

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

#182
post #7

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 a…

> 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.

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

#183

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 wit…

>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.

Yeah, I said that somewhat halfheartedly. Brain foggy. I'm just glad my words came out legible.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I people usually don't keep getting paid after a "termination of employment"

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

#186
post #7

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 a…

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 i…

Question: Are you in Europe? I get the feeling this sort of thing is much more common there (or at least "not the US")

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

#189
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.

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

#190

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 st…

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…

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.

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