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

davidlaprade.github.io

191–200 of 405 posts

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

#191

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…

I have literally never experienced or witnessed this for any company I’ve ever worked for. This is just /r/antiwork leaking again.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb question: why would you get severance if you resigned?

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.

I would definitely want to talk to an employment lawyer familiar with the laws of the local jurisdiction before making any assumptions.

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

#193
> If they do not understand and MUST HAVE YOU NOW, that is a red flag... Most companies, though, don’t have a problem with delaying someone’s start date.

This is not true at all in my experience. Very often companies are hiring to expand a team in order to hit a certain deadline, whether it's back-to-school or a big conference or a signed contract or whatever. Or to cover for someone taking maternity, etc.

If you can't start on the required date, the offer will frequently go to someone else. This is not a red flag at all, but rather simply a reflection of the business world.

Sometimes companies are hiring in a more leisurely way, but that is the exception rather than the rule.

So really this is what invalidates the entire article for me. You don't want to quit until you have a new job lined up, but that job very frequently will require you to be starting the Monday following two weeks from accepting (assuming it doesn't involve relocation).

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

#194
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, getting your bonus bought out provides some superficial relief for this problem. But if your next employer thinks that your value is high enough to buy out your bonus, they likely think that independent of the current date (modulo a special case where your value /now/ is significantly higher than it would be in another quarter or whatever). Your next employer gets no value from the fact that you're leaving prev…

I get what you're saying, but it could just be a way for a new employer to say "we have a policy of treating people fairly. We know that some new hires are going to lose out on bonuses depending when they join, so we have a policy of compensating these new hires for this loss". I wouldn't want to start off with a new employer by negotiating for a bonus buyout and then staying long enough to get my original bonus (and…

If an employer offers a bonus buyout during negotiations, that's a straight-up offer of more compensation, in the form of a signing bonus. It's hard to come up with scenarios where an employer would offer you a certain total compensation, and then revoke that offer because a different, previous company paid you a bonus. Would you expect your employer to reduce your compensation if you refinanced your mortgage, in the name of fairness, since that portion of your salary was "intended" to cover housing costs? Compensation is about estimation of value (expected to be) delivered vs costs (expected to be) incurred, in the presence of highly asymmetric information. Previous bonuses might give nice framing for certain points during the negotiation, but that's just storytelling; the real negotiation doesn't care about them, and only slightly cares about start date in most circumstances.

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

#195
I think this is very dependent on the company and your role. I've given as much as 2 months notice before, and typically it's closer to 3 weeks than 2 weeks, but I don't think this is always appropriate. In fact, I'd say it's a bad idea more often than not. You should ensure you're not leaving people in a lurch that you may later use in your network to further your own career (I now work with people I last worked with 9 years ago, as an example, which is an eternity in startup-land). But you also shouldn't extend your notice so long it becomes an imposition. You're leaving, so sort things out and leave.

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

#196
post #167

Sounds very navie. Many companies walk you out the door the moment you give notice. If anything you should give at MOST 2 weeks notice. Nothing bad happens if you only give 1 week, or even if you just walk out. Remember, they reserve the right to terminate you without cause at any time.

US corporate culture is such a horrifying shit show... Where is live, 3 months notice from both sides is a typical contract clause, and walking people who resign out of the door is unheard of.

To be fair, tech wages are much higher here. You can make 200k a year as an IC which is unheard of in Europe

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

#197
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…

Totally agree. Two weeks for knowledge transfer should be it. Remember that most leadership view all engineers as replaceable cogs. Just wrap up what you can and loop others into the things that can't and move on with life. Big companies probably don't want you around from a liability. Small companies want the knowledge transfer because you have "blind-sided" them. (Despite asking for a raise for the last two years and told no chance.)

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

#198
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…

One time I gave 4 week notice and my lead HR person (~2000 person company) who I have never spoke to before called me very upset and yelled at me for several minutes about how rude I was being by doing 4 weeks instead of 2.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In general AFAIK they'll typically pay out the customary two week notice period but take away your physical and computer access. (By no means universal but plenty of examples in this thread of where it happens.)

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

Maybe not. I'm in the US and this is generally my practice as well. Unless I'm dying to get out or have other circumstances encouraging a quick exit, I offer a month at least. Sometimes more.
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