Live data from Hacker News

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

davidlaprade.github.io

221–230 of 405 posts

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

#221

The one time I tried to do this my employer would no longer approved vacation requests and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of unused vacation.

> and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of unused vacation

That is overtly illegal in most/all of the US. Accrued vacation is like money, it is already yours. It's why so many companies have now switched to unlimited vacation, to get that liability off the books. The icing on the cake being that most people end up taking less vacation, not more, when you remove the limit.

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

#223
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don’t know they’d have to award you wages, but the only alternative to that would be firing you. Some might try to do that out of spite but it would be far worse for them than you.

They'd usually have to prove they fired you with cause not because you said you quit.

i.e. if you get caught stealing or are sexually harassing your co-workers, they can still fire you. They are not however required to let you work. They can revoke access and continue to pay, they can give you a package and terminate you employment. If you don't want to take the package, they can just walk you out of the building and terminate your employment two weeks later.

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

#224
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

If so, then no problem, right? My reading of the "two friends" anecdote was that it was somehow a problem that they were canned on the spot. If you take away my physical/remote access, I can't even be asked to help with handoff.

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

#225

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…

> there are good odds your company will say "we accept your resignation effective immediately. Goodbye." No, it's not common practice for tech companies to immediately fire anyone who resigns. A 2 week notice period is basically standard in the US tech industry. Some companies will take resignations and then remove the employee's access to sensitive material (code, chats, documentation, etc.) but require them to be a…

It’s a pretty common practice to walk people out the door immediately if they are known to be going to a competitor. They would still be paid for the 2 weeks though

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

#226

This is terrible advice, the company will never give you a heads up if they are going to fire you. Do what's best for you. Keeping a good relationship with your current employer comes second.

The company doesn't care, but your manager and you team might. It is maintaining those relationships that works to your benefit in the future. Burning bridges just because you can is a pretty reliable way of limiting your future career prospects, at least in your local area. Word gets around.

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

#227

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…

>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.

That sounds like a nightmare to me. Sometimes I want to quit immediately. I should be able to rather than stay in a miserable job for 2-3 months.

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

#228
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As the employee submitting your notice - have your ducks-in-a-row before turning in your notice as it maximizes your chance for a smooth exit. Right. If you have vesting events, expected bonus payouts, etc. wait until after those happen before giving notice as opposed to just assuming the employer will keep you on the payroll as an employee for those two weeks.

If you gave two weeks notice and got terminated immediately to prevent you from benefiting from something that would have vested in that two week period, you have an excellent legal case. Very few businesses of any reasonable size would pull that stunt, it isn't worth the headache. Some very small businesses might try it, because they may not have competent legal counsel to warn them away.

Why take the risk of needing to pursue legal action? Would waiting a couple more weeks kill you?

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

#229
post #216
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say the company hiring you agreed to pay relocation expenses from NYC to SF. If they then learned you were actually already living in SF they wouldn't just give you the money.

If the company went through the approval chain and got everyone to sign off on you being worth $comp + $relo, and you're value isn't effected by not choosing to $relo (because, in this case, you're already there), it should be pretty trivial to get everyone to approve a change to call that $comp + $signing_bonus since everyone involved already agreed to spend that portion of their budget on you. The case this doesn't…

What you're doing sounds fair. My reading of the upthread discussion was that someone who had asked for a bonus buyout should delay their departure until they could double-dip. That would be a huge red flag to me, if I were a new employer. But if it's all just part of comp, there's no specific issue.

Of course, the new company can say "you get X signing bonus if you join this calendar year, and x/2 signing bonus if you join next calendar year, since time is of the essence".

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

#230
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Life hack: Put your resignation in writing with a date in the future. This sounds like such a neat way to deal with it. I wonder if it's legally valid in my jurisdiction (in Sweden.) I have never heard of it but yet again, why not?

I always do that, draft the email to my boss and hr, walk into my bosses office, send the email saying:

"I will be ending my employment with ${company} effective ${two_weeks_from_now}. I'm giving ${X} weeks notice to afford ${company} the opportunity to transition my work and knowledge to other employees as they see fit. I appreciate the opportunity ${company} has given me and wish you all the best as you continue to advance ${company mission}"

Then I say, "I'm quitting, my last day will be in ${two_weeks_from_now}" and there's already a record of how that conversation came about. No one's going to walk out and say they fired you and you're pretending to quit or strange shit like that.

Post reply on HN