Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by JamesBarney » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:34 PM UTC

saulpw wrote: 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 gave several months notice one time. They didn't use any of the time to onboard someone else, and afterwards talked about how I left them high and dry.

From now on I'm giving 2 weeks and getting the fuck out of there.

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

#322

Post by InvaderFizz » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #186

zdragnar wrote: post #178

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")

Not the parent, but I have always given long notice periods in the US. Typically 3-4 weeks.

In all cases, they have been appreciated, and it gave me the opportunity to wrap up projects.

In several cases(the previous three jobs), I have been retained in a 1099 capacity at rates that far exceed my salary(3-5x) for consulting on projects and ongoing expertise of archaic systems. Typically that arrangement winds down to very little work after the first year.

In all of these scenarios, my manager was aware I was looking for months before I put in my notice. My reason for moving is a combination of environment(outgrown the scale of the company, or looking to relocate) and pay.

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

#323

Post by twawaaay » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:40 PM UTC

Contrary to some opinions here, I think this is very good advice.

I am always giving as much notice as I can. And also try to finish my projects and accommodate my employer/client as much as I can at the end of the project.

Regardless how unprofessionally they may act, I resolve to always act professionally myself.

I think it is more about the attitude rather than simple cost/benefit calculation.

But even if you are just looking at cost/benefit, after two decades of doing this I am finally seeing people noticing and coming back to me. I have my past bosses bringing new work to me, I have my colleagues spreading information about me by word of mouth. I have CEOs of unknown companies reach out to me because they learned about me from somebody who worked with me in the past.

Maybe you will not get noticed when you are junior level but when you get a bit more exposed position it starts becoming more and more important.

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

#324

Post by olliej » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #90

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…

>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 ceases. In many countries sick leave is also earned income and must also be paid out. Hence (5) is unnecessary. Yes, but if they let you have a "last working day" and then take vacation, you're getting both your salary and your benefits (like healthcare) for that time. Depend…

That's (4) I think -- extending benefits, rather than being needed to get your vacation time. It falls into where I said "you're better off going on vacation, and then handing in notice". Handing in notice pre-vacation gives them the opportunity to say "well you're resigning anyway so today is your last day" in many jurisdictions, or simply inviting pettiness: a boss just refuses to approve your vacation request after you hand in notice - it doesn't save them money to refuse it, it's just being petty.

The whole point of the article is that you benefit from giving lots of notice, but that's just not true. Say you want to quit in 8 weeks, you could give 8 weeks notice today, or you could give 2 weeks notice in 6 weeks. In both cases you get employee benefits for the same amount of time, you have the same opportunity to use vacation time, etc. But in the former case you also have the option in many places for them to just say "ok, today is your last day" - I _think_ in less anti-worker areas such a dismissal would not be valid (e.g. the company can stop you entering the premises, but would have to consider you still employed, _or_ they would have to report you as being terminated rather than resigning which has legal implications for them), but even then you aren't getting any real benefit from the early notice.

Honestly the only people who gain anything from you giving advanced notice is your employer, and these are the same employers who can (and do) fire you essentially without notice.

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

#325

Post by sage76 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:45 PM UTC

It's weird, in India, most companies have 2 month notice periods. Many have 3.

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

#326

Post by hot_gril » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:53 PM UTC

chickenpotpie wrote: post #125

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…

Am I missing something, or is this simple? You give the standard 2-week notice (or whatever your contract said), that's it. Up to you and them how you spend the final two weeks.

Idk what the alternative is. You tell them you want to quit in 2 months? Nobody does that.

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

#327

Post by jethro_tell » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:55 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #318

namelessoracle wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put in 2 weeks notice and you get fired on the spot its a slam dunk un employment claim. (assuming you can show that yes you gave notice and you weren't fired first) Most places would rather just pay you the 2 weeks if they really dont want you around than deal with unemployment. Lots of corporate environments firing people takes more than 2 weeks anyways, and you would just be creating extra work for HR for w…

Can you explain what you mean by "slam dunk un employment claim"? Do you mean you'd be able to get unemployment benefits (which come from the state, not your company)? Or do you mean you'd have a claim against the company? As a former lawyer (US-based), my sense is the first is true, and the second is not. As long as they're not canning you for being in a protected class, they can fire at-will employees whenever they…

Yes, but you generally can't get unemployment for quitting. You have to get laid off or fired by the company to be eligible for unemployment benefits. It's especially easy to get benefits if you were fired without cause. There's no legal protection in cause/or no cause, but it will be the difference between an easy unemployment claim and a contested one.

Most employers get their unemployment insurance rate set by the number of people that require the service just like any other insurance. When an employee can prove they quit (probably before you started 'performance managing' for a with cause termination), then it makes it much simpler to just let them leave then to do the paperwork, eat the unemployment insurance adjustment, risk a possible 'wrongful termination' lawsuit (regardless of merit or ability to win).

Transferring their work and letting them dick around for a week is going to be considerably less work and risk then terminating them before the date. So as a general rule, when you give advance notice, in writing, there is a very good chance that they'll just let you leave on the day.

Additionally, if you fire everyone immediately when they give notice, then people stop giving notice all together, so you just come in some days and are a person short.

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

#328

Post by psychphysic » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

thunfischbrot wrote: post #254

brtkdotse wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Termination dates are in the employment contract 99.9% in Sweden. At most you’ll get a “lmao, no”.

Notice periods are, as far as I know and in my experience, the _minimum_ number of weeks or months to give notice. Nothing is stopping you from giving notice earlier.

The question is can an employer truncate it?

It seems like you could really harm a company by forcing them to pay you to nothing if because they don't want to start someone on a project they will definitely leave half way through.

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

#329

Post by refulgentis » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #293

refulgentis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t accurate, might have worked in one-off situations but, given at-will employment, this was at best a confused HR employee trying to help, not a legal conclusion. Note the obvious edge cases

If it works, you win $$: why be so negative? Maybe some downsides if they make you work longer, but that is a judgement call to make depending on context. Factually it worked twice for them, versus your theories that it shouldn’t work.

Comments are packed full of 'em, downside of preannouncing you're quitting months from now is you get 0

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

#330

Post by throwaway98797 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 11:08 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #273

lumost wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I realized. After you give notice, at most, the business needs about a week to decide what to do with the work you were handling. In tech, most projects can be deferred, and most services can go into KTLO. After the week is done to figure that stuff out - no one really cares about you anymore. There is likewise a tacit assumption that you won’t deliver anything again (why would you?). As such it’s usually b…

After you give notice, at most, the business needs about a week to decide what to do with the work you were handling. In tech, most projects can be deferred, and most services can go into KTLO. Ideally, sure. In real life the employee needs to do a brain dump of handover documents because no one writes anything down.

does anyone ever read those braindumps?