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

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

#331

Post by BoorishBears »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #308
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…

I love when someone has an experience which is rather unique to them (or at least definitely not universal) and vehemently shouts in absolutes. I definitely agree with the article. I've given extended notice for many jobs I've left (again, usually on the order of several months). I had a good relationship with my manager, and I like to leave stuff "tied up with a bow". Similar to the experience in the article, it was…

Nothing about their comment is unique to an experience, yours on the other hand...

Risk isn't just about the likelihood, it's also the outcome.

Even if your manager loves you to death and there's just a .1% chance you misread the situation and your early notice goes wrong... the result of that .1% occurrence could be disastrous.

On the other hand, if a 2 week notice is likely to screw over your team, that's a sign of a bad employer. If 2 full weeks of notice isn't enough to stabilize things enough for you to leave on good terms, what happens if you're injured tomorrow?

2 weeks notice is good. The most you should do earlier than 2 weeks is start documenting the unwritten parts of your process and start getting others to understand those. A good manager will enable that without you saying you're walking out the door.

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

#333

Post by Turing_Machine »

adastra22 wrote: post #87
Turing_Machine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next day. How is this legal? You're not even required to give two weeks, though that's widely considered to be a courteous thing to do. If it's employment at will (as most jobs are in the United States), you can put down your tools and walk out the door with no notice of any kind. The other side of that coin is that the employer can fire you/lay you off, also wit…

You can ALWAYS just put down your tools and walk out the door. “At will” laws have to do with the employer firing you.

> You can ALWAYS just put down your tools and walk out the door.

Not if you've signed a contract which says otherwise, which of course would make it not "at-will" employment.

"At-will" applies to both the employer and the employee. Either can terminate it without notice.

"At-will means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences."

https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/at-will-employment...

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

#334

Post by ycombobreaker »

addaon wrote: post #157
gnicholas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of employers paying signing bonuses to make up for the fact that an employee is leaving a partially-accrued bonus on the table at the employer he's leaving.

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…

This sounds like pretty bad, or at least risky, advice. Mind you, I think it'll work on average; but it's a dishonest and adversarial way to start a new relationship, for probably not a ton of money.

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

#335

Post by kris-nova »

This only works if you’re a bro who is chummy with leadership. Honestly this is one of the worst pieces of advice for a marginalized person. If you show any indication of leaving as a marginalized person you are extremely likely to be pegged as “a flight risk” or “unstable” or “frantic” and your job will likely be eliminated before you actually are ready to roll.

In the U.S. this likely means losing your healthcare and missing your children’s tuition payments — and even your housing. Your visa if you’re immigrating, etc.

The only people who have enough psychological security to do this are the ones who don’t actually depend on their jobs for maintaining their current standard of living.

In a perfect world this would be great advice for everyone, however given the political and economic culture of the U.S. this is pretty horrible advice for a marginalized person. Our labor laws don’t support this behavior for a reason — and if “push comes to shove” every corporation in Silicon Valley will air on the side of modern labor laws (or lack there of).

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

#336

Post by briHass »

dbg31415 wrote: post #314
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…

This. 100%. You never let someone who gives notice keep their badge. You just say, "Congrats, there's the door. Cheers!" You have no control over someone who has given notice. If they do good work... that's great. But if they do shit work, what are you going to do, fire them? The liabilities are outrageous, and the payoff is only 2-weeks dev time (if you're lucky)... at the regular rate... Nah, not worth it. And you…

What is cancer for team morale is that their coworker, Bob, was here yesterday and today he's gone. Was he fired? Did he rage quit? Neither one makes the employer look good or gives me confidence I should stick around.

I've always paid close attention to how my employers behave when someone gives notice: how you treat people/are treated when conditions aren't ideal shows you the true character of those involved. If the employer acts like a jerk, I know I'll get equal or worse treatment. I won't extend them any curtesy when I leave, which will likely be sooner rather than later based on their approach.

That said, I disagree with the article. In the US, we're lucky to have a common expectation: 2 weeks. I've added an additional week for small companies, but I'd never do more than that. 2 weeks is plenty, and quickly feels like being persona-non-grata.

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

#337

Post by myarr »

Hell no. The startup I was working for fired me on a Friday, no notice, effective immediately. We had a team meeting the previous week about how macro environment was tough but everything was fine.

I'm so done bending over backwards to satisfy rich people who will dump me as soon as things get slightly bad.

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

#338

Post by lovich »

So I’ve been both an employee and a manager in companies that aren’t faang level but break 1 billion in yearly revenue.

This is advice from someone privileged enough that it was easier for their manager to ignore them as a problem, rather than deal with them.

Off the get go, it’s standard practice to remove all permissions and access to systems from someone who has tendered notice, in the interest of investors, security execs, and anyone who cares about the long term health of the applications being worked on.

The investors and security execs are placated by knowing that someone who has indicated they might possibly be disgruntled doesn’t still have access to damage the systems. Any manager who cares about the long term health of their systems doesn’t want someone involved in the day to day architecture and design designs who already knows they won’t have to deal with any problems that arise after a few weeks.

This isn’t even to blame the employee in question, they just no longer have the incentives to care about the codebase after their notice.

I have also definitely never seen a single person who gave notice and didn’t have access cut off, get to “focus on the fun parts of the job”. In that case they were normally tasked with knowledge transfer the whole time as if it’s an org that can afford the sudden loss of a single person, they also likely don’t have good documentation

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

#339

Post by Freedom2 »

zdragnar wrote: post #265
michaelcampbell wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nope, midwest US. Two weeks notice is social etiquette as a minimum to avoid burning a bridge, so to speak. There's nothing against giving further notice. Thinking back on it, though, I would absolutely not give further notice if I was only doing "busy" work (as someone suggested elsewhere). I try to maintain a good relationship with my employers as a professional courtesy. Putting out notice beyond what active work…

That's interesting. In my experience, I've somehow managed to score referrals despite daring to give less than 2 weeks notice and my previous bosses still recognize my investment in the company's success. It's rather amusing that the midwest isn't more forgiving when it comes to shorter notices, or that an employee is instantly branded as a "bridge-burner".

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

#340

Post by ipaddr »

throw0101b wrote: post #305
eckesicle wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The date at which your resignation starts to count is the date that your employer learns of your intent to leave. You are however free to agree on an arbitrary date with them as your last day. It’s not the date you put in the letterhead. That would be insane.

> No it’s not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The date at which your resignation starts to count is the date that your employer learns of your intent to leave. "or anywhere else" is an exceedingly broad assertion. For Canada: > Yes, you do have to give notice of your resignation in Canada. The common law imposes a duty to provide notice of resignation on all employees. > However, you don’t have to give two weeks’…

Can you give 10 years notice and if you get fired within 10 years they would be forced to pay out 10 years?
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