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Comment by alexandros | Hacker News Reader

Surely some employers may prefer to use the event of an employee quitting to readjust things / change salary levels / bring in a good candidate they had no room for? It just seems a bit presumptuous to offer someone your job at your salary without the employer's prior approval.

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I think the most polite thing to do, as an employee, is to say "I'd like to leave my position within [some time period], let's figure out an exit strategy".

PS - maybe add "I have a friend who I'm certain is capable of doing this job, I highly recommend her as a replacement if you need one."

I agree. I think the guy has a good character, but still, his situation was very special, here where I work I can't bring non-employee and show him what I do, that would violate a lot of internal rules.

I think you're right - especially when you're in programming. So much knowledge is lost every time someone moves on it's so much better when there is a handover period.

I just quit my job, and the first part is what I did, pretty much. Though, I came in with a reasonable offer (and in line with the employment laws here in Belgium). We then negotiated a bit and now I'm just redrafting my official letter to take that all into account. In my area (academia research) there can be a lot of training required (it took me about 6 months to get everything under my belt, but I think for the new person it should be at least half that since I've refined a lot of the material). I just hope that they can find someone sooner rather than later!! :)

I agree, and this is what happened when I last resigned from a job. I wanted to move abroad, so sat down with my boss and had a nice conversation about it. We set a rough timeline for five months, and then went about hiring my replacement and getting him trained up. I walked away with everything nicely in place, and I think it's been the best way I've left a job ever, no worries, bitterness, just things being the way they should be.

As someone who's about to do the same thing, and is kinda nervous about it, thanks for the boost of confidence :)

I used to be employee #3 at a small startup. When I left, I gave 30 days notice so that I could help hire and train my replacement. In response, they told me to go home and refused to pay the 2 weeks pay they owed me.

Good thing you left.

Here you could bring them to court over it. The most they can do is send you home for the 30 days (but they must still pay you for them).

At my last job, I was certain they'd tell me to go home for the two weeks (that was their usual practice). But I didn't want my projects to suffer. So I had my closest work friend and his family over for dinner and gave him a quick brain dump of the projects. Over the next few days, we'd find a few spare moments to make sure he knew all the ins and outs.

Now, finally, I could give notice. As it turns out, they "let" me stay pretty much the whole two weeks.

Agreed. I have been in the position as a hiring manager, and if one of my employees had done this, I would have been furious. This would have put me in the awkward position of telling the person that thought they had a job lined up that they needed to interview, may or may not get the salary they thought they had locked in, and that they would have to wait at least a week (likely longer) while I considered all other candidates, especially possible internal candidates.

And that is before talking about the fact they trained someone who had not yet signed an NDA in our processes and internal workings. I know in some areas this is not a problem, but in some industries I worked with this could have caused major issues. In fact, if working with any kind of sensitive data, this could involve actual crimes being comitted.

And that is not to mention the fact I would have to then have a long talk with legal about whether or not we needed to pay her for the week of training already done. And, again I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this could have opened up horrible liability situations if she had actually been injured in an employees only area while being trained without an employment contract.

The only saving grace is that most managers generally (I certainly did) have a good enough idea of what is going on in their areas that this would have been caught and corrected within hours instead of an entire week.

[Edited for minor grammar and spelling fix]

Yeah reading it I was thinking the employer is probably going to say "great, but we'll find our own person".

Depends on the role, if it's a service roles that anyone can be trained up for in a week or 2 it's a great idea.

I think for super entry-level or for very high-level, something like this is appropriate. Established, successful CEO's usually have a long, planned succession plan. I left a company like this once -- told my boss who should be promoted to replace me and spent time with them to make sure they could do the job. Didn't just do it and then leave though, so not really the same.

The idea of planning a succession is a good one, but not just on your own.

That's probably true. But, still, the point of the post stands and is a good one to be reminded of from time to time.

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