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Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why, but I found it really hard to resign at my old job. I actively disliked it and I didn't owe them anything. But still I found it really hard to resign and tell my colleagues that I was resigning, I didn't even care about them.

Most of the team only learned that I was leaving on my last week (I had given 3 weeks notice). I just felt really awkward telling them for some unknown reason. Funnily enough, I worked in a coworking space, and most other people in the space knew I was leaving before my coworkers. My coworkers only found out because they put my leaving party on the "this week" board in the kitchen.

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It's hard to quit anything you've invested time and energy into, especially when it involves relationships with other people. Only way to get better at it, though, is to do it, however hard it is. I awkwardly (and abruptly) quit my first job (for another one) and later ran into my old manager. She brought up how awkward it was, and I replied that I should have done it better. The thing is, I think it was mostly out of shyness, or worry about disappointing someone. But I think that you learn by doing. You get better at framing it correctly, or dealing with objections, and you can quit in a way that brings closure to both parties. People from my past often pop back into it from time to time. It's important to try to leave on good terms whenever possible.

So you should quit more often and you'll get better at it. Thats my kind of advice.

Quitting a job is like leaving a party. You probably didn't like everyone there. You probably avoided some people. That's where the Irish Goodbye shines. You get to leave without having to decide who to say goodbye to, and avoid long winded and shallow well wishes. As long as you aren't burning bridges, it actually benefits both sides in a lot of ways to just ghost on coworkers.

No, ghosting a job is a terrible idea. If two parties invested any amount of time into a relationship, be an adult and own up to your responsibility to end it in a way that gives closure and respects the other person. A job is not a party, a job is a big commitment with a lot of value exchanged both ways.

It also benefits you, more than you know.

Funny how the companies don't extend that courtesy to employees. When they're done with you, you're walked out the door. Sure, you should tell them you've quit and not ghost them, but why go to any extra lengths like a two weeks notice when they wouldnt do the same for you?

I've been at multiple companies where people get zero minutes notice of a layoff -- "Hey, come meet with me -- btw IT just took your machine." Despite that, the team I worked with were people I was close to, whose skill and wisdom I respect. It was as a courtesy to my _manager_ (and my team) that I gave N>=2 weeks notice. After all, every single one of these people are people I would love to work with again, and I'd like to preserve those good work relationships.

I've been very lucky to never have a boss or team that I didn't feel that way about.

I've seen every kind of way a company handles a firing or layoff, good, bad, everything in between. Doesn't matter. That's not you. What kind of impression and what kind of legacy do you want to leave? It costs you nothing to be the bigger person in any case. But hopefully, you leave a toxic company long before they do this kind of thing to you.

It costs you (14/365)*the salary increase at a new job. Additionally it puts you in a legal gray zone where you have quit employer A, but dont work at employer B yet. Employer B can rescind the job offer which leaves you with no job and no unemployment payments because the states views it as you voluntarily becoming unemployed. I have gone through that situation so it's not theoretical, and it does have an actual cost.

As for keeping a personal relationship, giving two weeks to maintain friendly relationships with a manager is just something weve all decide to do for seemingly no reason. Unless you work in a no skill job, you are not going to be replaced in 2 weeks. You are also not going to be able get an actual knowledge transfer done in two weeks unless your team had already done this before you quit, in which case the notice period doesn't matter anyway.

The two weeks notice period just let's companies get another two weeks of work from you, at a job you have explicitly decided you dont want to stay at

For a professional job, there's usually a waiting period of a couple weeks before the job is ready to onboard you. It's extremely rare and unexpected that a company gives you an offer on Friday and expects you to start on the following Monday.

It's not just your manager, it's your coworkers, it's your team. You don't want to leave them hanging at a critical juncture with no time to find a replacement. It's not for no reason, it's because relationships matter, more than you know, and it pays a lot of dividends to invest in long-lasting relationships that carry on even beyond your job.

I guess we hang out in different crowds then. The other software engineers I know would congratulate someone for leaving with no notice. The only reason we haven't is fear that your managers might start trashing you in the community here, there is zero concern that coworkers would be upset.

I get the concept of not burning bridges, but you gotta ask if the bridge is gonna take you somewhere you want to go

Edit: Additionally, every job I've worked at in my career has wanted me to start ASAP. I've even had one explicitly ask me if I could give my previous employer less notice so I could start earlier

Which companies don't extend that courtesy? Any company I've worked at gives 1-3months notice for low performers. They call it a "Performance Improvement Plan" or somesuch, and basically pay you while you search for another job. For layoffs, there's a severance payment equivalent to several weeks. No salaried job at a going concern would skip severance, because severance is on condition of promising not to sue the company for anything.

Whenever I (or anyone else I've seen) have been laid off, and I've been laid off from several jobs, I would have about fifteen minutes to pack my things and say my goodbyes, and be ushered out the door right away.

People that resign may or may not be allowed to stay for the two weeks, depending on how much the company was relying on them (often the companies didn't really have much redundancy or documentation in place and needed to train someone new and/or do a few meetings with infodumps with these people)

But that's the only 'courtesy' I've ever seen.

References? It is relatively common to call a former employer of a prospective employee and verify employment and ask if they would hire the person again.

Every place I've worked has a policy of only confirming when an employee worked at a company. I'd get references from personal contacts, but they don't care how I left the company

As another person commented, a job is not a commitment. It's a transaction, and it's very impersonal in nature. The second I am not profitable for my employer my ass is out the door, and generally they won't give me any sort of notice. I don't owe my employer anything other than work for my paycheck. If my manager or employer needs "closure" from an employee leaving, they're overly attached to their employees.

Not everyone -- especially salaried professionals -- works at a toxic company like yours.

You're kidding yourself if you think 99% of employers wouldn't lay off an employee if he or she wasn't profitable.

I think that's it. I invested years of my life into building that product (that I owned exactly zero of). It felt weird giving it up to someone else, I had a lot of pride in the code I wrote.

It's because of the way our brain deals with commitment: the more your invest yourself in something, the harder it is to quit.

E.G:

Put your bad next to a person and leave. A thief comes and steal the bag. You have a low change of the person to protect your bag.

Do the same, but just ask quickly if the person can keep an eye on the bag. You now have a much higher change that the person will protect it. The risks are the same for the person, and the gains are still zero, but they committed.

This have plenty of application in sales, politics, etc.

For a very fun ride about this, read "Small Treatise About Manipulation for Honest People ". It explains very well how we trick ourselves into taking weird decisions because of commitments.

The company actually owes you a lot. At least the capitalist ones.

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