Can your employer fire you after you quit? | Hacker News Reader

Can your employer fire you after you quit?

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72 pointsjawns151 comments

It can get a lot worse in states with onerous non-compete laws.

When I quit Tudor Investment, they forced me to work for an extra 3 months. If I didn't, they threatened to fire me 'with cause' which under NY state law means they could enforce my non-compete without paying me.

1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay longer. So I terminated my employment using the 'right to work' clause and they carried out their threat, firing me after I legally quit (twice!).

This kind of non-compete abuse is probably illegal but fighting it through arbitration would be expensive.

Those assholes still owe me money in fact. Don't ever deal with the wage thieves at Tudor Investment.

Your state Department of Labor probably takes nonpayment of wages very seriously.

You're responsible for hiring a lawyer and suing the company if you make over $900/week, which probably every developer in NYC does.

https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workpro...

Ouch. Hopefully you left a factful glassdoor review for the next person.

Likely this comment is worth 10 glassdoor reviews, and could alert others still working there as well to these practices.

In content sure, but not in reach.

This might be one argument in favor of having a union or guild for developers: pooling of funds to temporarily cover legal fees.

Generally however they don’t become liable for the time you aren’t working because you’re dealing with them, and that ignores the actual up front costs in hiring a lawyer. A lot of this theft is targeted at people who literally cannot afford to make a claim, and for some reason you can’t just report the theft to the police.

Thank you for naming names. Most people with experiences like this keep everything anonymous, leaving other people to fall into the same trap.

This kind of thing makes me thankful to work in Europe

> If I didn't, they threatened to fire me 'with cause' which under NY state law means they could enforce my non-compete without paying me.

IANAL, but might that qualify as criminal extortion?

Their glassdoor rating alone would keep me away!

Why not quit by sending a certified return receipt letter? Then you could prove you quit first.

Why would it matter? I can already I prove I quit several times via email timestamps. Still doesn't mean I'll front the tens of thousands to sue.

Wouldn't they have to sue you to enforce the noncompete? It would still be expensive to defend but the game theory would say at that point that they shouldn't sue you because it would cost them money to do so and there's no way they could win.

In many states the non-compete remains in force whether you get quit or get fired.

I’m confused - why didn’t you have normal garden leave?

In NY state, if your employer terminates you with cause then garden leave is enforced but not paid.

It's open to massive abuse, as I found out.

I've heard of companies forcing you to leave early for security reasons, but I've never heard of companies forcing you to stay. That's close to blackmail, but I suspect it would be difficult and expensive to prove in court. Sorry you had to go through that.

Man, I'd love to hear your story from the parallel universe where you got the threat in writing, quit, they fired you with cause, you talked to a lawyer and sued them for tons of damage. But knowing how employer-favoring the legal system is, I assume I'm just daydreaming now.

I'm going to say 2 things here that are going to be unpopular for the HN Community, but they need to be said.

First, Non-Competes and Binding Arbitration are legal abhorrations that need to be avoided at all costs. Management is saying "You can't leave and the law doesn't exist here". Google's management, of all people, used these to sexually harass and assault their employee's. The only time signing one is advised is if you have a lawyer, that you trust and are paying, representing your interests, involved to ensure you get paid and there's no weasel words or wiggle room for game-playing. Ask them if the contract is negotiable and if you can go over it with your legal counsel; if the answer is no, you just confirmed you are walking into a company full of psychopaths that would sooner kill you and harvest your organs for a buck than treat you reasonably. There is literally no fine line or middle ground here; when these contracts are rolled out either they are negotiated in good faith or they are not.

Second, a lot of people walk into those contracts on good faith, only to find the nightmare later on. Summarizing the situatuion; the Soap Box is done and over with, the Ballot Box is already empty, and the option for a Jury Box was taken away from you, which leaves only the Ammo Box.

Prudent people will realize the only way out is to bankrupt the business and ownership through making a big mistake or error; They can't pay the arbiters if they are bankrupt and the contract terminates once they are liquidated. And remember, 90% of the reason those companes run like dogsh!t is because the staff there either have lost interest in their lives or are trying to take the place down to get out.

And if that isn't an option , There's a reason we've got a 2nd amendment in this country and nobody did this in the 50's-80's after WW2 (Ex-Soldiers have zero patience for this crap). Remember we're a jury trial country, mob rule reigns supreme, and you get to pleade your case.

It sounds like the person received unemployment benefits until their intended resignation date. That seems fair, right? You certainly wouldn’t receive unemployment benefits after you resigned. As for wrongful termination, I don’t know the law behind that, but this certainly doesn’t obviously seem wrongful to me. What am I missing?

Yeah, that's the way I read it. Though they didn't specify, I assumed they gave the 60 days notice because they had a new job that, for whatever reason, was slated to start on January 1st. I don't think I'd ever have given that much notice (unless it was for some reason legally required) for specifically this reason. Either way, even if I didn't have any new employment lined up, I would have expected to collect my remaining paychecks and then that would be that - no unemployment at all.

Aside from a little extra cash (since the unemployment they did get wouldn't have been anywhere near the amount their paychecks would have been for) I'm also not really sure what the end goal here is... just put this crappy employer behind you and move on.

Unemployment benefits are likely to be substantially less than wages. In Massachusetts, unemployment benefits are about 50% of wages, with a cap of $795 per week (which works out to an annualized rate of $41,340/year). So the employee is probably in worse financial shape than they expected to be.

IMO, the issue here isn't wrongful termination, it's providing false information to the state. Firing someone because they intend to resign in the future is probably legal, but it doesn't change the fact that they were fired. It sounds like the employer reported that they resigned, which simply isn't true.

There’s no question that unemployment benefits are worse for that employee than their full employment benefits, and that extended unemployment benefits are better for the employee than them ending on January 1.

I just don’t think that’s a sufficient argument for saying that the employee is entitled to those things legally or ethically.

From a legal standpoint, the relevant language is "no benefits shall be paid to an individual under this chapter for... the period of unemployment... after the individual has left work (1) voluntarily..."[1]. I hope we can agree the employee did not leave voluntarily. There is no statutory language I could find that makes the fact that the employee intended to leave at some point after the date of actual separation relevant to the eligibility for benefits.

Ethically, the thing I have the biggest problem with is the employer characterizing the circumstances of the separation as anything other than a firing on November 1st. Effectively they are trying to say they fired the person on November 1st, then they rehired that person on January 1st, at which point they immediately resigned. I just don't think that's an accurate description of the circumstances.

[1] Massachussetts General Law Chapter 151A, Section 25, preamble and paragraph e: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXI/Ch...

It's also entirely possible that the company could have worked to retain the employee. This happens all the time. The only time it matters is if the employee quits on the spot or was given notice of termination. Notice of intent to quit is not quitting.

I've in fact quit a company in Massachusetts before when I was younger because I was falsely accused of theft. They provided me unemployment which I refused on principle. Turned out the manager who accused me was the one stealing. Karma paid her a visit in that she was stabbed during a robbery on the shift she had to cover because of me leaving (she was fine with stitches). After this is when she was caught. So fun times all around.

Due to the difference between pay and unemployment benefits, the employee still has less money at the date when they would have resigned and they may have been counting on that money to see them through the job search.

During the two months after they gave notice, the employee might have intended to send out applications in the evenings. Since there is often a significant lead time between submitting an application and hearing back, the employee may have been counting on the two months of employment to burn some of that wait.

Hiring is probably also cyclic. For example, between Thanksgiving and New Years is probably not a very productive time to be looking for jobs. The employee may have been counting on the two months before their resignation date to get them through one of these slow periods.

The post said they were fired without cause. I don't know about Massachusetts but in right to work states, people can be fired without a reason or a notice period, and it is up to the person to prove there was a reason that is illegal.

> and it is up to the person to prove there was a reason that is illegal.

And the company has the money, legal team, and power.

And the person has, well, less money, and no legal team, and low/no power.

And that's why all layoffs and firings need to include why. There shouldn't be any of this without-reason dismissals.

In Massachusetts you automatically get unemployed benefits unless the employer files paperwork for termination due to cause. The de facto assumption is that the employee will receive unemployment benefits up until the date that those benefits are exhausted. The only way that this stopped was if the employer started that the employee quit or that they were terminated for cause, neither of which sounds true in this case as terminating someone for an intention to quit is not cause. Obviously IANAL but as far as I can tell the employee is entitled to unemployment benefits.

I think the employee made a mistake by giving 60 days notice; generally, that is only called for in very senior-level positions. Beyond that, the employeee didn't have another job lined up. So (at least from the employer's point of view) it seems as if the employee intended to use those 60 days to find another job, and I think an employer could reasonably assume that they would not be putting in their all during that time, so best to cut the line.

All that said, it's not fair for the fired employee to receive unemployment benefits only until the date on which they would have stopped working if they had not been fired.

Unemployment assistance is a public benefit that people (generally) qualify for if they are fired without cause; it helps them get by until they are able to find another job. You can qualify for unemployment assistance even if your work has a defined end date. I have a buddy who works on film sets, so his jobs typically last 4-5 months. But even if the film is scheduled to wrap up filming in a week, he would still qualify for unemployment if he were let go, and not just for the single week he would have been working.

The implicit understanding of giving notice is, "I intend to work for you until this date." But if the employer fires them prior to that date, it totally invalidates whatever notice was given.

Keep in mind that date of notice and date of separation are different. Between those two dates, the employee has the same expectation of employment, and the public benefits associated with it, as any other employee. If you get fired prior to your date of departure, whether or not you have given your employer the courtesy of notice, then you should qualify for the same unemployment benefits as someone who has not given the courtesy of notice.

Think about it. It would really suck if Employee A and Employee B both intend to stop working two weeks from now; Employee A is a jerk and plans to give no notice; Employee B is nice and gives two weeks' notice; both employees are fired without cause several days later; and Employee A gets at most 10 days' worth of unemployment benefits, while Employee B gets the standard 6 months.

I’m not saying you’re wrong legally, but I don’t quite follow your argument. You say “between those two dates, the employee has the same expectation of employment” but then immediately follow it up by saying that the unemployment benefits should extend indefinitely outside of that date range.

You may be right legally, I really couldn't say, but it makes perfect sense to me that the unemployment benefits would extend only to the announced separation date.

What I mean is that even in an at-will state, employees have an expectation of continued employment, unless their employer has given them a defined end date. An employer can decide to fire an employee at any point without cause or notice, but until that happens, the employee has an expectation that they're going to be coming in to work and doing their job. To put it another way: Even in at-will states, you're employed until you aren't.

But if an employer fires an employee, that upends the arrangement, whether or not the employee was planning to stop working at future date, and whether or not the employee has given the employer notice of that fact.

Frankly, the only reason it's considered common practice to give notice is because there is an implicit expectation that you will continue to be employed until your date of planned separation and can make arrangements based on that fact. If employers regularly fired anyone who gave notice, and offered them no severance, no one would give notice.

So, for the purposes of qualifying for unemployment benefits, it should not matter whether you had planned to stop working for your employer on some future date. The firing has nullified those plans. The employer has prevented you from working until the date on which you intended to stop working, and so it's almost nonsensical to say, "Well, now you're out of a job, but let's treat you as if you still have a job that you're still planning to quit on the date you specified."

The announced separation date was based on the assumption of gainful employment up until that date. Being thrown into unemployment makes that decision irrelevant. Giving notice is a courteous statement of intentions. The courtesy and intention no longer apply if they get fired in the interim.

If the employee quit, but he never quit; he was fired before he could quit.

If 5 people are planning to share a cake and I say I'm going to eat that cake on Friday, all by myself. If you eat the cake on Tuesday. Everyone doesn't get to switch to being mad at me on Friday. You still ate all the cake.

He was planning to leave after 2 more months of full pay. He never got those 2 months of full pay. The loss of that puts him in a very different position on Jan 1 than he would have been in had he not been fired.

I agree, you should follow the procedures outlined in your employee handbook. Give them exactly the notice they ask for, otherwise you have no legal protection in a case like this. They were certainly within their rights to fire him (legally), but I disagree about the unemployement insurance. Giving longer then standard notice is just not a smart move in today's climate.

The best thing for the employer to do would be to accept the resignation with only 2 weeks notice and tell the person not to come in for the 2 weeks (and pay them for the two weeks). This assumes that the employer doesn't trust the employee and doesn't think they will behave during the time between notice and termination. If an employer things the employee will behave there is usually no harm keeping them on for the notice period. Not a lawyer this isn't legal advice, consult your lawyer before doing anything like firing an employee or accepting a termination notice for any period other than the one in the notice.

This is what usually happens. The employee is terminated everywhere but on payroll, so they can't come in, have to return all equipment, don't have any access etc. The company basically didn't want to pay those extra checks so they pulled this stunt.

Funny. In Spain (and I'm sure other countries) you are owed severance pay and can claim unemployment benefits in case your employer fires you/laids you off, but not in case you resign on your own.

Few employers would "fire" an employee resigning (also, "asking" to be fired is highly illegal), unless he/she were a very recent hire for which severance pay would be low.

In Europe, we don't really have the concept of at-will employment so an employer can't legally terminate your employment without a good reason. And resigning isn't usually classed as a good reason.

I'm not sure about Spain, but in the UK there is a difference between being fired i.e. terminated with cause and laid off i.e. made redundant.

In the former, I don't believe there's any requirement for severance. In the latter there is a statutory minimum severance.

Also, if you're actually fired, your rights to unemployment benefits change. Usually some form of delay and/or reduction.

Isn't it a bit more complicated in England? An employee who's been working for the company for less than two years is fired for anything but reasons connected to protected characteristics doesn't have any recourse if they're fired. The employer doesn't need to give a reason.

Citation please? I was under the impression that UK employers always need to give a (valid) reason. The only change at two years of which I'm aware is that this is the point at which redundancy payments (US: severence pay) starts to become due in case of redundancy.

Qualifying period to claim unfair dismissal at tribunal is 2 years: https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/what-to-do-if-youre-dismissed

That doesn't necessarily legalise unfair dismissal for the employer though, does it?

It’s common in the US to be asked to leave when you give notice. One place I worked had security escort people out of the building by the end of the day they gave notice.

I also worked in restaurants through college and while you weren’t asked to leave, you were taken off the schedule and not given any shifts.

(edit) The security walking out wasn't this big show of force, it was mostly to turn in laptop, badge, etc. Security was nice about it, but it was still security (end edit)

I don’t get the whole being walked out by security thing. It seems just an unnecessary show of force or humiliation without any benefit. If a person had wanted to do danger then they could have done that easily before putting in notice. It makes no sense.

Before the notice, they had a job with a company that paid them money that allowed them to pay the rent, food, hospital costs, etc.

After it, they may worry want to pay next week’s groceries from.

So a person is fine until the moment they give notice and immediately become a risk after handing it in? When I saw someone walked out it felt like a show of power by a police state that signaled “we can take anybody anytime and the only thing you can do is watch helplessly”. The procedure seems designed for humiliation and intimidation.

In the cases I've seen it happen the person walked out was given their final two weeks pay. They just were not allowed back in the office.

i would guess that if the employee handbook calls for two weeks notice of resigning, there would be some sort of case for getting paid if they were walked out right away. I'm probably wrong though.

It sounds like a dumb policy that some hack in HR would come up with, but couldn't really explain why. Probably not malicious, just stupid.

I've never seen it happen myself. When an employee leaves us, the only thing I like to do is immediately suspend access to all the equipment. I tell them before I do it, and it isn't to deny them the ability to damage anything. It's to give us two weeks of opportunity to catch anything that they were responsible for which was sliding under the radar, so we can correct the process while they are still around to explain it.

Sorry, completely missed the context of “person quits” because, for me as for you, that is extremely incompatible with “must be escorted out of the office ASAP”.

And, by the way, “leaves angrily, and may steal or destroy company property“ isn’t the only, and sometimes not even a reason for getting people out of the office as soon as possible after firing them. Certainly during mass firings, it also is about morale for those who are allowed to stay.

It’s no fun hearing that, from now on, you’ll have to do with 20% less head count for the same amount of work, but it’s even less fun when there are people sitting around for a few weeks who say “it’s not my problem. I’m fired”.

Indeed, the only time I have seen this is when someone was being investigated for gross misconduct, or a 'surprise' redundancy. I assumed that the company just didn't want anything untoward happening.

For the same reason it is polite to declare war before invading a country.

I've seen more than once employees try to argue loudly for their job back, threaten violence, leave bomb threats, stalker exes, etc. all at a single company. Security walking people out is a precaution and based on my experience there a sound one.

For people getting fired, I can see that occasionally happening. But someone giving notice is leaving of their own free will, why would they make any sort of scene on the day they give notice?

"I've seen more than once employees try to argue loudly for their job back, threaten violence, leave bomb threats, stalker exes, etc. all at a single company. "

What kind of place was this? I have never seen such a thing.

Really depends on the individuals, it's not so common in our industry because we're well paid and have plenty of opportunity, others aren't so lucky.

The worst of seen in software specifically was a guy that had some visa requirements for permanent citizenship coming up and probably wasn't dealing with pressure well already, he had a mental breakdown and cat5 was being ripped out of the walls during the meeting.

The second is an older guy in tears because he'd been struggling with long term unemployment due to ageism (I can vouch for his code at least) before that gig.

If you're not in a region and industry with a lot of opportunity it's a much bigger deal and even reasonable people won't necessarily act rationally.

It usually happens when employees are fired/laid off, not when they leave voluntarily.

>It’s common in the US to be asked to leave when you give notice. One place I worked had security escort people out of the building by the end of the day they gave notice.

Yes, but they usually pay you for the two weeks. Not summarily fire you and report that you were fired to future employers. (At least in IT)

In the US fired means for cause. When you are fired they are legally saying you are a bad employee and they can/will tell others not to hire you. This implies they can not give your severance because the time you "worked" for them without doing your job is your severance. You don't get unemployment because you were not actually working. Contrast this with laid off which means you were a good employee, they just don't need you anymore: you can get severance (if there is any, it is not required).

If/when you employer is going to fire you ask if you can resign on the spot instead. Most will say yes: because you resigned of your own violation you cannot sue them, but in turn when someone checks references they will carefully say "yes s/he worked here, s/he left in good report, we have nothing more to say", which doesn't look bad.

In my country (Netherlands) there's some strict laws around firing; the situation you described (being a bad employee and getting fired on the spot) only applies for a few cases; refusal to work (without good reason, probably the most up for debate reason), theft, fraud, or severe incompetence. The other cases though require a more formal release procedure and compensation.

However, to work around that some companies get up to some really scummy practices. Multinationals especially, they can just let a company go bankrupt so there's no way for employees to get anything.

You are typically not fired on the spot in the US. The law allows it, but generally it only happens for the good reasons you listed. Most cases you are doing useful work, just "not enough", and the company will try to help you produce enough. If those attempts fail to work out they will fire you, but you should have seen it coming for months.

> You don't get unemployment because you were not actually working

Nope. You have to get fired (with or without cause, doesn’t matter) to collect unemployment in most US jurisdictions.

Nope, you have to get terminated "without cause" (i.e., laid off) to collect unemployment in most of the US.

If you are terminated with case (i.e., fired), you are generally not eligible for unemployment, though there are a few exceptions.

In California it is misconduct which disqualifies you, which doesn’t include more common “with cause” cases. I don’t know about other jurisdictions.

Laymen, especially techies, often assume that termination for "poor performance" or "bad fit" is a "for cause" termination because there is a "cause" behind the termination, but that is an incorrect understanding of employment law.

Businesses always have a "cause" for letting someone go (usually financial or performative), so the inartfully term "for cause" actually means a cause for something other than business considerations. Generally, today "for cause" means misconduct. Each state enumerates a different set of activities constituting misconduct, but there is always some sort of misconduct involved.

(Unfortunately I no longer have the employment law book where they cover the history behind the origination of this term and I don't have the time to google an alternative history, but in a nutshell it's shorthand for a somewhat longer phrase.)

Not always. “With Cause” is defined in employment contracts quite a bit more broadly than just misconduct in all its forms. For example, my most recent contract had terms about the company hypothetically requiring relocation and I refusing as being “With Cause,” as well as things like not complying with internal rules, procedures, or org charts. Basically any reason for letting me go due to a choice I made. “Misconduct” on the other hand requires material detriment, aka me screwing over the company financially.

“With Cause” is about you being qualified for severance pay. “Misconduct” is about you causing trouble through intent or severe negligence.

That might be different for the legal term "With Cause" though. It is common for legal documents to define terms, many laws in fact start with a definition section that apply just to that law. Thus legally your state may have several different definitions for "with cause" that apply to different parts of the law.

That's cool but that's not legally for cause in the US whatever the company wants to claim. I'd go even further and say they may be violating labor law but including such a provision.

This just isn't true, at least in New Jersey. For NJ Unemployment, being fired only renders you ineligible if you are fired for misconduct, which is further defined as requiring intent or sufficient negligence to imply a disregard for the job. Meanwhile, employers aren't limited to firing you for misconduct or layoffs. You can be fired because you're just not a good fit for the team/position. In that case, you are eligible for unemployment because you didn't quit but didn't commit misconduct. If you asked to resign instead of being fired, you'd be giving up your right to collect NJUI.

I can't speak for other states, but I'd be surprised if NJ is entirely unique.

No, what he said is true in NJ and generally all over the US.

While being "fired" is commonly used by laymen as a shorthand for being laid off, the two have very different meanings in practice (and very different legal consequences).

Being "fired" in the US means a termination "for cause", where cause generally means commission of a felony, morally reprehensible acts, deception in the hiring process, or violation of rules set forth in the employee handbook.

Being "laid off" means a termination for any reason other than for cause. For example, if you are terminated because you are a "Bad fit", you have been laid off, not fired.

If you asked to resign instead of being fired, it would have not affect on your right to collect NJUI, because you wouldn't be eligible either way. No one in their right mind would choose to resign over being laid off unless the company was offering a termination bonus that exceeded the foregone UI.

I've never heard of a termination based on individual performance being called a layoff. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's defined as a termination due to factors outside the employee's control. A layoff is when the position itself no longer exists due to downsizing, restructuring, etc.

Being terminated due to poor performance or a bad fit is not a layoff, by any standard I've heard of, and some brief googling seems to support that. Terminating an employee for being a bad fit and calling it a layoff would almost certainly invite legal action.

But I'm no lawyer, so if you've got a source backing up the claim, I'd love to see it and be enlightened.

You admit that you're not a lawyer, and then continue to argue about the meaning of terms which have defined legal consequences?

Your colloquial understanding of what "layoff" means is just that--a colloquial but not correct understanding. A layoff is legally just a not-for-cause termination of an employee by the employer. Down-sizing is a type of termination (and a type of layoff) which usually has additional legal requirements and consequences (mostly for the company).

Being terminated due to poor performance or a bad fit is not a layoff, by any standard I've heard of, and some brief googling seems to support that.

Cites needed. HR and legal sites only. You might be confusing the Canadian and EU sites that pop up as the first results as authorities on US law, which is very different. (Note: Canada does define "layoff" and "termination" to mean different things. The US does not.)

Terminating an employee for being a bad fit and calling it a layoff would almost certainly invite legal action.

Literally anything can invite legal action in the US. But terminating an employee for being a bad fit is precisely within the meaning of "layoff" and would not result in a successful legal action by the terminated employee.

But I'm no lawyer, so if you've got a source backing up the claim, I'd love to see it and be enlightened.

I charge $600/hour, if you want cites, however, Google is free if you remember to limit yourself to US sites. This ADP article (https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/2018/09/firing-employees-...) confusingly notes the difference between the two from a non-legal/non-HR perspective intended for layman employers.

I don't think that would help you in most circumstances. I know when I worked for HP, they had a policy of only confirming the dates of employment. Beyond that, I think some employers will indicate if an employee is rehirable, which I'd guess your not if you were getting fired.

In France (and I belive everywhere in Europe) your employer is not allowed to comment on your employment at all.

The only thing they can confirm is that you were employed, from when to when, and the position you had. Full stop.

Not your salary, not whether you were "good" or not, nothing. They can of course tell w great your were if you explicitly allow them.

Similar in Denmark. I've had a co-workers that wanted to quit do to personal reasons. Our boss opted to fire him instead, so he be able to collect a severance pay (I think three month of pay).

If the employee's 60-day notice was non-binding or aspirational it seems to me that their unemployment benefits should not have been cut off at the 60-day mark. Because the employee always had the option to change their mind and withdraw their notice to quit.

In the unlikely case that it was impossible for the employee's employment to extend beyond the 60-day mark after giving a 60-day notice, it seems reasonable for the unemployment benefits to be cut off at the 60-day mark.

But absent some express contract term or law, just giving notice would not prevent an employee from withdrawing notice before leaving the job.

They said the company chose not to accept their resignation notice, so the dates are void anyways. It is a firing, plain and simple.

I worked at a Microsoft affiliate a few years back, and it was common knowledge that if you put in your two weeks notice, a couple of days later armed security would come and escort you out.

> a Microsoft affiliate

What is that?

Telemarketing for O365, etc.

Other than armed security, this is common in many sectors where you will be walked out the same day. You'll get paid as expected but won't have access. It's not worth the potential data and customer risk to companies once you've stated your intent to leave.

How are you any more of a risk after you let them know of your intent to leave than before you let them know? You had an intent to leave the minute you started looking for a job.

If you wanted to harm the company, you wouldn’t have given them notice.

Probably comes down to HR and Corp security not taking the chance.

Obviously, if you had malicious intent, you would have ample opportunity to act before giving notice.

They just want to make sure they did what they could in case you should in fact have malicious intent. 'Oh, we escorted him off the premises within the hour; this one is not on us...'

This company was more about humiliation, they took people leaving personally, as if it was an act of betrayal. Not a good place.

Yes, but now you are a "known risk". IN theory, if a company does not have a policy for a "known risk", they could be liable if a data breach occurred, whereas an "unknown risk" there is nothing they could have done, and therefore less penalty under the law.

As with most bureaucratic procedures, there was probably one person, one time, who went absolutely nuts and tried to wipe all corporate data / attack every coworker they never liked / ... after giving notice.

Many very serious meetings were then held to ensure this could never ever happen again, regardless of the cost-benefit tradeoff, because inconvenient procedures don't make headlines.

Because now the company knows, and people aren't perfectly rational.

It's not about stopping targeted harm (which is covered by other security procedures) but to limit the time where the employee is at increased risk of leaking data or doing things that they normally wouldn't because the main consequence of losing their job is removed. Someone knowing they'll be gone soon can also have a negative impact on team productivity and morale.

Because before they knew you wanted to leave they did not knew you wanted to leave. If employee A is plotting to opportunistically jump boat the company can only (preventively) act after it knows that A wants to leave.

The same usual problems with false positives and false negatives.

(also 99.9% of employees are not leaving, considering them all a risk can be expensive)

Which just proves that BigCo policies are written by bozos.

All this means is that people take all the customer data before you submit your notice.

Different story if someone's fired for cause, of course.

> Which just proves that BigCo policies are written by bozos.

I know it feels good to say that, but isn't it more likely they are just rational human beings making decisions by weighing a wide array of facts - most of which we aren't even aware exist?

Or perhaps policies are written by smart people who have lots of experience and data that shows that it's a time of increased risk that's not worth it when your company has valuable trade-secrets, customer relationships, and other confidential data. Sometimes it's as simple as protecting team productivity and morale.

I guess if it's a small startup with 5 people it doesn't matter, but please don't assume that everyone at all these major companies is a "bozo".

Probably it's mostly "we did something!" box-ticking. Having policies matters more than their being effective or sensible, generally.

What are you basing this on? Seems like the same assumptions as the other comment. I've explained several reasons why it makes a difference.

The vast majority of business decisions I've seen around security have boiled down to "we need to be able to put something on this sheet/slide, and it needs to be something that will raise the fewest questions—so, exactly what everyone else does".

Effectiveness or actual purpose isn't on the radar, and improving security through these processes does happen but is basically a side-effect or an accident. Some of these things probably are based in some real need (at whichever business started the ball rolling) and tend to be useful for that reason, but I guarantee a lot are just doing things for the sake of being able to say something was done after an incident, get that in place at a couple bigcos and pretty soon it's a standard industry practice, even if it's not sensible at many places implementing it. This smells very much like one of those.

This is not about security, it's HR. These policies are for mitigating potential risky behavior, not to stop otherwise malicious actors. It's about managing normal workers during a time period that will have decreased or even negative productivity and can cause team cohesion issues.

For example: a salesperson wont work on new deals and may even sabotage existing deals that they know they can pick up at a new company. Sometimes it's as innocuous as copying their contacts or browsing through new deal flow which they don't need to know about if they're going to a competitor. A manager might stop getting reports from their team or put off other tasks. Sure it may all go well but there are still hundreds of reasons to avoid all this potential risk.

HR departments aren't stupid or useless. They exist to manage the most complicated part of any business: the people. If you haven't ever worked in these sectors or departments, I'd recommend against assuming they have no value.

I don't assume they have no value. And this general sort of decision-making happens all over in companies (and the public sector) all the time. It's not limited to any particular department, it's just a little more checklisty and cargo-culty in the security world (and I would expect in HR where it concerns procedures like this).

[EDIT] to provide some context, I've come to see a huge portion of decisions about policies, procedures, tools, and more as basically personal and departmental risk mitigation and blame-deflection rather than anything aimed at helping a business function. At a high level that's the goal, but in the details it becomes about making sure there's always something or someone to point a finger at. Conveniently these things don't always need to be directly relevant or useful, so long as something's being done and can be put on a powerpoint slide when the C-suite or someone at some company yours is courting asks a question. As long as "what are we doing about X?" can be answered with "Y and Z, both of which are standard industry practices, see this HBR article about how IBM does it" you're good.

> Or perhaps policies are written by smart people

Where has that been true? JPMorgan has policies on notice depending on your position (engineer II has a different notice window than a IV).

During the ISO9000 heyday, it was SHOCKING to see how random HR exit policies were between hundreds of companies, with a bias toward traditional 2 week notice. The norm is that smart people aren't in HR, because smaller companies outnumber smaller ones.

I believe an employer sending you home after you give notice still has to pay you for your notice period, as long as it is a notice period they asked for in their company policies.

This is why I won't give extended notice.

Why in the world would you give an employer 60 days notice instead of the accepted two weeks.

Presumably because you (unlike the employer in this case) aren't a nasty person and would like to let your employer have time to hand over and tidy up tasks, hire or train a replacement and so on.

2 weeks is the standard amount of notice to give to employers and I think part of that reason is that companies may let you go if you give them too much notice. Sure there are situations where more may be warranted, but 2 months notice is long enough that it doesn't make sense to staff you on new projects or give you new responsibilities.

This seems like an American phenomenon. I'm planning on handing in a notice soon, and from asking around it seems like 4 weeks minimum is the standard in the UK. A 2 weeks notice only happens when you leave on really unfriendly terms.

It is very culturally dependent. In India, for example, four weeks notice might get you blacklisted, you're expected to give a lot more than that.

You don't owe the company you work for anything. You worked, in exchange for money. End of transaction. Two weeks is being courteous, sixty days is being ridiculous. See the comment below, where Microsoft guards escort you out two days after giving them two weeks notice. This is not unique to MS. Do companies normally give you 14-60 days to find a new job before firing you? Nope.

I don't know US laws, but in Canada you have to give an appropriate notice that can extend far beyond 2 weeks. Your loyalty obligations also extent after the employment period. For instance, a dentist who gave the usual 2 weeks had to pay 45,000$ in damage[0]. There is many more examples like that for high-skill hard-to-replace employees.

[0]https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/rgd/2006-v36-n1-rgd01560/10...

There is definitely no law requiring you to give any notice to an employer. I can walk out right now if I want to. The only benefit of giving a company two weeks, is not burning bridges. The unfortunate situation up North seems like the classic Canadian stereotype, where you're always sorry for it somehow being your fault.

That's interesting. Up here the employer still have to prove damage in court. I can understand the reasoning. If are a the only highly specialized engineer in a small shop, quitting unexpectedly could jeopardize the whole operation and put more people out of work. But then again, maybe I'm just a stereotypical Canadian ;).

If one person leaving jeopardizes the entire company, then that sounds like a serious issue with management and the business as a whole. What if they fall ill, or die suddenly? Everyone is replaceable.

Presumably that consideration goes both ways? The employee may be critical to the company, but the reverse is also very true -- the company is likely the sole source of income to the employee and losing it unexpectedly would be devastating. So what kind of mandated compensation is due to employees that are involuntarily terminated?

Sadly (and weirdly) it's not symmetrical. The law specifies a minimum termination notice of only two weeks from the employer. Most people assume the two weeks notice applies both ways (and it's generally fine), but it's not accurate and can bite you if you have a litigious former employer.

> Do companies normally give you 14-60 days to find a new job before firing you? Nope.

Actually, yes, in europe they do. 90 days, contractually agreed upon. Unless there's a very serious issue like theft, violence or similar, you have 90 days until you're without work. Usually it is also at the end of a month, so sometimes it can be up to almost 4 months if they decide to fire you at the start of a month.

You're very fortunate then, but we were discussing US employment.

Depends on your work contract. Some require advanced notice for higher level positions. Standard rank and file employees in the US is accurately describes as two weeks notice is appropriate where companies will often ask that you either keep it quiet or terminate you on the spot.

I think that guy said he worked for a third party who was just associated with Microsoft. When I was at Microsoft I gave them about a month's notice because that's when I was scheduled to move across the country and I "served my time" without issue.

I also find it mildly amusing to make my last day at a company be on or just after April Fool's Day so my goodbye emails are funnier.

A two weeks notice is the accepted norm in the US. If you are moving to a new company, they also expect to you start within two to four weeks.

If it takes more than two to four weeks to transfer knowledge, both you and your management are doing it wrong.

You as employee should be cross training and knowledge sharing on an ongoing basis. If you are the only one that understands a process, that means you will be stuck on it forever. The person who puts themself in a position to never get fired also can’t be promoted. From a short term view, you also can never take a vacation without worrying about being called and interrupted because you are the only person that knows how the process works.

On an employer side, you should insist on knowledge sharing and cross training in case an employee “gets hit by the lottery bus”.

I was giving my employer a couple months notice. They decided to get mad that I was resigning. So I made it two weeks notice instead

It's not uncommon if you're in charge of critical projects that you give your employer an extended window before you leave so that they have a real chance to hire someone to replace you and you can get them up to some kind of functional speed.

What would happen if you get hit by a bus? Any employee can be replaced. The concept of a corporation is that it should be able to survive as a separate entity outside of an individual.

Would the company be concerned about you or your financial obligations if they decided to lay you off?

Yes out of courtesy I’ve helped former coworkers by answering questions. But I’ve slso made myself available on a contract basis to a former company.

> But I’ve slso made myself available on a contract basis to a former company.

And how many have taken you up on the offer? I'm 0/2. Usually people don't like people leaving them.

1/2

But that’s only because the company I was working for laid everyone off [1] when another company acquired us for scraps and our corporate customers. The customer I was working for made arrangements with the acquiring company to hire me as a contractor and gave me access to all of their (my) source code.

[1] the lay off was very well done. The company kept us informed of the situation the entire time we were struggling and the investors promised us that we would get paid as long as we were working. The acquiring company gave us each a month severance. We all had plenty of time to prepare and all of us had jobs lined up within two weeks.

It could be that you're required to do so in your contract in order to have vacation/sick days paid out. I had one employer who required a 1 month notice. Unfortunately such requirements are legal in some states.

And although obviously not the case in this instance, 2 weeks isn't the norm in every country. I have to give 3 months notice in Norway.

It’s been years since I worked at a company that had separate sick and vacation time - it’s usually just one paid time off bucket. But if I remember correctly, companies don’t usually pay out for unused sick time, just unused vacation.

But most of the time, I’ve used most of my vacation time between actual vacations, interview prep and interviewing by the time I leave.

In France the notice period is generally three months, though that can be negotiated if your company is not stressed about replacing you. Two weeks would be very, very unusual here, though.

Most positions in the UK will have at least a month notice.

I have a friend whos notice is 12 months.

At my last job they tried to convince us to accept 3 months notice, this was for even junior developers.

I’ve seen the affects of that from some of my coworkers in India. It makes job mobility much harder and it benefits the employer much more than the employee.

They mistakenly treated the corporation as a person, which noone should do. The corporation is accurately modeled as a sociopath. They misassumed the corporation would have the same honorable intent they did. They've hopefully learned their lesson.

At higher levels, it's customary to offer far more than 2 weeks. At senior-director/VP, I'd expect 2-3 months (both to be offered by employees and for me to offer to my boss/company).

It's ridiculous for a company that can fire an employee with no notice at all to expect an employee to give them 2-3 months of notice, no matter how high-level the employee is. If your company needs such a long notice period, they should negotiate a contract with the employee that gives the employee similar protections, e.g., a 2-3 month notice before they can be fired (or at least a guarantee to pay salary and benefits for the entire notice period, even if the company hires a replacement after a couple of weeks).

We typically do pay severance to those employees at roughly the same duration (depending on tenure in role, could be slightly less to a fair amount more). It's an unwritten "gentleman's agreement", but I've been here 16 years and seen it pretty consistently applied in both directions and plan to hold up my end of that unwritten agreement when/if I decide to leave.

Vice Presidents don't give two weeks' notice; that's just not a thing that's done.

I have always wondered if you see a termination in the future can you trump it by submitting a 6 month resignation...

Quite possibly.

I'm a line manager and amicable resignations are much cheaper than terminations when you add up goodwill, management time, and direct costs.

Of course you can tell them that you're leaving in 6 months. Whether or not they accept that is really up to them... I'm also not sure what resigning to avoid being terminated would get you, since, depending upon the termination reason, you would be eligible for unemployment benefits but those wouldn't apply at all if you were to resign.

Resigning allows you to answer no to "Have you ever been fired or asked to resign from any past position?" on future job applications.

I don't know that I've ever been asked that before, but similar to giving more than 2 weeks notice... why would you ever answer yes to that?

If you were fired from a job they can check and find out. This is bad, they may have to fire you for lieing on your application, even if they would have hired you for a yes.

Note that they have no way to know you were asked to resign. When you are asked to leave company records will show "left for personal reasons": it is illegal for them to ask what they were.

I've been fired before. I'm up front about it when people ask. It's never been a problem. Not sure why this is considered a stigma unless you were really doing something wrong.

Because being fired is associated with incompetence, no?

umm... weren't you "asked to resign"?

I would bet it depends on just how much the company wants to get rid of you. If they're on the fence, they might just wait out the 6 months. If they want you gone immediately, the trick isn't going to work.

And if they have a policy of locking you out as soon as you give notice, it's not going to matter either way.

Why would you do that?

So wait this person was going to quit, but then got fired. So after getting fired they receive unemployment benefits which they would not have received otherwise (obviously they would have gotten fully paid for 60 days). But now are mad that the unemployment isn't lasting past the 60 days (in which after 60 days fired or resigned they wouldn't have gotten anything anyway). I guess I just don't understand what this plan was. Were they hoping to just milk out 60 more days worth of pay, and then travel or something. It appears there was no plan of a new postition lined up at all.

So we may not be getting a whole story here and I would like to know the whole story. Sure it seems bad by the employer, but we still are unsure of what the employee was planning here either. Maybe after 2 days of working after giving 60 days they weren't performing their duties anymore so they fired them. They could have been just hoping to get 2 months worth of pay, but been not expected to do anything since they were leaving. I can't make any assumptions, but without a full story this is impossible to judge who is truly in the wrong.

I actually once put in two weeks for a job, and then later when the CTO found out he said they didn't accept and I was asked to leave before 2 weeks. I, however, never thought of that as being fired, and I was leaving for a better position so it was no skin off my back. I just got a break between jobs I may not have had before.

Maybe he was due to vest something after those 60 days?

>1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay

How does that work? If you don't finish them he can fire you for poor performance? I find that hard to believe.

In at least some states, being fired for incompetence (including failing to finish assigned tasks on-time) is not disqualifying for unemployment benefits.

“We do not accept your resignation.”

“Well I don't accept your termination!”

I don't know how many tv shows I've seen that go like this:

Boss: "You're fired!" Worker: "You can't fire me, because I quit!"

I always thought that was an odd ordering.

i fire people who don’t work for me all the time :)

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