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Comment by sushibowl | Hacker News Reader

I think the answer is pretty simply due to the difference in laws. In the US no notice is legally required. As you noted, employees that already know their employment is shortly coming to an end generally don't perform to the same level. Therefore it is in the company's interest to give no advance notice whatsoever until employment is officially, actually terminated.

In every European country, there's a legal requirement to give notice. And therefore there is an incentive for the company to maintain amicable relations during the notice period to try and prevent trouble.

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Well, yes, but actually no: you can easily give notice then lock them out, you just have to pay them over the entire notice period as the law says. It's not commonly done but in special cases of really bad blood, it will. The law is there to protect the employee income, not to force the employer to give them work.

This has been my experience in most cases. When an employee is terminated, they are sent home and paid the rest of their time, to avoid risk of vengeful acts or whatever.

What bugs me: in most companies, especially ones where people do mostly knowledge-based work like Authy does, almost everyone has some kind of unique information on them. No matter how good your project management and code base, most people carry some kind of valueable knowledge in their head that only becomes apparant as soon as they are not there anymore: something like how to log into certain systems, backup schedules, currently pressing issues etc etc. In my opinion the most important thing that needs to be done during offboarding is transfering as much of this hidden knowledge as possible into the company.

How do they proceed operating after kicking people out without prior notice? Do those projects just get stomped and started over with new people?

> Therefore it is in the company's interest to give no advance notice whatsoever until employment is officially, actually terminated.

That doesn't follow at all. The notice period exists so you can transfer your knowledge and projects to colleagues who will take over your work.

If the notice period is in the company interest when people leave on their own, it's also in the company's interest when they have to leave?

The notice period also exists so you can find a new job and aren’t immediately out on the street like in the US.

It is both in the interest of the company and employee, as neither can terminate the contract immediately.

The big difference between those two cases is when it's the company's decision, they have plenty of opportunity to plan for the transition and may frequently conclude that they've done enough for the transition before the conversation with the employee.

Not only do you have to give notice, but here in Norway you also have to include employee reps and follow a strict process. Part of that process is to define criteria for how to determine who should stay or go. Then after notifying the employees about the ongoing reduction, each employee should have the opportunity to discuss with their superiors how they fit the criteria or if there are other roles in the company they could fill. And then at a set time the actual layoffs will be announced.

So it's virtually unheard of to show up, hear about layoffs, and not have a job the next day. Unless it's a situation where the whole company is going bankrupt or so.

The notice period is mostly monetary. 30 days notice means you should pay for that time, but having the person actually work is optional (if you're being terminated)

> In the US no notice is legally required.

Required or allowed? So in the US you can't give notice?

I think you've read that wrong.

It is probably better phrased as “In the US, notice is not legally required”.

If you’re asking about resigning as an employee, it seems to work the same way: legally speaking, you could just stop showing up from one day to the next.

I imagine most of the time people will have the courtesy of giving 1-2 weeks notice if possible.

It's not just courtesy. For many local companies, the business owners will know each other and will let other business owners know if someone quits without notice, and so it's harder to get hired after that if you don't give notice.

That said, sometimes the company will decide that they'd rather you just go, and they'll tell you not to bother giving notice and you can leave immediately. Someone in another comment said that was because of bad blood, but it's also because of risk and it's unlikely that a person will be very productive during a short notice period.

When there's a tricky hand-off, though, the company might ask for and incentivize a longer notice period, too... So nothing's written in stone.

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