A Protip When Giving Two-Weeks Notice | Hacker News Reader

A Protip When Giving Two-Weeks Notice

forrestthewoods.com

During my talk with HR I should have politely presented the following three options.

They fire me. I go home. I notify the state and collect unemployment benefits until my new job starts. I sit at home for two weeks doing nothing, collect my regular paycheck, and avoid all distractions. I work for another two weeks and have my last day like normal.

This ultimatum constitutes constructive resignation, which is disqualifying for unemployment insurance benefits. I wouldn't take any advice from someone who believes this to be a reasonable position. The correct response to an employer who severs you early in your 2-weeks notice is to thank them. The 2 weeks notice is an obligation on you, not them.

I try to avoid companies that are big enough to have an HR department. While I was discussing what I thought about a position at a company with their HR person I actually told her that the fact that they were big enough to have HR department was a strike against them. <g>

When I've gone to new jobs, they always wanted me to start as soon a possible so the OP's scenario wouldn't normally be a problem. It's never happened to me but if it did I'd just start 2 weeks sooner at the new job.

ProTip for meeting a coworker before a new job: maybe have an open mind about this person being helpful to you instead of spouting a prejudgement about their existence being a problem.

I meant no offense. Companies "that are big enough to have an HR department" are generally bigger than the size of companies I like working for. It wasn't a dig at HR. Replace "HR department" with "front desk receptionist/dedicated IT/security badges/have a cafeteria" if that will make my preferences less offensive.

The 2 weeks notice is for the party being notified. Not the other way around.

When you suddenly quit you leave them high and dry. Which is where the notice comes in. If however they don't need your services anymore either then it's perfectly reasonable for you to mutually end the contract.

I mean what are you really complaining about. You wanted to quit and they said OK.

> I mean what are you really complaining about. You wanted to quit and they said OK.

More accurately, he wanted to take a new job in 2 weeks and got sent home without pay for that time. Not everyone can afford that gap. What's more, I don't see this as a complaint, so much, but as a retrospective analysis of how s/he might better have handled things to his/her own advantage.

If his new employer wouldn't welcome him earlier under the changed circumstance, it probably wasn't a very good career move...

Another reminder of how brutal employment law in the US is. Hard to believe that it's legal for a company to act in that way.

23 states (+/-) have Right-To-Work laws, meaning that either party can fire the other at any time without notice.

As Jack Welch of General Electric put it: "You got paid on Friday, therefore we're even."

As I put it: "You paid me for the work I did, therefore we're even."

The main difference here is he didn't get fired, so no unemployment. Basically they talked him out of 2 weeks wages, as at the time he thought they had the power to just move his resignation date.

That's not what a right-to-work law is.

Right to work laws are related to union workforces; they allow non-union employees to work in otherwise unionized workforces without requiring them to join the union (and thus be forced to pay union dues as a de facto condition of employment).

You actually refer to at-will labor laws, which describe the laws of all 50 states in the U.S. "At will" means that either party can terminate the employment agreement at any time, without notice, unless notice is first required by the terms of the employment agreement.

2 weeks is the standard notice required in most employment agreements that require notice, but 2 weeks notice is not required in most situations. It's simply the polite thing to do if you don't want to burn bridges. (I've worked with many people who gave more than 2 weeks notice, and a few who left the same afternoon they gave notice.)

You're right - I got the term wrong. I shouldn't be posting that early on a weekend.

So embarrassed...

Brutal? I think it's incredibly fair. I'm being paid to do a job. If I don't want to do that job anymore, I leave whenever I want. If they don't want me to do that job anymore, or are unhappy with how I'm doing it, they tell me to leave whenever they want.

The lack of crazy-ass employment laws is one thing in a long list of reasons why startups tend to thrive in the US more than in other countries.

A useful tale, a shame this didn't get any traction on HN.

I like option 1: "You can fire me. I won't quit!"

So what. If they decide to fire you before the effective date of your resignation, you're eligible for unemployment benefits and/or the severance package. I've known a few people who knew that layoffs were coming, but chose to stay anyway, simply because they wanted the severance payout and were confident they could find a new job relatively quickly.

Financially, you usually come out ahead, although you now have to admit that you have been fired in the past. (Interestingly, layoffs are legally distinct from firings.) But if you already have a new job lined up, I don't think it's that important.

Looking at the bigger picture, if they weren't willing to keep you on for your last two weeks, either they saw you as not that important or useful at the company, or the company is in serious financial trouble. Either way, you're probably better off forgetting about that company and enjoying your extra two weeks.

There is another common reason companies send people home as soon as they resign: security. These company consider all dissatisfied employees as security risks, and resigning clearly means you are dissatisfied, so they have policies saying upon resignation you'll be escorted from the building. (Usually, to keep it legal, on a 2 week vacation.) This is not too uncommon in financial services.

I consider this flawed reasoning, but the people I've known who where hit by it considered it a nice bonus vacation...

Being fired generally means you were terminated for cause. Being laid off generally means you were terminated for business reasons.

I think this may vary by state. A friend gave 2-weeks notice and was fired immediately (from a non-tech-sector job) and said that, according to the state, he wasn't eligible for unemployment, because he had resigned.

I was unwilling to dig through the laws enough to find out for sure. Until he told me this, my understanding was the same as yours.

Probably there was some kind of paperwork that the office had to file to make him eligible, which it didn't occur to them to do in this case. I'm willing to bet that its something they should have done, although I could definitely be wrong.

It seems that unemployment shouldn't function that way: the employer has to actively deny the UI claim, not have to do work to make their own UI premiums go up.

Said friend may also suffer from social anxiety and just not want to talk to the UI office.

By all means, anyone in this situation should call your state's unemployment office to find out. The worst they can do is say no. The one time I got laid off I was amazed at how nice they were.

2 weeks notice is only required by either side if the employment agreement requires it. (2 weeks = 2 weeks before the intended departure date, not the actual departure date.) Otherwise, the standard is that either party can terminate the agreement at any time. Professional employment contracts (lawyers, accountants, programmers) usually have a 2-week notice requirement on the employee, but not on the employer. This is to allow for the orderly transition or wind-down of the employee's responsibilities to other employees. If the employer is terminating you immediately, they've already figured out what to do or effected the transition, so the 2 weeks is unnecessary. (Union contracts usually have a lengthy process for terminating employees, which is goverened by a very different set of rules (and laws)).

Ergo, the suggestions Forrest makes in his blog post make no sense. He gave 2 weeks notice. His company did not need the full 2 weeks to transition his workload to another employee, so they terminated him the next day (or rather, the next business day).

Forrest got lucky by leaving. Imagine what management at that company does to their employees every day, including spontaneous firing.

I have never had a job where my last two weeks weren't full of important brain dumping and transition meetings.

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