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The flip side of severance is the two week notice. Quitting is often the moral equivalent of "firing your employer". Giving another two weeks to an employer who drives you out the door with their own poor performance is frustrating, but again necessary for your reputation.

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Which is why employers would usually pay you for your notice period but tell you not to come to work, or at least that's the standard practice in the UK.

To my mind, notice periods are good for both sides - the employer gets peace of mind that if you choose to leave you'll still have a period of time for handover and winding your job down and the employee knows that they've got a bit of a safety net if they're let go. There are generally clauses that allow notice not to be paid in specific circumstances as well, generally for gross misconduct.

I think that's tough on everyone involved. The soon to be gone employee won't want to stay. Especially after hearing - "hey you're a poor performer so leave in 2 weeks."

Employers should give formal warnings. Employees need hard metrics on where they are flailing.

2-weeks notice is a system where an employee tells their employer "I am going to be leaving your company in 2 weeks." It's not the employer telling the employee "I want you gone in 2 weeks." Usually when someone is fired, they're swiftly removed from a company to keep sabotage at a minimum (I presume).

I know a couple of companies that have a policy with IT employees, that regardless of the 2 week notice[1], the IT employee is escorted out of the building upon giving notice. They worry more about security than hand-over. Doesn't matter if the company loves the employee or not.

1) they do pay for the two weeks

Oh is that how that works? That makes more sense.

It is not universally true. Some companies even do the same thing if an employee is going to go work for a competitor regardless of job function.

> necessary for your reputation.

Nope, no severance, no advance notice. Simple as that. If you need something after I am gone, we can negotiate the terms at that time.

Do you announce your "no advance notice" policy to potential employers before you're hired?

Hopefully, you don't word it like that. It doesn't come off well.

Well, you smile a lot when you're selling yourself, but yes. Currently I work under annual contracts, so notice sort of goes both ways. Basically, notice is negotiated for at the beginning of the contract, (if you want it). But, if the other party were to violate the terms of a contract in a meaningful way and I had another opportunity ready, I might very well leave on little or no notice. The closest I have ever actually done in practice was only after calling several meetings with company officials to address specific issues over a period of months. The issues were not addressed to my satisfaction so I found work elsewhere. I got my open projects organized for them and ended up giving four days notice. Oddly enough, they later paid me to interview my successor. I even did some more work for them a couple years later.

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