Never, ever burn bridges. Even if you feel you were treated poorly and that you'll never see your boss again. You never know what might happen in the future. If you do, your coworkers who are left holding the bag will know who to blame. It also destroys any credibility you might have had.
Unless you find yourself in the kind of structure and nice working atmosphere where they'd have the decency to give you advanced notice that you you we're going to be fired/laid-off so you can prepare, you probably shouldn't freely offer to do the same after you quit.
So severance pay is something akin to that advanced notice?
I'd agree with that, my thoughts are if your employer doesn't provide the people it lets go with a cushion (advanced noticed or severance pay) then the employee who leaves is in no way obligated to do something the employer wouldn't do for them
Obligated? No, no one can force you to leave with notice unless it was contractually enforced. However, it is common courtesy. And you refer to "the employer", who exactly is this? The CEO? Your direct manager? The board of directors? A lot of times the ones who have to let people go are not the ones responsible for the decision. Your boss may not have wanted people to get cut and may have totally disagreed with the way they're being forced to do it. But being the self-entitled person you seem to come across as, you're gonna stick it him and the rest of the coworkers you leave behind? That's fine, you're entitled to do that. But more often than not, karma is a mean bitch and she will come back and kick your ass.
These people are leaving for better jobs that they already got without that reference and are probably long term workers as long as you don't keep pushing and pushing cuts to see if you can.
Employment is like any other relationship. If it has been a good one that has run its course, then sure you act with courtesy. However, if its been a bad one like the ones in the article appear to be then you don't owe anyone anything.
Employment is a business arrangement like any other. If you screw your employees, expect to get screwed back.
Treat your employees like shit and they won't feel they have any reason to be kind. I have a feeling this is more closely related to people who do not like their job but rather work to provide for their families or themselves and layoffs, cutbacks and everything else threaten that so they get out as soon as possible.
There is a certain amount of frustration employees feel with their employers when the relationship isn't balanced. If the employee leaves on bad terms, the employee loses any reference he or she might have from that company. It makes it harder to find employment elsewhere. But, when a company terminates the relationship, the employee has little recourse. The employment contract states that either party can terminate and any time for any (or no) reason, but it is the employer who is in the position of power. I think it is this frustration that causes such hard feelings from disgruntled employees.
I've decided that when I resign from my position, I'm writing my resignation letter on a cake.
Whether or not I smear said cake all over my employer's face, or share it with him at the table is a different matter; decided by how well s/he treated the people beneath them, including me.
I think its important to differentiate between the things that the people above your boss are forcing him to do and the things hes doing that you don't like that he's NOT being told directly to do.
For example, at my work, my boss has to come around every so often to make sure I'm working up to speed, and this is required by his superiors. What ISN'T required by the higher-ups is that he nit-pick what I'm doing, ^especially^ when I'm my speeds are above average. When I quit, I intend to make that clear on my cake, lol. I intend to lay out, "I don't like that corporate requires this this and this of X (my boss) because it is counter productive, and I don't like the way X, my boss, does this this and this without a reason to do so because it is an obstruction to the work flow."
I think communication is a big part of it, but for some reason it seems like now-a-days outgoing interviews are a thing of the past. You know, where they interview you about your experience with the company as your going out the door. Then again, if I actually felt my employer was at all listening to my suggestions to begin with I probably wouldn't have resigned to begin with, so I guess that explains that.
I don't see why you should feel _obligated_ to give two weeks' notice. Now, it's possible that you want to finish the project you're working on, or for some other reason you don't mind doing it. But, honestly, most of the time if you decided to quit, you're mentally checked out or even worse, hostile toward the company. And it's not as if two weeks is a long time, the employer can't get anyone to replace you that fast anyway. The company often has no obligation to give you any notice either. Now, you don't need to be flip about quitting, you can just say politely that you don't think it's working out for you, that you can't give 2 weeks notice because you need to use the time to take a break before the next gig starts, or that you won't be doing a good enough job or whatever. I think most normal people (co-workers) understand that you have to take care of yourself. That said, in my past I've given up up to six month notice, mostly because I've been lucky to work on great projects and with great people that I didn't want to undermine. But if you're not in that situation, I don't think that there are any _ethical_ considerations in quitting ASAP.
I'm curious; Is the two weeks notice standard in the states? How about other countries? Where I live (Denmark), the standard is one months notice from the beginning of the following moth. So effectively somewhere between 1 and two months.
I have personally been laid off three times. Once two months before my first child was born from a company I had worked for for 8 years. None of them give any kind of notice. My current employer fires people on Fridays just before quitting time. Again, no notice.
I'm of the opinion that what you give is what you get. The employer will let you go on Friday at 17:00, but then they expect 2 weeks notice? Yeah, right.