You don’t expect someone to start a few days after you hire them in many parts of the world. Unless you are hiring someone who is currently unemployed. The whole world doesn’t operate the same way.
I recall one “immediate” retirement. After a retirement lunch for co-worker A, co-worker B pulled out his retirement rules to find out which year he could retire at 100% pay (the maximum). He discovered the answer to that was last year. There was swearing and he immediately got a copy of the retirement notice form to fill in.
The reason that “immediate” is in quotes is that it takes awhile for the retirement papers to process. So he wasn’t immediately receiving retirement, but he used vacation days until the process was complete. No one blamed him.
There is never severance pay if you resign. And sometimes the hiring company is happy to get the person early. However letting someone go immediately seems dumb if the person
has a bunch of stuff in progress which no one else is up to speed on.
Termination upon notification was common in some parts of Silicon Valley if you go to a competitor. Supposedly to keep you from stealing secrets, as if you couldn’t before. For that reason it is now common practice to keep your destination a secret until you start there. Probably also a good move if a vindictive boss wants to torpedo your new job.
I know someone who really did retire with no notice. Our retirement system covers a number of state, county and municipal employers, so notifying the retirement system is not the same as notifying your employer. She notified the retirement system that her last day of work would be January 14, and walked into work on that day and informed her manager that it was her last day of work. If she had any annual leave left , she would not have been paid for it as she didn’t give 2 weeks notice. My guess is she didn’t have any leave left.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I can beat that. I work at a university, and it’s roughly the same situation. The only people you’re actually required to inform that you’re retiring is Human Resources. There is apparently no requirement to inform your immediate supervisor, and HR evidently doesn’t do that either.
So we had one lady who set up her retirement date with HR, arranged for her 403b payments to start, and so forth, and did not tell anyone that she worked with. Not even on her last day. One day she just didn’t show up. Eventually calls were made, and we finally got hold of her daughter. “Oh, she retired. She’s on a boat right now.”
I’ve done it both ways; my first job out of college, I’d basically decided that I was going to move, and hadn’t actually pulled the trigger on telling my boss yet, since everything wasn’t final; my roommate-to-be had to ride out his lease and find a new place- that wasn’t going to happen for several months.
Boss was about to go into the spring annual company planning meetings and started discussing my role in all this stuff that he had planned. So I ended up telling him that I planned to quit and move earlier than I might have otherwise, because I felt bad about letting him go into the planning meetings with grandiose ideas involving me, and then being made to look silly, or worse, held to those goals without having the staffing levels he intended (we were a very small department). He and I got along very well, and he was cool about it- I worked out my last 3-4 months and got a nice send-off when I finally quit.
Most of the rest of my jobs have ended with a unanticipated layoff or I only gave two weeks notice, even if I had prior knowledge of my intention to quit months in advance, mostly because I didn’t particularly care what happened at the companies I was leaving.
Where I worked, if you were leaving to a competitor, the boss would say, pack your bag and leave now. And here is two weeks pay.
At my last company there was a maximum notice period for retirement. You weren’t allowed to file for retirement until the 3 month window before your retirement date. Of course, most people let their boss know outside that. I think I told my boss six months before I retired, but I couldn’t fill out the paperwork until 3 months before my “gone” date.
When I took that job, I hadn’t told my current employer that I was looking for a new job, so when I finally was offered the job, I had to give a very last minute two-week notice (that was the required time). The woman who worked in HR and offered me the job really wanted me to start in the current calendar year because the benefits were going to change (to the slightly less good) in the following calendar year. Since they didn’t make the offer until like the day before Christmas, it was very tight timing! I took a vacation day at my old job, worked 12/29 (the last working day that calendar year) at my new job, had the next two weeks as unpaid time off at my new job, and worked them at my old job. Whew. I was really happy because those benefits changes really made a difference over the years since I stayed there 34 years.
That’s exactly what happened. Our food budget was slimmer that fortnight.
Resignation notice is one thing. Termination notice is another.
My uncle, mid-level manager at an independent phone company, returned from vacation to find his name gone from routing slips and his office door. His mail slot held a note to see the lead secretary, who told him he’d been retired early, bye now, don’t let the door etc. Totally unexpected, he said. I guess his contract lacked termination notice. To save on mortgage, Unc and Aunty moved into a trailer with Grandma. :eek:
Prior to the job I cited above, the large insurer where I code-monkeyed underwent “extensive downsizing” aka they fired a whole bunch of us. My manager was ousted a day before me. It was all same-day notice - be gone by close of business. That gave me time to administer good-bye hugs to all the women I was on good terms with.
Have ex-employees here been walked out the door by security? Have you quit and scrammed before security could get to you?
Back to quitting without notice. New guy at gas station stole $17,183 worth of stuff on first shift. Besides lottery tickets, cash, and cigarettes, he “also stole his employment folder, which contained his personal information, so the store’s owner does not even know the worker’s name”. Smart move.
Never worked anywhere outside of the US. Most of my jobs were the standard 2 weeks. The position I have now is in upper management. When I took the position, I agreed to 30 days notice if I would leave. The rank and file is still two weeks, but we do ask them to let us know when they are in the process somewhere as soon as they think it looks good. They trust me and my boss enough that we aren’t going to try to sabotage their new position. Almost everyone that has left has been nice enough to do so. This helps us get an ad out to start the process, which in turn helps us from working short handed for too long.
Now if you are retiring, our policy states that you are to give us “notice of intent to retire”, 6 months prior to your intended date of retirement. So they have to give 6 months notice, but can’t fill out any paperwork for the pension program until 30 days before the retirement date. I asked my old boss about this when I got promoted and he said it has always been that way. I kept digging and never really got a solid answer, but there have been some theories that are plausible:
- Years ago, it took a long time to get a plaque engraved, so they wanted plenty of time to get it done.
- The place used to rent out places for a retirement party, cater food in, etc. They needed a long lead time to make sure they could get all of that done.
I don’t know if they are really that plausible or not, but we have room to hold a party at work now and we can get a plaque made in a couple of days now; but no one seems to want to change the rule.
Nothing much to add except, this is very timely since I am handing in my two week notice today.
University professor here. My first job was a 2 year limited contract with no expectation of renewal and neither the school nor I gave any notice. The second job, I gave notice (or told the chairman actually) in November that this would be my last year and left at the end of exams in May, so you could say I gave 6 months notice.
A friend of mine worked for many years at Burroughs. When someone tried to give notice there, they were given two weeks pay and escorted out the door. The same when someone was fired. Two weeks pay and goodbye on the spot.
My SIL ran a small imprint inside a major publisher. When he was ordered to choose 3 of his 6 editors to lay off so their jobs could be moved to India he quit on the spot, foregoing close to 6 months of severance.
I think the idea is that in those countries you have an employment contract and this works both ways. The employer may not get rid of you without cause/if it finds what it thinks is a better employee, so likewise you cannot just up and quit because you think you have found a better job.
In the US most (all?) states are default employment at will. Just as the company can fire you for any reason or no reason, you can quit and take another job for any reason or no reason. The notice period is merely a professional courtesy and not required by law.
So each has its good and bad.
I gave 3 days notice once when quitting a job.
That was in radio though, where the median notice probably can be measured in minutes.
Years later a couple of co-workers in academia were pissed when I gave 10 weeks notice. Go figure.
Yes, those agreements are always bidirectional and as UltraVires correctly wagged, usually part of a written contract. In some countries there are also country-wide agreements or laws indicating notice periods (France and Spain to name two).
Don’t know about all companies in Switzerland, but mine has the following rules:
3 months probation. During this time only one week’s notice is needed.
Entry level position (not an apprentice): notice period is 3 months
Senior level and middle management: notice period is 4 - 6 months depending on when you signed the contact
Upper management: 6 months and up to a year.
This works both ways. If someone is escorted out (I know of a few examples) they still get paid.
For all situations there is the possibility to decrease the notice period at the time of resignation. It is not guaranteed.
No rational company in a country or industry where expectations are that you give three months notice would expect you to start Monday. They’d understand the conventions of the society they’re in. In South Africa every employer was totally on board with the fact that I was going to give six weeks notice. Even in the US a reasonable company would be on board with the two weeks notice. In fact, my experience in the US tech industry both as a new employee and a hiring manager is that companies are often totally cool with quite long lead times. It’s so hard to find the right person. There is no way an inability to start next week would be a dealbreaker if the person was otherwise a great fit. We’re often okay with giving people a few months (to move, to finish up school stuff, to take some time off, whatever).
Most of the jobs I have worked required two weeks notice, but were willing to waive it, usually.
My job before last, it was four weeks notice and they made me work the whole time. I was actually making a good faith effort to manage the handover - documenting everything, doing a brain dump of what I knew, etc. I could have used up my accumulated PTO, but I didn’t want to screw over my co-workers and I was afraid they would try to deduct the four weeks from my PTO balance.
Everywhere else I worked, once you gave notice, they walked you out the door the same day and paid you for two weeks.
Regards,
Shodan
When Anders Hejlsberg (Delphi, c#) left Borland for a job a Microsoft, the lead time was 1 year. I’ve always assumed that covered the non-compete clauses in his Borland contract.
In Thailand, two weeks is standard in my experience. Never heard of a three-month rule.