Situation: Due to having not taken much PTO during the pandemic, I now am at the point where I could either take a 45-day vacation in July or a 68-day vacation in November. I am planning to use it to go back to Taiwan for a few weeks, where I will make a decision on whether or not I should quit my job in America and reside in Taiwan permanently instead (long story.)
Problem is, quitting a job during vacation is apparently regarded as highly unprofessional. Is there a better way to do it, or some way to do this without burning bridges? It’s hard for me to make the quit-job-and-stay-in-Taiwan decision before being in Taiwan, because the decision will depend on whether I can get some paperwork and stuff approved (non-job-related) while I am in Taiwan. I can’t really make the call in advance.
First thing. Jaysus! Nice vacation!
Second thing- decide if you’re going to quit before you go.
If you stay in Taiwan, it doesn’t matter if you burn that bridge.
If you return, give your notice on your first day back.
I learned when I was laid off that the whole concept of “2 weeks notice” and loyalty don’t mean shit when the tables are turned.
I agree with the previous two responses. Ask yourself this: If the company decides you’re extraneous or expendable while you’re on this trip, would they hesitate to fire you during your absence?
Nine times out of ten, this whole “professional behavior” thing is bullshit intended to maintain an unbalanced power relationship. Don’t buy into it.
At my previous job there was a round of layoffs while a coworker was on vacation and he was included. He actually got a bit more time before losing his job because they only told him when he got back. Even though an employer will lay you off if necessary, not everybody is going to be a jerk about it.
If you decide to stay in Taiwan, are you really going to just not come back at all? Don’t you have anything you will need to pack/sell/sign etc? Can’t you just quit when you get back, even if you’re planning to move to Taiwan?
It does if he ever wants to use his former employer as a reference, or if he works in a clubby field where people talk and his professional reputation could be damaged. From the employer’s perspective, it’s going to look like @Velocity took a two-month vacation never intending to return. Those were two months that the employer could have spent recruiting his replacement or making other arrangements. They’re probably going to be pissed.
So from a purely self-interested standpoint, OP may want to try to work with his employer on a transition. Even if you decide to move to Taiwan, could you return for 2-3 weeks to help train a replacement or help bring coworkers up to speed on your projects? Are there aspects of your job you could continue to do remotely for a set period? Offering some sort of time-limited transition could help smooth things over.
How friendly are you with your boss? After you determine that you can do the paperwork, and you plan to quit, contact your boss and explain. Offer to help with the transition (possibly remotely, if the expense of returning is a big deal.)
But my field is small, clubby, and layoffs tend to come with paid severance. If you work in a huge anonymous field where they just fire people without notice, screw it, just quit.
This is a fallacy that I’ve seen lots of people repeat. If you give the standard two-week notice today & even if your boss is fast, by the time the job is posted, interviews are conducted & an offer is extended, it’s probably a minimum of a week. That person then gives two weeks at their job, which means they’re starting a week after you’ve already left. With the one possible exception of everyone moving within the same company, they will never interact with the former holder of their new job. The person who trained me at my current job was the cow-orker who was temporary custodian after my predecessor left. Temporarily doing my job in addition to their own very busy workload. I didn’t get much more than the basics, & nothing about what happens when things go sideways as he just didn’t know that info.
It’s true that the standard two-week notice is not enough time to get your replacement hired and for you to train your replacement. But someone is going to be doing your job after you leave, and depending on exactly what your job is , that two weeks might be helpful to the person taking over.
Although, in my experience, if the two weeks would be helpful to the person taking over, you would need to do that same sort of handoff for any vacation that lasted more than a couple of weeks
And maybe not just the employer - when I was working, I had to arrange coverage when I took time off. The person covering would handle immediate needs, but that was it. So a coworker was planning a vacation at the end of December and asked me and our other peer to cover. He decided to retire ( and must have submitted the application no later than his first day of vacation - and very possibly did so a couple of months before ). He told no one until two days before he was due to return - and the day of his return was his last day of work. Nobody would have stopped him from retiring or taking the vacation, and he wouldn’t have been pushed out sooner than he wanted to leave - but had he at least told the two of us who were covering that he effectively wasn’t returning , we would have handled things differently. And he burned some bridges if he ever decides to get a part-time job where anyone who knows the story is already working.
I’ve had employees give two weeks notice, and yes, i didn’t replace them in that time, but it was hugely helpful.
They finished all the urgent projects they were on, and passed longer/less urgent ones to coworkers, with time to ask questions. They documented stuff. They discussed “sticky” bits of their job with me, their manager. Things like “Carol in accounting does good work, but never gives me data until 2 days after I’ve asked for it. Make sure to put in requests to her with enough time to actually use the results.”
I reassigned projects to make sure the most critical ones weren’t delayed while I was hiring.
Since i didn’t give them any new projects in that time, they generally weren’t working very hard by the last two days, and they had time to wander around and say goodbye to friends. Maybe we took them out to lunch, too. But one guy worked late on his final Friday to finish something he’d promised me. Saying goodbye to friends is better for morale than people just disappearing.
Yeah it’s a difficult situation for the OP, but as others have stated - do what’s best for you. IMHO quitting while on vacation is unprofessional, even of you don’t care about the employer or any of your coworkers. As long as you can look in the mirror and be okay with your actions, do what’s best for you.
Before the pandemic, we had a young manager brought in to oversee a small team. She was very young, IMHO, to have the management responsibilities, but whatever, as I was not included in her recruiting or onboarding. She worked there for about a year and I guess she did OK, and then went out on maternity leave, and AIUI, she utilized the maximum combined company and state maternity benefits, getting the most time off. In the mean time, her Director and others on the team filled-in the gap, thinking it was just temporary. Just before her expected return, she resigned, under the reasoning she wanted to be with her new baby. The Director (young and female as well, with two young kids herself) was furious at the situation - she and the rest of the team supported this person while she was out and there was a job waiting for her when she came back, but she did not have the courtesy to tell anyone she never intended to return. Maybe she did intend to return at the start of her leave, and sure, things change, but to milk it for every drop, then quit at the very end?
IMHO it’s bad juju to quit while you are on vacation or leave.
I’ll echo–do what is best for you and your career. In many/most fields I think employers are pretty disloyal, and will often try to screw employees. That obviously is not universal, but it frequently is the case. A key question for me would be what is the company’s policy on paying out unused vacation? There are laws on a State by State basis about that, so they may not have significant flexibility in what they pay out, but I’d make sure before you made any decision to find out if they can screw you on paying out all your vacation days if you tell them you are quitting while you still have days left. If they can screw you out of your accumulated vacation days, I would use up every one of them and then tell them you quit–if you can swing a notice period and you feel like that is necessary for your career or whatever, okay, but I wouldn’t sweat it if not.
Note that aside from really small fields where people gossip (and you are moving to another country which may limit this a lot), most corporate employers will not explain the circumstances of an employee’s departure even when given reference or asked–they will simply confirm job title and span of employment. Smaller companies vary more in what they do, but a lot of bigger companies just now do that blanket generic employment verification for legal purposes.
If you’re not going to come back at all, then it probably doesn’t matter. But if you have to come back to deal with your stuff in the US, then it’d probably be best to come back and give your two-weeks notice. This will give the employer time to transition any of your current work to someone else. Do you know your company’s policy on unused vacation? Do they pay it out or just forget about it?
With the trend towards telework, there might be an option for you to work from Taiwan. Even if your current position would not be suitable for that, perhaps there’s something else in the company which you could do from Taiwan. Or other US companies may have positions that might work and may be advantageous because of the timezone difference. No sense is burning the bridge with your employer unless you are really positive you’ll never need them or their references again.
If you have a good relationship with your manager. Let him know when you know.
And if you don’t have a new job lined up, offer to be flexible. Or offer to be available early morning time in Taiwan for an hour a day (late afternoon west coast time) for the transition period. Again, if you have a good relationship with your manager, maybe can work out an “informal deal” where your two week notice translates into that hour a day for the next month to be available, answer questions, do a minimal amount of work to help smooth things over. Your manager may not take you up on it, but I would think well of any employee that left under such conditions.