So, I’ve given several two week notices throughout my career. Unfortunately, I recently had to give one over the phone instead of in person. I only report to one guy and he was on vacation. I could have just given it to HR but that would have felt scummy. I called him and gave him my notice then sent him a letter of resignation. Feels bad man. Anyone else ever have to give a two week notice in an awkward/unfortunate way?
I always give two weeks. I’ve never quit a job without having another lined up, so maybe that’s the difference.
Honestly I love the feeling during those two weeks. The “I don’t gove a fuck” vibe that I feel deep down in my bones is kind of nice.
Yes I have. In most cases I gave more than two weeks.
Always via letter.
I once gave a job three months notice. I knew I was moving and wanted them to know as soon as I did. It worked out well for me for two reasons. One, they uncapped my overtime, said I could work as much as I wanted to get ready for the move. Two, after I moved and jobs weren’t quite what I thought, they re-hired me at my new location and transferred my file, so I got to keep my previous time and training credit.
I once, and only once, walked out on a job without hardly any notice. It was just a temp job, we were working in a call center, and they had this alarm that blared in our department whenever someone was on hold in another department. That department didn’t have the siren, and they pretty much just fucked off all day, and we were punished for it, quite directly. So I went to the supervisor and told him that wasn’t going to work. He told me to deal with it, so I did — I left, and when I got home (this was before we had cell phones), I called the temp agency and told them what happened. They said they were already called and said I walked out. When I told them why, they asked me to come in to speak to them directly. I did so. They’d begun an internal investigation, and I had to make a statement for the record. Well, I wasn’t compelled to, but I damn sure wanted to. Ended up getting my pay for the whole week, and the agency pulled all their people out. They took the investigation to the call center people and asked them for a statement, and they basically confirmed what I said, and then tried to justify it. Apparently there was a clause in the contract the temp agency was able to invoke and it cost the call center a fair amount of money. Supposedly. I got a lot of this secondhand. It kind of snowballed from there because the call center itself was a contractor to a much larger company, and the company found out about the call center’s misdeeds and they may have lost that contract, too. I mean, no company really wants a reputation as having poor customer service, so the place was already being investigated from the other end.
The only other time I put in notice wasn’t for quitting, it was for vacation. My supervisor tried to deny me vacation, so I put it another way. I told her I was going regardless, and if my minimum wage fast food job wasn’t there when I got back, I’d just apply at the 2-3 others in the same area and one of them would pick me and my work ethic up, and I’d probably get a little more money out of it. Lo and behold, my job was waiting for me when I got back.
I’ve only quit jobs when moving, one I gave 2 months notice and confirmed I would be around for two peak periods. I have done what you did without the vacation bit. Tell them first and then give them the letter.
I typically do NOT give 2 weeks notice.
I went from ‘camp’ jobs where you’re fired and you have until the truck or boat or plane comes to pack all the shit you can carry and leave, to secret-squirrel jobs where quitting renders you instantly from “valued human asset” to “probably a diseased criminal”.
I have
- given two weeks at the start of my 2-week vacation
- given notice that the taxi arriving now is taking me to the airport to my new city and job
- just ghosted (that was an international one)
- came in, dropped off my stuff, catalogued it with a peer and then had the peer escort me offsite
I was put on a pip and had to write an essay on how I failed and how I’ll fix it.
so I wrote an essay on how they failed me as managers and how leaving was going to fix my problems.
I gave them one week.
Ah yes, good use of company time to write an essay that will get no actual work done that drives progress.
Managers are stupid.
I’ve never felt awkward about quitting, but I have given notice depending on how fucked over the colleagues I cared about would be.
If I didn’t have any, I was out effective immediately.
If I did, I told my colleagues first and used a boiler plate to give the company a two week deadline to replace me.
I’ve been working at the same place for over a decade, had the same boss for many years. I respect him, so I’ll give him at least two weeks when I leave. But if he leaves before me, I’ll be giving no notice at all.
My company has experienced a lot of enshittification over the last decade. In the last few years, the company has begun firing people with no notice. That is, you get a meeting notice for a one-on-one with your supervisor (which is a common enough thing), and security is there to walk you out. Someone else is sent to your desk to get your shit for you. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Want to say goodbye to your coworkers? Fuck you.
In the last round of firings, they gathered a hundred or so people in the training center and told them there that they were all fired. Because apparently we’re cattle or something.
So yeah, if my boss leaves before I do, I’ll be following company policy and give my two-seconds notice with my laptop and badge on a Friday around lunch time.
In the last round of firings, they gathered a hundred or so people in the training center and told them there that they were all fired. Because apparently we’re cattle or something.
IBM used to hold all-hands in the big office, kill the power to the building, and selected people would be led with flashlights to their cube to pack a box under view of a security dood with the flashlight.
“hey boss, in two weeks you’re gonna notice I ain’t been here in about two weeks”
I let them know in person then make my letter as you do
I used to work as a cheapo part-time-on-paper software developer to pay for university. All devs in the company were student workers and the quality of the work reflected that. That clown show of a job actually took so much of my energy and attention that it delayed my thesis by two years. Yikes.
My boss was straight up delusional. Among his many bizarre ideas was the assumption that I’d stay on for about nine months after my graduation, obviously for the absurdly low pay I was making as a student. That arrangement would’ve worked out very well for him so he assumed I’d be all for it.
Unfortunately for him, I was already working out the terms of my employment with another company. On the other side of the country. Who actually employed real full-time devs for real market-rate pay. There was no chance I’d stay on for longer than necessary.
So I hand-delivered my written resignation, effective in two months – that being the legal minimum notice period based on my employment duration at the time. Boy, was he upset. He thought we had an agreement (that I never agreed to) and that I’d take as much time as needed to finish up that major project we’d recently started (because clearly that’s a reason to work for pennies).
Hell no. I did tell him I’d reconsider… if he beat the other company’s offer. That would’ve meant a 200% pay rise. Suddenly he was much more amenable to my leaving.
What country are you in? I’m not aware of any with any legally mandated notice time (mine is explicitly opposite–employment is “at-will”)
Germany.
The minimum notice time scales with employment duration (if the company terminates the contact) or is four weeks (if the employee quits). However, the contact can state a longer period; this is often done to make the notice time symmetrical. The notice period for the employee can never exceed that for the company. Usually, contacts can only be terminated effective at the end of a month so that can extend things a bit further.
At-will employment is not a thing in Germany except for informal arrangement like paying the neighbor’s kid to mow the lawn. Even during the trial period (a period of typically six months at the start of an employment where firing the employee is much easier) two weeks are the absolute minimum.
Sorry but that sounds so American. Are you USAmerican?
Because nearly every other first world country in the world doesn’t have at will, but rather worker rights to have a certain notice period.
Canadian/American. The counterpart here is unemployment insurance, which your company has to pay if you’re laid off until you get another job.
It’s a common thing in employment contracts, its where 2wk notice comes from, but more valued positions can have longer notices. It usually works both ways except in certain circumstances. It may or may not actually be legal but if legal could supersede “at will” depending on the specifics.
Damn, so you tripled your salary, very nice.
Mind me asking what you’re making now?
I’ve changed jobs since then; these days I still do software but in the financial sector (which is a highly annoying sector since the problem domain is complex and unintuitive).
Back then I did almost triple my salary (more like x 2.5 but it routine taken triple pay to get me to stay) but that’s more reflective of how terribly the old job paid.
Alright, it’s okay if you don’t want to divulge. 🙂👍 Glad you got out of that bad situation in the beginning!
No, I misread (“do” instead of “make”).
I went from something like 25k to something like 50k, which still wasn’t impressive but okay for a junior-level dev. And vastly better than what I made before.
These days I’m somewhere north of 80k but monthly bonuses tied to company performance make it hard to give an accurate number off the top of my head. Depending on who you ask that’s either above or below average for someone of my experience level.
That’s very, very good. How much are you able to save of that 80 or so K? To give an estimate of the living costs of where you live? (I swear I’m not trying to dox you 😅)
Well, that heavily depends upon factors like what kind of lifestyle you’re living. For example, I save a shitload of money by not needing a car.
In general I’d say that someone who lives in my town and makes roughly what I do could save 1k to 2k per month depending on how much discretionary spending they want to be able to do. Possibly more if they’re very frugal.
In case we’re comparing to the USA here, Germany has lower wages and higher taxes but a lot of stuff is way cheaper, especially education and healthcare. My health insurance premium can’t exceed 14.6% of my income, deductibles don’t exist, and most procedures are fully covered – for instance, when I went to a hospital for surgery and stayed for four days, my total bill was 40 €.
Kind of the same where I live in northern Europe then. 👍
I worked at a place whose policy was that you had to give four weeks notice to get your vacation paid out.
I remember getting the call from the place I was going to where they gave me the offer. I said yes and they asked when I would start. They said “well, you probably have to give like two weeks notice so that would put us at such-and-such date” and I had to tell them that no, I had to give four weeks notice. I remember them being surprised that that was a thing.
At the place I was leaving, I also had a real asshole boss. He decided randomly that we were slacking off or some shit and started demanding 7:00am demoes every day. (I wrote software there.) When I’d secured a position elsewhere, I pulled the boss aside and gave him my 4-week notice. I was the tech lead and lead architect and basically in-charge-guy on the team of only 4 people for “Big Project™”. The boss had arbitrarily made up a due date for “Big Project™” and promised that timeline to the managers over him over my team’s objections. By the time I quit, the arbitrary deadline had already passed and he was getting pressured. With me gone, it was doomed to slip much later still.
The asshole boss asked me why and I ended up telling him – politely – exactly all the problems I had with him. That and leaving him in the lurch of his own making were kinda cathartic, honestly.
The asshole boss got fired on a “do not pass go, do not clear out your desk, security will escort you out” basis after I left. As if I wasn’t already overdosing on schadenfreude. What exactly he did to get fired is the subject of rumor only. I heard someone say he called the CTO incompetent and promised to replace him in a meeting with lots of people. Another rumor involved a possible affair with someone else high up in the IT department.
Whatever the case, I think it was more awkward for asshole boss than for me. But he deserved it.
Always via email and BCCed to my personal email.
I normally just send an email thats very short saying im resigning effective this date then give 2 - 4 weeks notice.
I just wrote up a small letter saying that I will be leaving and my last day of work will be X day.
If they as questions I do answer them but don’t go into detail.
