No, it's not common practice for tech companies to immediately fire anyone who resigns.

A 2 week notice period is basically standard in the US tech industry. Some companies will take resignations and then remove the employee's access to sensitive material (code, chats, documentation, etc.) but require them to be available for 2 weeks to participate in handoff conversations. They continue to be paid, however.

It does happen that companies will immediately fired people. However, companies rarely do it because they stand to lose a lot of transition information and it also poisons the well for any future resignations. It also sets a precedent for remaining employees to not give any notice, which means everyone is going to start quitting without any notice in the future. This is bad, and companies want to avoid it.

Giving extremely long notice periods (e.g. "I plan to quit in a few months") could push the company to move up your departure date, though. The only time long departure notice is really warranted is for executives and truly key employees. Most people over-estimate their importance to their company and their project, IMO, but in some rare cases a single person can be instrumental to a company. It's nowhere near as common as people assume, though.

In practice, it's not really a huge loss even if it does happen. Most people get raises when they change jobs and the new company is often willing to move start dates up if you ask.

It doesn't matter if it's a common practice. It's whether you want to deal with the uncommon outcome.

The odds might be long but the stakes are high.

Imagine in the United States giving 2 months notice thinking you're a good guy doing a mitzvah for your employer and then getting walked out the door and having to figure out COBRA insurance and getting by on unemployment and maybe a PTO payout if you're lucky.

Otherwise you’re just accepting status quo risks blindly, and thereby letting the mob make decisions for you. That seems risky.

I have worked at a company where the moment you signal your intention to resign, HR cuts you a check for your remaining PTO, your manager goes to your desk to collect your things in a box, and security escorts you out the door. But this was all well-known to everyone who worked there, so every departing employee made sure to say goodbye to their (trusted) co-workers before telling their manager.

The company I am at now, they let you stay on for basically as long as you want, but one to two weeks is typical. Most people don't make their departure fully public until their last day.

If your current company is the latter, then jumping ship without giving your manager and co-workers any kind of heads-up is a great way to burn bridges you might need in the future.

It's difficult to imagine why they would do this, since it would remove all the cushion that 2+ week period would provide the company for getting projects closed and documented, and bringing new people on to take over the employee's projects. It turns an unfortunate situation into an immediate crisis.

I have seen (recently) a company say "please, we are begging you not to resign, would you like to take a sabbatical and we can talk about it when you're back?"

I have worked at a company that had a blanket policy of always doing this.

Let me be clear: it was a dumb policy. It resulted in employees waiting until their last day to tell the company that they were planning to leave. It created all kinds of havoc with the lack of knowledge transfer and handoff. And if it was intended to prevent exiting employee from taking malicious actions, it was completely ineffective at that since the employee would know about the policy and would choose not to disclose that they were leaving until after the head undertaken any malicious action.

But, I can say with some confidence that there are some tech companies that do this.

only for people really underperforming, or going to a competitor

Never say where you are going when you resign. That's standard practice (California, anyway) and nobody will ask.

I definitely agree with the article. I've given extended notice for many jobs I've left (again, usually on the order of several months). I had a good relationship with my manager, and I like to leave stuff "tied up with a bow". Similar to the experience in the article, it was good for both me and my employer.

I'm sorry you didn't have a relationship with your employer where you felt this was possible. And to be clear, I don't believe my experience is universal, but I think if most people stop to think about it, they will be able to figure out how their employer will respond.

Risk isn't just about the likelihood, it's also the outcome.

Even if your manager loves you to death and there's just a .1% chance you misread the situation and your early notice goes wrong... the result of that .1% occurrence could be disastrous.

On the other hand, if a 2 week notice is likely to screw over your team, that's a sign of a bad employer. If 2 full weeks of notice isn't enough to stabilize things enough for you to leave on good terms, what happens if you're injured tomorrow?

2 weeks notice is good. The most you should do earlier than 2 weeks is start documenting the unwritten parts of your process and start getting others to understand those. A good manager will enable that without you saying you're walking out the door.

Plus, IME nobody wants to wait that long.

What i've learned is if I can't have some kind of conversation with my manager about possibly leaving or being unhappy in the role, unhappy with compensation, etc.. then that is partially on me having let that relationship sour.

Obviously a lot of this depends on the kind of manager you have, and situation with the company and loads of other factors.

Genuine question; is this a US thing? I've never, ever seen this or heard of it happening. I don't think I've ever worked at a company that didn't state in the contract the notice period. I have seen companies decide they don't want that person on site anymore when someone quits, but they gave "gardening leave"; the person goes home and is effectively on holiday, paid as usual, for their notice period.

There is a significant chance you will be instantly fired with no income for months.

US "at will" kind of thing? Must be.

Then I was let go immediately. Which was an unexpected hit, though luckily the new company let me move my start date up. This was a tech company with around one hundred employees, and I was in good standing (my then manager later recruited me for a position at a different company).

The best approach is to always give two weeks formal notice on a Friday morning, with the expectation that there's a chance you'll not be coming back on Monday. Best to do all the transition preparation work before that moment. If I've got a manager that I trust, I let them know with a bit more informal advance notice.

ETA: on the other hand, I gave a month or two advance notice to Google, and they were happy to have me stay until my resignation date. My sense is that it's smaller companies that tend to do the immediate layoff.

The only exceptions I can think of were when people gave multiple months of notice that they were going to quit and already had declining performance due to e.g. unhappiness about the job. If you're not performing well and you tell your employer that you're quitting in a few months, they're not really interested in giving you more paychecks to perform poorly. IMO, that's not exactly unreasonable either.

Some companies will restrict the employee's access for the notice period and remove their work as a way of protecting company information from last-minute exfiltration (it happens a lot more than you'd think), but those employees are still paid during this time period. They're also obligated to answer questions and attend meetings about handoff, although in some cases this may amount to zero work.

But no, it's not common for US tech companies to fire employees immediately for resigning. I don't know where the parent commenter got the idea that this is common.

I've seen it happen multiple times. Microsoft has a list of competitors that if you say you are going to work for them, your access to everything is immediately revoked.

Managers at MS ask their employees to NOT SAY where they are going, so a proper off-boarding can take place.

If you work for Microsoft (for example) pretty much EVERY tech company is a competitor of theirs because they have soooo many products and services.

I saw this happen multiple times. You tell them you're leaving, and get escorted out by security. It's just not worth the risk for them.

Right, but did they cut off paychecks too?

Being walked out of the office is equivalent to having your access removed like I said above. It doesn't mean the person is fired, it just means they don't have access to sensitive information.

In practice, it's not really a big deal. If someone is going from a high-paid FAANG job to another high-paid FAANG job, the new company is usually eager to have you onboard. They can move your start date up. New compensation might be higher, too, so it's a net win.

I agree. It's the company's decision not to have you help with handoff. Not your problem. In fact, all the more reason to give two weeks notice as you'd be paid for doing nothing. (If they were immediately fired with no payout, they'd probably actually be eligible for unemployment though that's irrelevant if they have another job lined up.)

I didn't take the same conclusion from the parent who didn't say anything about payments. In general, the norm would be to pay for two weeks--and maybe benefits to the end of the month. Someone can be terminated on the spot and still paid. (In general, they have to be paid out for accrued vacation time in any case.)

Mostly it was so we could find out if any ostensibly automated tasks were in fact dependent on their ongoing work, while they were still reachable to answer questions. Perhaps related, this was all during my time as a unix admin, before I officially converted to a pure software development role. I've never personally seen a developer walked immediately out the door.

It generally only happens in exceptionally paranoid companies in sensitive industries or government organizations, which clearly exist but are already atypical workplaces.

I've never seen the point in treating your employer as an adversary, as the OP of this thread clearly does.

There are some with six (my last job) or some with one. In my last job I was able to negotiate it down though as I wanted to quit earlier, it was the employer that wanted the six months in my contract. I was a key person in a start up bank so it's not a normal term to have.

> Genuine question; is this a US thing?

At least in California/Silicon Valley I have never seen or experienced such a thing in almost 30 years, so I can say confidently it is not common.

Of course it can happen, there are zero employee protections in the US. But it's not common.

People generally give 2 weeks notice and keep coming in to the office (pre-pandemic) for those two weeks to meet with others and help transfer knowledge, hang out, do farewell lunches etc. Only on the end of the last day is your account access revoked. That's the expected convention.

I am not sure what happens when you try to give more than two weeks notice.

You never let someone who gives notice keep their badge. You just say, "Congrats, there's the door. Cheers!"

You have no control over someone who has given notice. If they do good work... that's great. But if they do shit work, what are you going to do, fire them?

The liabilities are outrageous, and the payoff is only 2-weeks dev time (if you're lucky)... at the regular rate... Nah, not worth it.

And you have that person in the office talking about how they're moving on to a better role, with more pay, and it can quickly turn into a cancer for team morale.

I have never seen an article with such horrible career advice on Hacker News. This is bad advice.

I've always paid close attention to how my employers behave when someone gives notice: how you treat people/are treated when conditions aren't ideal shows you the true character of those involved. If the employer acts like a jerk, I know I'll get equal or worse treatment. I won't extend them any curtesy when I leave, which will likely be sooner rather than later based on their approach.

That said, I disagree with the article. In the US, we're lucky to have a common expectation: 2 weeks. I've added an additional week for small companies, but I'd never do more than that. 2 weeks is plenty, and quickly feels like being persona-non-grata.

Idk what the alternative is. You tell them you want to quit in 2 months? Nobody does that.