
How to Quit Your Job - hunterwalk
http://www.onlyonceblog.com/2013/09/how-to-quit-your-job
======
georgemcbay
This may actually be true at Return Path, but in my nearly 20 years of
software developer experience, I've only seen a couple of companies for which
I believe this would be good advice.

At most places the common wisdom holds and you should keep your job seeking
activity a secret until you are ready to resign and give your two-weeks (at
least, I've given more than two weeks in a few cases where the circumstances
warranted it).

As soon as you even hint that you're thinking of leaving you will be seen as
"the other" and a bit of a traitor up and down the chain except perhaps by
your peers who will envy you (in most cases the things that drive you away are
likely making their job overly stressful as well).

A lot of companies (even dedicated software shops, which is kind of mind
boggling, but true IME) like to delude themselves into thinking programmers
are just human resources like box lifters and with the proper amount of
process you can just easily fit someone else into the role being vacated. They
maintain this illusion even while knowing their people are thinking about
leaving. In my experience it isn't until you make it official with a
resignation letter that they snap out of this and go into "oh shit" mode and
then attempt to offer real change. But by then it is too late, you've probably
already accepted another job and mentally prepared to leave and unless the
concessions are extremely, extremely substantial (and guaranteed somehow in
your favor) you should virtually always just stick with leaving.

~~~
jlees
At a smaller tech company (not sure how big Return Path is) it feels like so
much investment is put into each hire that they don't really have the
"replaceable parts" metaphor - and I know I'd rather know someone was unhappy
and try to fix the reasons why, than suddenly learn they were going.

I agree that the last-minute counter-offer can be way too late. (It's also
pretty unfair if you've already accepted another job - I've heard of several
cases of startups trying to hire people employed at larger companies who had
the hire fall through due to a generous counter-offer.)

~~~
slantyyz
I personally think it's always a bad idea to accept a counter-offer even if
the only reason for your departure is money.

Most of the things that drive you to leave are unlikely to change, and if you
have to quit to get the money you think you deserve, what will you have to do
to get raises in the future?

------
ianstallings
So I should tip my hand and let people know I'm looking for other
opportunities? If I'm looking for another position chances are I've already
spoken to my managers about things I'd like to see changed and they haven't
listened. Telling someone I'm looking for another job offers no strategic
advantage to me. If I get an offer and there is a counter-offer and I accept,
I'm still the guy with no loyalty to the business and seen as expendable.
Someone to be punished for daring to look outside the organization. Nothing
good can come from that. I might give you two weeks if I think it will be
honored and we can gracefully part ways.

But let me tell you a little story about giving two weeks notice. I quit a
startup this year because I wanted some things addressed and they were never
addressed. Mainly dispute over equity and control of IP I had brought to the
business from my previous startup. I laid this out in conversations, meetings,
and in emails. They knew I wanted something done. But nothing happened. So I
put my two weeks in and got an email back from the CEO almost instantly - I
wouldn't have to wait two weeks they were letting me go immediately. And he
cc'd almost everyone in the company. That's what being a nice guy gets you, a
walk out the door.

~~~
mason55
On the flip side, I had a junior dev quit without ever addressing any of his
issues with me. Even in reviews where I asked him if he had any issues and
even when I made it clear that he could come talk to me with any problems he
had.

We still had him work out his last two weeks and took him out to happy hour
his second to last night... and then his last day he never showed up to do an
exit interview and finish some handoffs.

~~~
georgemcbay
I don't know the particulars of the case you're talking about, but sometimes
even if you're working at a place that you like and you aren't actively
looking for work, other work finds you and you wind up with an offer that is
far more attractive than your current place.

This is why companies should always be proactively adjusting compensation,
perks, etc to retain the people they can't afford to lose, though very few
actually do this. In the end though, even if a company does keep up on the
retaining side there are lots of reasons (eg. more interesting technical
stack, new project instead of maintaining old one, etc) why someone who is
mostly happy may still leave a job for another.

Having said all of that, it sucks that the dev didn't show up for the last
day. I hate exit interviews, but I'll still do them.

~~~
hga
No, just no. There is _absolutely_ no upside to the employee in doing an exit
intervew; rather than going into details, Nick "Ask the Headhunter" Corcodilos
lays it out very well:
[http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm](http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm)
First graph:

" _Exit interviews fascinate me like cockroaches do. An exit interview is the
meeting a company 's human resources department has with an employee who has
been terminated or who has resigned. Like the Top Ten Stupid Interview
Questions, exit interviews are the cockroaches of the human resources world:
no one knows why they exist, no one can justify or eliminate them, and they
will likely survive into the third millennium._"

~~~
h2s
Personally, I'm glad I co-operated with my previous employer by delving into
the specific factors that led to my decision to leave. Despite the fact that I
obviously left, I really liked those people, and sometimes you go out on a
limb for people you like.

My feedback provided a written-down justification for investing in some much-
needed improvements to the way they built software. A few things tangibly
improved as a direct result, and that is valuable to me.

~~~
mason55
Likewise, as an engineering manager and not an HR drone (my company doesn't
even have HR yet), the point of my exit interview is to improve my team and
company. The hope is that a departing employee can feel a little more free
about giving feedback.

I suppose the flip side is that people will say I should be eliciting that
feedback all the time, and I do, but there's a difference between giving
feedback to your superior and your former superior.

------
tthomas48
I'm in Texas and we have at-will employment. You want super-easy hiring and
firing, that's great. But because you can fire me at the drop of a hat, I
cannot take the risk in tipping my hand. Feeding my family is more important
to me than the health of your company. I'm not going to rage quit, and I'm
going to try to change jobs when we're in a slow part of a cycle, but I cannot
discuss it before hand.

Sorry. That's just the reality of the situation. We could move back to
employment contracts and you would have a much more stable employee base. I
would openly discuss my plans for the end of my contract ahead of time. But
that would probably be _too_ stable and rigid.

~~~
ggreer
A solution could be to have a sort of tenure track for employees. Probably not
as strict as university tenure, but still enough for neither side to worry
about things changing unexpectedly.

That would let employers fire "mistake" hires (whose faults are obvious within
a couple months) while getting stability in the long-term.

~~~
CrLf
In Portugal, we have either contracts that renew yearly (where you are forced
to give a two-weeks notice) or contracts that are "permanent", where you have
to give a months' notice (under two years) or two months notice (over two
years).

For "permanent" contracts, there is a 6 months experimental period where both
the employer and the employee can terminate the contract with no notice at
all.

This gives enough time to get to know a new hire and fix any mistakes. After
that, both parties have a penalty for breaking the contract (an advance notice
for the employee, or a severance pay for the employer).

------
dpweb
Got as far as - "if you're thinking about leaving, have a conversation with
someone in management and discuss that you might be leaving".

Here's some, albeit free, advice. DO NOT do that.

------
super-serial
This is horrible. Do this if you're looking to be fired unexpectedly in the
future.

If someone gives this kind of ultimatum and the employer doesn't want to give
in, the employer will drag along the conversion while they start looking for a
replacement. I'm sure that's a wonderful thing for this CEO... he'll find a
replacement, get the naive employee to train the new guy in his role, and then
fire him first chance he gets. WIN-WIN for the CEO, huh? Well fuck that.

------
caboteria
> If you are contemplating looking around for something else, you should let
> someone know at the thinking stage.

On behalf of your employees: If you are contemplating letting people go, you
should let them know at the thinking stage. Wouldn't anything less be
hypocritical?

------
coops
I have done this the last 2 times I changed jobs. It worked out well for me
both times. If you are considered to be a valuable employee, and you have
management that is the least bit competent, you won't "just be replaced" for
looking around. Why would they trade you, an employee who has proven herself
to be valuable, for someone who just _might_ be adequate? Also consider that
we currently have a talent crunch on. No company with high standards for
engineers is able to hire as many as they would like to.

It is a great idea to tell your employer that you're looking around, because
it frees you to tell friends and former colleagues that you are looking for a
job without having to worry that your employer will find out. In my experience
you can get great job leads this way. This also gives you the opportunity to
control the job search process such that you have multiple offers available at
once, which improves your leverage.

When I do this I let every company that I am interested in know that I have a
deadline by which I need to receive a job offer or not. Typically this
deadline is my search start date + 1 month. After that I have a 2-week
negotiation window, at the end of which I will accept 0 or 1 new jobs. This
gives me a lot of leverage in soliciting counteroffers and minimizing stupid
recruiter games like exploding offers.

Do be aware that if you follow this strategy some recruiters will bitterly
resent you. This is because they know exactly what you are doing and how it
minimizes the informational asymmetry that is one of their most important
weapons.

------
general_failure
The whole post talks about how hard it is for the company and how the employee
should make it easier for the company. It doesn't work that way.

------
ams6110
I wonder if Return Path were contemplating layoffs if they would be completely
transparent and open a dialog with the target employees. Likely no, they would
do the standard approach of a surprise meeting, a box to pack your personal
items, and security supervision to the door.

~~~
Yhippa
I imagine they would drop obvious "hints". From my friends who've gotten laid
off most of them said they could "see it coming".

I am not sure if that's being transparent though.

~~~
w0rd-driven
I can attest to this in countless examples from my own life. The problem is
it's hardly quantifiable at all. It's a "feeling" that isn't always easy to
pick up on and quite frequently you can be fed wrong information to make you
think the ship is sinking when it's really just taking a new direction (that
you may or may not be or want to be a part of).

The analogy I use is rats know when to abandon a sinking ship. If you're a
pirate sailing along and see a shitload of rats jumping off your pimp ass
boat, you better be joining them lest you actually _want_ to sink with it.
That's reserved for captains (CEOs) not us regular folk.

------
crazygringo
This is ridiculous. If you're smart and not complacent, you're probably
_always_ looking around for something else, maybe not super-actively, but
possibly doing a phone interview every now and then, writing back to
recruiters, and a smart company should take that for granted, for all its
employees. The job market is a market.

You don't need any "reason" to consider other options, except for the obvious
one: there always might be something better out there, and you'll only know if
you're looking.

Your satisfaction in your current job is its own issue, and you should talk
about that with superiors/etc. whenever necessary and possible.

But there's no reason to tell your boss about a job-hunting unless you already
have an actual offer and you're contemplating taking it. Let's not hide the
fact that the job market is built on negotiation.

------
twelve40
This is bad advice. Business is business no matter how many times you claim
your team is like "family" or "friends". One place I worked at was very
friendly and supportive. One day the founders, who are still my friends and
mentors, faced an extremely lucrative acquisition offer that resulted in
firing half of the team, myself included. They announced and completed the
whole transaction in a matter of days, and I don't blame them - if they
announced too early, people would have fled or leaked the negotiations,
failing the deal of their lives. So when time comes, even the friendliest
management will not give you any warnings, why should you? There is nothing to
gain.

~~~
gaius
There's an old saying, if your boss is your friend, he's either a bad friend
or a bad boss. There's nothing wrong with partitioning your relationships into
work and play.

------
kadabra9
This arrangement sounds great, theoretically. At previous jobs I left, I
constantly thought about trying to set up this sort of open conversation with
my manager, and laying out my reasons for considering making a change.

I never did it. Not once. I conducted my search in secret, gave my notice,
thanked them for the opportunity and moved on.

At the end of the day, despite all of the assurances from my manager and my
employer about having an "open dialogue" about my concerns or reasons for
looking elsewhere, there's simply no assurance that they won't walk out of the
meeting already having me blacklisted as someone looking to jump ship. I have
to take their word for it they will work to address my concerns, and there
won't be any future resentment or even retribution. When it comes to something
like my career, I just can't afford to make that gamble.

More often than not, this isn't nearly as much about employee satisfaction,
retention and growth as it is protecting the employer from the potential
impact of an employee leaving unexpectedly.

------
ddoolin
It's not always a good idea to this. More of than not, probably. Many times if
you tell them you're going to start looking, they're going to start looking,
too. And if they find someone and you don't? Well, the potential new hire may
start to look really good while you, depending on your reasoning, are starting
to look really shitty right about then.

I've had mixed results here. The one time I did this and it was well-received,
the company was already in the middle of hiring a swatch of new people,
including some in my direct product/line. The other time, the manager/COO/CEO
didn't take it nearly so well, despite my reason for leaving having little to
do with them at all. I just got a better opportunity that I knew my employer
at the time could never offer, including a 50% pay raise (to start). I'm
pretty sure if I hadn't of found something, I'd have been out the door in any
case...

------
OhHeyItsE
Yes.

And I'm sure that you'd fully reciprocate. You know, give me a heads-up that
sales were down this quarter and you're considering laying me off? So I can be
adequately prepared? Because that would be VERY PAINFUL.

------
elicash
You should bring up the underlying _issues_ with management or HR, sure. But
this is essentially saying you've got to threaten to leave before your
concerns will be taken seriously.

------
chrisbennet
Actions Speak Louder Than Words. If you want employees to give you a heads up
before leaving, you need to foster the kind of environment where an employee
would feel comfortable giving you advanced notice.

Where I work now, the guy I replaced stuck around for a month or more to
interview people (hiring me in the process) and transition and bring me up to
speed. I'm not looking to leave but I've seen how (well) my employer treats
someone in the "I'm leaving" situation so I would feel comfortable letting my
employer know before hand.

I read a blog once where the author encouraged employers to treat past
employees as "alumni", keep open future communication and even possibly hire
them again at some point and benefit from the skills they've acquired in
meantime.

------
mattblumberg
Someone just alerted me to this thread, and WOW - there's a lot here! Instead
of responding to each individual comment, let me just note two things.

First, my post was not intended to be general advice to employees of all
companies on how to handle a situation where they're starting to look for
jobs. Of course, many environments would not respond well to that approach. My
point was just that that's how we encourage employees to handle the situation
at Return Path, and we have created a safe environment to do so. By the way,
it doesn't happen here 100% of the time either, by any stretch of the
imagination. But I wish it did. When it happens, it's better for everyone --
the company as well as the employee, who either (a) ends up staying because we
resolve some issue we weren't aware of, or (b) has a less stressful and more
graceful transition out.

Second, the way we run our business is around a bit of a social contract --
that is to say, a two-way street. And just as we ask employees to start a
dialog with us when they are thinking of leaving, we absolutely, 100% of the
time, are open and transparent with employees when they are in danger of being
fired (other than the occasional urgent "for cause" situation). We give people
ample opportunity to correct performance and even fit issues. In terms of
someone's question below about lay-offs, we fortunately haven't had to do
those since 2001, but if I recall, even then, we were extremely transparent
about our financial position and that we might need to cut jobs in 30 days.

Happy to jump in on other comments as well or respond individually at matt at
returnpath dot com.

------
trippy_biscuits
If a job is so bad that I see no recourse other than leaving, two weeks notice
isn't going to happen. I'll leave whenever I feel like it and I won't tell a
single soul other than HR as I walk out the door. This is my life and I decide
what happens. Now, if I don't need to vote with my feet then courtesy
certainly prevails. I don't need to tell my boss that I'm looking at other
opportunities. Now, if I happen to mention that Google called and expressed
interest in me, my boss has an opportunity to let me know my value. I can also
return the favor and let my boss know that I turned down an opportunity at
Facebook. Communication is key, but don't give up a strategic advantage by
blabbing.

------
mfringel
I have no doubt that the information in that posting, if followed, makes
operations easier at Return Path.

I can not say the same about how that would benefit any individual employee.

------
rhizome
The technique in this post doesn't account for an intrinsic people problem in
organizations: butthurt.

------
djvu9
Use "I quit" to quit your job and use whatever the author tells you to get
fired.

------
memsom
Two weeks? It's a month minimum in the UK when permanently employed, and can
be more depending on contract (I had a 3 month notice period at one job.)
Oddly, the extra 2 or so weeks really makes no difference with hand overs!

~~~
ufmace
Exactly what does the "minimum" mean here? I always wondered that. If you just
walk out the door without saying anything and don't come back, what will they
do? Are the police going to come drag you out of your home and force you to
sit at a desk? Do you get fined or something? I'm pretty sure that, everywhere
I've worked, you're free to do that if you want to, and there aren't really
any consequences besides your now-former employer being unhappy with you,
along with any other potential employers that find out.

~~~
CrLf
If you don't stay for the minimum number of days that you have to as an
advance notice, I'd say that (if the UK is similar to other EU countries)
you'd have to compensate your employer for that. And that would mean something
like paying them what they would have paid you for the number of days that you
missed, plus any damages resulting from those missing days.

This enforced by law, so if you don't pay, they would just throw you in court.

------
hawleyal
> We invest heavily in our people.

Is not the same as loyalty.

They will drop you faster than you would drop them.

------
gaius
Site is down, Google cache:
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