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Ask HN: Notice Periods for Devs

2 points by royletron ↗ HN
Hey HN,

I am in the incredibly fortunate position of being able to determine a policy that I have been a victim of all too often - notice periods! I've worked several jobs now where notice periods are set around 3 months - which are simply too long. In fact in my last place they placed me on gardening leave for the last month as they struggled to give me projects.

So what makes sense with notice periods for you? Does anyone have any great examples of when this process has worked well for you and the employer both?

Thanks all,

Royletron

5 comments

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gregjor
You can’t force someone to give notice at all, or work for weeks or months after they’ve decided to leave. Two weeks seems like the most common interval. Some people get walked out immediately, some might stay for a couple of months to ease the transition. It’s case by case and negotiable.
royletron
Fair point. I wonder whether there are specific themes with developers at least because of the value of knowledge and trying to get as much of that out as possible. I was once told to write docs for 3 months and maybe 10% of them were actually useful but it made me think at least they got something out of it...
duxup
Do you mean the company notifying the employee that they're going to be let go in X months?

The amount of knowledge each person has to pass on / cleanup they could do can vary. If there's no other downside than to say someone might not have something to do the entire time, why not stick with 3 months?