What is necessary. Sometimes, I've worked overtime the last day. Sometimes they want me out of the building. Professionals bring their A game with them, and reputation spreads way faster than demonstrated success.
Absolutely. When I left my last job (team lead), I did the best I could to leave my team in a good position for the future. Got my code into a working state, documented everything I could, including stuff I hadn't touched in months. Made sure I left a time-critical project in a good enough state that they could demo to the client.
Even after all that, I still got a panicky call a couple weeks ago about a project that hadn't been touched in over a year. You can only go back so far :-)
For former colleagues I'm personally always willing to answer a reasonable number of questions for free. But after leaving one particularly-unpleasant situation, I did barter that I'd give a friend a brain dump if we could do it over dinner and he'd expense it =*).
I've worked past the point that my access started expiring and I had to make sure not to reboot anything important so I could keep making progress, even after they came and took my chair away [yes, seriously]. When I absolutely had to reboot the dev system to continue, I sent off my final notes and left.
I do agree that knowledge transfer is top priority, but sometimes there's also work I'd really like to hand off in a completed, easy-to-take-on state, that will save the next engineer ever more time than another few hours of brain dump.
Depends heavily on what needs doing and what the org wants. Some want you to stop so there are fewer things you have touched. Others want things to progress as normal. Others walk you out the door.
Usually stuff gets pulled off my plate so fast after giving notice that it doesn't matter what my intentions are. Often makes me wonder what the point of giving notice was.
I usually switch from 'work' to 'dumping everything in my head that I haven't already documented in to a doc'. I've never really been sure if anyone ever reads the doc. I guess that means I stop working.
EDIT: You're on day 4 with 6 more to go, so that means you're giving 10 days notice? My current contract says I need to give 3 months. Most roles prior to that have been 4 weeks. What sort of job has such a short notice period?
Labor protections don't really exist but neither do obligations, I couldn't imagine giving 4 weeks+ notice unless it's around the holidays or something.
Early in my career I just did the standard '2 weeks' thing, but as I progressed I extended to 4 (and in one case I gave 6). In my mind, I thought it was respectful to the company, helped soften the blow on finding a replacement, gave loads of time to recruit/promote and transfer knowledge, etc.
But after reflection, that was a mistake. 4-6 weeks is an eternity in product & engineering time. Too much time to sit around and work-but-not-really-work, and was ultimately disrespectful to my staff, peers, and myself.
My current place has an unwritten rule to not allow notice periods of longer than 2 weeks. When someone resigns, just cut it off and move on. We suffered in knowledge transfer in a few cases, but that's been rare. If it takes longer than that to transition, we probably have other problems.
That just sounds impractical. You interview somewhere and get hired, but you can't start for three months? And you just don't do any real work for your old employer either for an entire quarter?
It is. I had one of those three month notice contracts. Negotiated my start, gave my notice, and the company chose to part ways immediately - but did not pay out the three months. If I am ever in that situation again, I'll give two weeks and they can sue me to make me stay.
Then you would be highly unprofessional. I'm on a three-month term where I am, it's fairly standard around here. I would expect to work as normal during those months, and other people that I have watched go through notice have done the same.
On the other hand you can often negotiate a shorter exit period; it will depend in some sectors _when_ you are leaving as much as how much notice.
e.g. as I understand it, in government sectors in the UK, you might find your notice period runs out at the beginning of any new Budget regardless, or you might find yourself on gardening leave.
And if you travel into London you might find your final date has as much if anything to do with your travel season ticket loan period!
Cuts both ways, too: longer notice periods for employees resigning are matched by longer notice of redundancy (and statutory pay), as well as other redundancy protections, like they can't make you redundant just to hire someone else they prefer. It's a very different world to the "at will" states of the USA.
I'd be in breach of my contract, and (in theory) my employer could sue me. 3 month notice periods are very common for senior people in the UK so employers work with it. It also benefits the employer because it means they're less likely to have an unfilled role - if I resign they have 3 months to replace me. Less notice means they have a serious problem after I leave but before the next person starts.
3 months isn't even the longest I've known. I worked with some people a few years ago who were C-level execs in a manufacturing business who had to give 6 months notice.
I worked in a UK company where someone went "I'm leaving, and I'm not giving you the 3 months notice".
Management consulted with lawyers, who basically said yes, you can hold them to that contract, but no, it's not worth it as you'll basically have to pay them whilst they're either un-cooperative or you place them on garden leave.
He left after a month, though those bridges were quite burned!
When you're counting work days, 4 weeks is 20 days. 10 days is two weeks notice.
Some countries/states have no notice period at all. (How could you work under conditions like that? How could you plan anything? That would include tasks at work, your mortgage, your holidays, etc, etc.)
I really try not to relax and put in a proper effort to wrap up anything I have in progress and do a proper handover. Sometimes this results in a bit of additional overtime for my own peace of mind.
As much as I need to wrap up current work, write docs, hand over stuff etc.
> It's only like day 4 and there's six more
You're in the land of 2-week notice periods. The most recent company I joined has a 3-month notice period (it's in my contract) which is kind of ridiculous. I'll probably try to get it waived down to 1 month when it comes to it.
UK. All previous employers have had 1-month notices which I think is more common. I don't think it's too big of a deal because the management chain seems to be pretty understanding and it will probably be okay not to serve the full notice. And it's dumb from their point of view too because they don't want to be paying for 3 months for someone who will be very unmotivated and unproductive. The main inconvenience that it causes is that it makes conversations with potential new employers a bit more awkward.
Heh, I once had a "three months to the end of the quarter" contract, meaning if I timed that wrong, I had essentially a 183 day period. Needless to say, no employer is going to wait half a year for you, so going job searching was risky.
I take pride in the quality of my work. Part of that involves doing everything I can to ensure that work's legacy; in my case, notice period typically involves handoffs in all its various forms, no new development. Lots of documentation and training.
Working my last week at a company. I'm treating it like a vacation (its wfh). I join my meetings and work the few tickets. Ihave but I'm not stressing about getting anything done. I've already documented my work the first week of my two week notice so I'm goooooood
New work? None, I just try to bring open work to a stopping point and document/answer questions for peers who will pick them up.
IMO it’s kind of a dick move to deploy in your notice period. Each deploy is a missed opportunity for knowledge transfer. Better to point out to peers what you would do and help them get up to speed while you are still around.
I usually work harder during that period than any time before, sprinting to finish every project I started while documenting everything and training my peers. At one job I pulled an all-nighter on my second to last day finishing up a project.
This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression.
IMHO it's quite important in the long run - I have often seen people get jobs or sales or consulting projects in large part based on referrals or reputation from peers they have worked with 10 or 15 years ago. The guy or gal who's your junior hire today may well be a purchasing manager or tech lead somewhere interesting in a decade or two.
I actually tend to respect my coworkers more than my managers. I thinks that's because the majority of my managers stay for only a short time (4 in the past 2 years) and sometimes are clearly manipulative or DGAF about the employees.
I've amassed a high reputation at my organization. Except for the last 2 years on my current team. It hasn't helped me. There have been some opportunities for backroom deals/promotions, but I feel those are unethical.
The relationships always last longer than the job, so this is alaways good advice. Plus, it's fixed term so I'd argue it IS a sprint, not a marathon at this stage.
Good advice to focus on documentation and wrapping; don't start anything new.
When I've had to work a notice period it has been a month (in the UK).
I focussed as much as I could on handing stuff over, going into "question and answer" mode, and generally refused to go into meetings for new projects, excluding myself from discussions on the basis that it was better for everyone if I did not.
I did some genuinely new work in one case to help a colleague I liked get started.
When I left my last job, my manager said he trusted me to hand off my work (Only took about 2 days), then take the remaining 8 work days of my 2-week notice as essentially PTO. He only asked me to check my e-mail once a day to see if anybody had any questions for me and to just meet him at the office on my official last day to turn in my laptop.
Last time I did it, not much apart from some code reviews and discussions. I also filled out a minimal knowledge transfer doc and asked my team to put in questions that they thought I could answer for them. I had a project I had started before, but I was pretty burnt out and it wasn't close to being finished. So I didn't do any more work on it. In some ways that may burn a bridge because it meant disregarding previous responsibility, but on the other hand I knew I wouldn't be able to make a good enough dent in the two weeks of notice. Not only that, but I figure that someone on the team would be more ideal to finish it because it would mean that knowledge remains, versus it disappearing (other than docs) when I leave on my final day.
Hard learned lesson is that it's best to have hands off keyboard for anything in service and just spend the time writing documentation, including all the little quirky things that are fubared and 1/2 the reason I'm leaving.
Whatever they need you to do. The point of a notice period is they get time to prepare for your departure. If nobody is asking you to do anything then there's not much you can do. I would begin preparing for my next role.
I've been on notice periods of 2-3 months for the past 5-6 years. Generally it involves finishing projects, training others and writing documentation for whoever takes over your work.
When I've had notice periods the bulk of the "work" has usually been creating / extending / clarifying documentation, and attending knowledge-transfer sessions with colleagues. I have rarely if ever done any true "net new work" during those periods. Maybe if there was some task that was half-finished that I could finishing knocking out, I might finish that up.
The rest of the time, which would generally be the bulk of it, was spent surfing the 'net, going to long lunches with my colleagues, or hanging out in the break-room swapping war stories, talking about out-of-work hobbies (mountain biking, etc.) and such-like.
> The rest of the time, which would generally be the bulk of it, was spent surfing the 'net, going to long lunches with my colleagues, or hanging out in the break-room swapping war stories, talking about out-of-work hobbies (mountain biking, etc.) and such-like.
That's what I did for my internship which was in office years ago now. Was nice for those last two weeks to unwind and take some walks with my fav coworkers. Everyone brought in some baked goods on the last day it was nice!
For my other jobs I had I got laid off for COVID, so no two weeks, and remote so unfortunately less of a thing now.
Maybe it's a relic of bygone era since everywhere seems to be at least hybrid now, and convincing everyone to come in for someone leaving probably won't happen.
The most critical thing I do is to make sure I'm not the only one who knows something. Warm handoffs, writing docs, wrapping up tasks, etc. Other than that I work as normal, minus taking on new work, so as I handoff/finish tasks, the workload dwindles. Usually the last day or three I have essentially nothing left to do.
The marginal value to your career of a day's work is probably highest during your notice period, because of the opportunity for a last impression on your network for future job references etc.
74 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadEven after all that, I still got a panicky call a couple weeks ago about a project that hadn't been touched in over a year. You can only go back so far :-)
The employer before that, it was $200/hour and they were happy to pay it.
I've worked past the point that my access started expiring and I had to make sure not to reboot anything important so I could keep making progress, even after they came and took my chair away [yes, seriously]. When I absolutely had to reboot the dev system to continue, I sent off my final notes and left.
I do agree that knowledge transfer is top priority, but sometimes there's also work I'd really like to hand off in a completed, easy-to-take-on state, that will save the next engineer ever more time than another few hours of brain dump.
Still, try to do the brain dump first.
Some employers seemed to be in denial about the change.
Other lean in and address the elephant in the room.
But it shouldn't be a drastic load increase. You're still an employee and a human being.
What are they going to do? Fire you?
EDIT: You're on day 4 with 6 more to go, so that means you're giving 10 days notice? My current contract says I need to give 3 months. Most roles prior to that have been 4 weeks. What sort of job has such a short notice period?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_period#Notice_periods_i...
Labor protections don't really exist but neither do obligations, I couldn't imagine giving 4 weeks+ notice unless it's around the holidays or something.
But after reflection, that was a mistake. 4-6 weeks is an eternity in product & engineering time. Too much time to sit around and work-but-not-really-work, and was ultimately disrespectful to my staff, peers, and myself.
My current place has an unwritten rule to not allow notice periods of longer than 2 weeks. When someone resigns, just cut it off and move on. We suffered in knowledge transfer in a few cases, but that's been rare. If it takes longer than that to transition, we probably have other problems.
Maybeeee if you're like high up two weeks might be too quick and you need an actual transition plan of some kind.
I'd rather take those extra weeks and put them into a real vacation to combat burnout.
That's ridiculous.
What if you gave 3 months, and then 1 month in said, "Nah, F this, I'm out" and just bailed?
On the other hand you can often negotiate a shorter exit period; it will depend in some sectors _when_ you are leaving as much as how much notice.
e.g. as I understand it, in government sectors in the UK, you might find your notice period runs out at the beginning of any new Budget regardless, or you might find yourself on gardening leave.
And if you travel into London you might find your final date has as much if anything to do with your travel season ticket loan period!
Cuts both ways, too: longer notice periods for employees resigning are matched by longer notice of redundancy (and statutory pay), as well as other redundancy protections, like they can't make you redundant just to hire someone else they prefer. It's a very different world to the "at will" states of the USA.
3 months isn't even the longest I've known. I worked with some people a few years ago who were C-level execs in a manufacturing business who had to give 6 months notice.
Management consulted with lawyers, who basically said yes, you can hold them to that contract, but no, it's not worth it as you'll basically have to pay them whilst they're either un-cooperative or you place them on garden leave.
He left after a month, though those bridges were quite burned!
Some countries/states have no notice period at all. (How could you work under conditions like that? How could you plan anything? That would include tasks at work, your mortgage, your holidays, etc, etc.)
> It's only like day 4 and there's six more
You're in the land of 2-week notice periods. The most recent company I joined has a 3-month notice period (it's in my contract) which is kind of ridiculous. I'll probably try to get it waived down to 1 month when it comes to it.
Location: Germany
Sometimes they just don't have any work for you and that is fine. If there is nothing to document / button up then yeah it can be painful.
If that runs dry I find 1-off things to fix or improve that either I personally care about or that a customer I will miss cares about
Just want to document everything and next week you have me if you need me lol.
IMO it’s kind of a dick move to deploy in your notice period. Each deploy is a missed opportunity for knowledge transfer. Better to point out to peers what you would do and help them get up to speed while you are still around.
This industry is small and I want to leave a good last impression.
This leaves a great impression on your manager(s) and co-workers, the latter of which is often more important (thought people neglect it).
I've amassed a high reputation at my organization. Except for the last 2 years on my current team. It hasn't helped me. There have been some opportunities for backroom deals/promotions, but I feel those are unethical.
Edit: why downvote?
Good advice to focus on documentation and wrapping; don't start anything new.
I focussed as much as I could on handing stuff over, going into "question and answer" mode, and generally refused to go into meetings for new projects, excluding myself from discussions on the basis that it was better for everyone if I did not.
I did some genuinely new work in one case to help a colleague I liked get started.
Other people have there own lanes to worry about
I've been on notice periods of 2-3 months for the past 5-6 years. Generally it involves finishing projects, training others and writing documentation for whoever takes over your work.
The rest of the time, which would generally be the bulk of it, was spent surfing the 'net, going to long lunches with my colleagues, or hanging out in the break-room swapping war stories, talking about out-of-work hobbies (mountain biking, etc.) and such-like.
That's what I did for my internship which was in office years ago now. Was nice for those last two weeks to unwind and take some walks with my fav coworkers. Everyone brought in some baked goods on the last day it was nice!
For my other jobs I had I got laid off for COVID, so no two weeks, and remote so unfortunately less of a thing now.
Maybe it's a relic of bygone era since everywhere seems to be at least hybrid now, and convincing everyone to come in for someone leaving probably won't happen.