10 ms·

Naïve Quitting

157 points by niyazpk 16y ago

alexandros 16y ago
Surely some employers may prefer to use the event of an employee quitting to readjust things / change salary levels / bring in a good candidate they had no room for? It just seems a bit presumptuous to offer someone your job at your salary without the employer's prior approval.
- netcan 16y ago
  That's probably true. But, still, the point of the post stands and is a good one to be reminded of from time to time.
- robryan 16y ago
  Yeah reading it I was thinking the employer is probably going to say "great, but we'll find our own person". Depends on the role, if it's a service roles that anyone can be trained up for in a week or 2 it's a great idea.
  - loumf 16y ago
    I think for super entry-level or for very high-level, something like this is appropriate. Established, successful CEO's usually have a long, planned succession plan. I left a company like this once -- told my boss who should be promoted to replace me and spent time with them to make sure they could do the job. Didn't just do it and then leave though, so not really the same. The idea of planning a succession is a good one, but not just on your own.
- andreyf 16y ago
  I think the most polite thing to do, as an employee, is to say "I'd like to leave my position within [some time period], let's figure out an exit strategy". PS - maybe add "I have a friend who I'm certain is capable of doing this job, I highly recommend her as a replacement if you need one."
  - greyman 16y ago
    I agree. I think the guy has a good character, but still, his situation was very special, here where I work I can't bring non-employee and show him what I do, that would violate a lot of internal rules.
  - dunk010 16y ago
    I think you're right - especially when you're in programming. So much knowledge is lost every time someone moves on it's so much better when there is a handover period.
  - liedra 16y ago
    I just quit my job, and the first part is what I did, pretty much. Though, I came in with a reasonable offer (and in line with the employment laws here in Belgium). We then negotiated a bit and now I'm just redrafting my official letter to take that all into account. In my area (academia research) there can be a lot of training required (it took me about 6 months to get everything under my belt, but I think for the new person it should be at least half that since I've refined a lot of the material). I just hope that they can find someone sooner rather than later!! :)
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    I agree, and this is what happened when I last resigned from a job. I wanted to move abroad, so sat down with my boss and had a nice conversation about it. We set a rough timeline for five months, and then went about hiring my replacement and getting him trained up. I walked away with everything nicely in place, and I think it's been the best way I've left a job ever, no worries, bitterness, just things being the way they should be.
    - masterj 16y ago
      As someone who's about to do the same thing, and is kinda nervous about it, thanks for the boost of confidence :)
  - wan23 16y ago
    I used to be employee #3 at a small startup. When I left, I gave 30 days notice so that I could help hire and train my replacement. In response, they told me to go home and refused to pay the 2 weeks pay they owed me.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  Agreed. I have been in the position as a hiring manager, and if one of my employees had done this, I would have been furious. This would have put me in the awkward position of telling the person that thought they had a job lined up that they needed to interview, may or may not get the salary they thought they had locked in, and that they would have to wait at least a week (likely longer) while I considered all other candidates, especially possible internal candidates. And that is before talking about the fact they trained someone who had not yet signed an NDA in our processes and internal workings. I know in some areas this is not a problem, but in some industries I worked with this could have caused major issues. In fact, if working with any kind of sensitive data, this could involve actual crimes being comitted. And that is not to mention the fact I would have to then have a long talk with legal about whether or not we needed to pay her for the week of training already done. And, again I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this could have opened up horrible liability situations if she had actually been injured in an employees only area while being trained without an employment contract. The only saving grace is that most managers generally (I certainly did) have a good enough idea of what is going on in their areas that this would have been caught and corrected within hours instead of an entire week. [Edited for minor grammar and spelling fix]
jacquesm 16y ago
If I were the employer I'd say, that's really nice, please make sure you serve out your two weeks and we'll post the job, she can apply. Bringing in an outsider for a job on your own initiative can open up your employer to all kinds of nastiness, for instance, maybe there is someone in line for promotion that immediately has a case because the job was never posted. Really, this will work only very rarely, if you're working for 'bigcorp' x, I'd highly advise against trying a stunt like this. You also can't just disclose all kinds of stuff to third parties that are not under an employment contract. Even a librarian has access to all kinds of private information. No wonder his boss was a little 'stunned'. What's wrong with talking it over beforehand instead of presenting your boss with a fait-accompli ? I worked for a company as a co-founder/shareholder in the mid 80's and was in the situation that I too wanted to quit, I talked it over with the owner ('DGA' in dutch, mine was a minority share), suggested that I would talk to a friend of mine, he said, fine, go ahead. That's the correct sequence. Incidentally, my friend still works there today!
- amalcon 16y ago
  "If you work for bigcorp x" being the operative term here. If you work in a small business, you know the owner personally, and you know this would be appreciated, knock yourself out. That's a lot of "if's", so the post could've used a lot more context, but in a certain situation I can see doing this.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Even in a smaller corporation I'd be very careful. I try to put myself in the place of the boss there and to have some sysadmin walk up to me and say hey Jacques, I'm leaving today, here is the guy that I trained while you weren't looking, he already has all the passwords and would very much like my job, I can promise you I'd be less than thrilled about it. There are two things wrong with it, it presumes that it is his right to make these decisions and presents his boss with an impossible situation, either accept and you might have continuity, or don't accept and have an immediate problem. Master salesmanship to get away with it but not everybody is quite as timid as his boss was there. I can't find a better term than blackmail, but that isn't quite it because he doesn't expect any payout, maybe someone else has a better term for this, but something really isn't right here. That decision was simply not his to make.
alexandros 16y ago
It's interesting to see the contrast in comments here vs. the comments on Derek's blog.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  Sycophants and praise in the comments on the blog itself, rational discussion elsewhere. It's not that surprising or interesting. :-)
  - alexandros 16y ago
    68 comments and not a single one pointing out the obvious flaw with the article? If that was my blog, I'd be worried. (Of course my blog is happy to have 3 comments on a post, but that is another matter entirely)
- hugh3 16y ago
  Indeed. Like the first one: Derek - what a remarkable guy you are. More individuals like you, sharing viewpoints that make the world a more productive place, is what helps shape a culture and push things in a more positive direction. Thanks for taking the time to do so. If people started posting comments like that on my blog I think I'd be too embarrassed to ever post again. Continuing on with Derek's theme of naivety though (no, I'm not going to track down the correct key combination for the double-dotted i) I feel privileged to have no idea who Derek Sivers is, and hence no need to praise his rather ordinary and somewhat flawed blog posts. Hooray, beginner's mind!
enterneo 16y ago
I want to quit my job to go for MS this fall, but there is a service agreement binding (2 years) that makes me work for them until Jan 2011, otherwise I need to pay a huge compensation for the bond breakage. curious to know, is it only in India that I see such binding agreements, or are they prevalent worldwide? UPDATE: they reason because we invested money to train you, we expect you to serve us for 1 year after the training. after a generic training, you need to get trained in any specific technology (which you don't get to choose). I was forced into mainframe; I have a web app development background from college, and due to lack of interest in mainframe and eventually realizing how tantalizing it could be to do something you don't want to do, I decided to apply for MS, and got decent admissions, and now I am not able to go.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  I have worked in America all my life, never had such an agreement.
  - metageek 16y ago
    In America it would be banned by the Thirteenth Amendment.
    - btilly 16y ago
      Really? I know a number of people who got advanced degrees (eg MDs) paid for by the military. The terms say that if you work for the military for a certain period after graduation, your tuition is paid in full. If you don't, then you owe your tuition. Either way you have an MD. (I know people who have gone both ways on that.) That sounds very similar to this situation. And I've never heard of any legal objections to the arrangement.
      - henrikschroder 16y ago
        But that tuition is unrelated to your military work, and it's a contract you enter beforehand where the tuition costs is essentially a bonus. In the grandparent case the company decided to train him in whatever, and after the fact used that training to guilt him into staying.
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
This is believable, if you assume this guy has never seen a television, listened to the radio or read a newspaper for the last 25 years.
- davidu 16y ago
  Many of Derek's posts are a vehicle used to illustrate a point. I thought that was generally well accepted.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    You mean, made up? Like, a fable? Didn't read like that.
    - davidu 16y ago
      Perhaps embellished or selective memory driven. For example, I'm sure he is aware of how people elsewhere quit, and I'm sure at CDBaby he had someone quit over his tenure of running it. But by leaving that out, the story is so much better and the point is made crystal clear.
      - sivers 16y ago
        Thanks David. You're right on and said it better than I could. :-)
mallipeddi 16y ago
If that's what the employer expects, shouldn't he put in a longer notice period in the contract and also reciprocate the courtesy while firing someone's ass off?
tjmaxal 16y ago
I've never had an employer offer to find me my next job, why would an employee offer to find their next employee?
galactus 16y ago
So, if he has to fire someone does he find him another job first?
- timwiseman 16y ago
  Fire for cause, certainly not. But layoff in a restructuring or downsizing? Many of the better companies will offer some form of support in finding the next job in that situation. What form that support comes in and whether it is really useful or not is another topic, of course.
dkersten 16y ago
I don't get all the articles on HN about quitting.. having recently quit a job I've worked in for 1 year and 9 months, and never having quit a serious job before that, all I can say is its not that hard. Give them whatever length of advance notice as your contract says (I hear its typically 2 weeks in the US? Where I am, a month is the standard length), tell them in person. Be polite. Make sure you pass on any information that they may need for someone to take over your job. Thats it. Employers should be used to people leaving - and if not, they should get used to it. It may not be the employers fault you want to leave (or maybe it is?), but its still not your job to find replacements - thats their HR departments job. Also, I keep hearing things on HN about people feeling bad for leaving - don't. The employer doesn't feel bad when they make money off your hard work without giving you a reward or bonus, they don't feel bad when they downsize the company to save money. They don't feel bad when they replace you for someone better/cheaper. (Ok, they might and you might feel bad for leaving, but its normal and it happens. Loyalty shouldn't get in the way of fulfilling your career goals or your happiness). I got stressed over quitting my job, but then I decided screw it, I'll tell them this morning. I IM'ed my boss to ask him when would be a good time for a chat and then I went to him in person and told him straight out that I want to leave to work on personal projects and possibly travel for a few months. We then briefly talked about exactly when I'll be leaving and then we chatted about about how I found my time working there and my future plans. He then wished me well and offered to contact him if I ever needed advice or help with anything. That was it. I worked for the month and then on my last day everyone went for a few drinks. I'm still in contact with some of my former workmates.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  It depends on so many circumstances whether quitting is a big deal or not that it is probably not possible to say which without knowing a lot more about a person. Obligations matter a lot, savings obviously figure in there, the local economy and the job market. What's a non-issue for one can cause many sleepless nights for someone else.
mkramlich 16y ago
Social, economic and technological innovation is disproportionately made by the supposedly naive.
nedwin 16y ago
This article isn't about the fact that he quit his job or how he went about it, it's about challenging the norms of society and not just accepting them. I think it's this naivety that let's many entrepreneurs, young and old, think that they can tackle established players or entire industries head on and win. It's this naivety that helps them identify the right way to do something rather than the established way.

157 points by niyazpk 16y ago

Surely some employers may prefer to use the event of an employee quitting to readjust things / change salary levels / bring in a good candidate they had no room for? It just seems a bit presumptuous to offer someone your job at your salary without the employer's prior approval.

netcan 16y ago
That's probably true. But, still, the point of the post stands and is a good one to be reminded of from time to time.
robryan 16y ago
Yeah reading it I was thinking the employer is probably going to say "great, but we'll find our own person". Depends on the role, if it's a service roles that anyone can be trained up for in a week or 2 it's a great idea.
- loumf 16y ago
  I think for super entry-level or for very high-level, something like this is appropriate. Established, successful CEO's usually have a long, planned succession plan. I left a company like this once -- told my boss who should be promoted to replace me and spent time with them to make sure they could do the job. Didn't just do it and then leave though, so not really the same. The idea of planning a succession is a good one, but not just on your own.
andreyf 16y ago
I think the most polite thing to do, as an employee, is to say "I'd like to leave my position within [some time period], let's figure out an exit strategy". PS - maybe add "I have a friend who I'm certain is capable of doing this job, I highly recommend her as a replacement if you need one."
- greyman 16y ago
  I agree. I think the guy has a good character, but still, his situation was very special, here where I work I can't bring non-employee and show him what I do, that would violate a lot of internal rules.
- dunk010 16y ago
  I think you're right - especially when you're in programming. So much knowledge is lost every time someone moves on it's so much better when there is a handover period.
- liedra 16y ago
  I just quit my job, and the first part is what I did, pretty much. Though, I came in with a reasonable offer (and in line with the employment laws here in Belgium). We then negotiated a bit and now I'm just redrafting my official letter to take that all into account. In my area (academia research) there can be a lot of training required (it took me about 6 months to get everything under my belt, but I think for the new person it should be at least half that since I've refined a lot of the material). I just hope that they can find someone sooner rather than later!! :)
- mootothemax 16y ago
  I agree, and this is what happened when I last resigned from a job. I wanted to move abroad, so sat down with my boss and had a nice conversation about it. We set a rough timeline for five months, and then went about hiring my replacement and getting him trained up. I walked away with everything nicely in place, and I think it's been the best way I've left a job ever, no worries, bitterness, just things being the way they should be.
  - masterj 16y ago
    As someone who's about to do the same thing, and is kinda nervous about it, thanks for the boost of confidence :)
- wan23 16y ago
  I used to be employee #3 at a small startup. When I left, I gave 30 days notice so that I could help hire and train my replacement. In response, they told me to go home and refused to pay the 2 weeks pay they owed me.
timwiseman 16y ago
Agreed. I have been in the position as a hiring manager, and if one of my employees had done this, I would have been furious. This would have put me in the awkward position of telling the person that thought they had a job lined up that they needed to interview, may or may not get the salary they thought they had locked in, and that they would have to wait at least a week (likely longer) while I considered all other candidates, especially possible internal candidates. And that is before talking about the fact they trained someone who had not yet signed an NDA in our processes and internal workings. I know in some areas this is not a problem, but in some industries I worked with this could have caused major issues. In fact, if working with any kind of sensitive data, this could involve actual crimes being comitted. And that is not to mention the fact I would have to then have a long talk with legal about whether or not we needed to pay her for the week of training already done. And, again I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this could have opened up horrible liability situations if she had actually been injured in an employees only area while being trained without an employment contract. The only saving grace is that most managers generally (I certainly did) have a good enough idea of what is going on in their areas that this would have been caught and corrected within hours instead of an entire week. [Edited for minor grammar and spelling fix]

jacquesm 16y ago

If I were the employer I'd say, that's really nice, please make sure you serve out your two weeks and we'll post the job, she can apply. Bringing in an outsider for a job on your own initiative can open up your employer to all kinds of nastiness, for instance, maybe there is someone in line for promotion that immediately has a case because the job was never posted. Really, this will work only very rarely, if you're working for 'bigcorp' x, I'd highly advise against trying a stunt like this. You also can't just disclose all kinds of stuff to third parties that are not under an employment contract. Even a librarian has access to all kinds of private information. No wonder his boss was a little 'stunned'. What's wrong with talking it over beforehand instead of presenting your boss with a fait-accompli ? I worked for a company as a co-founder/shareholder in the mid 80's and was in the situation that I too wanted to quit, I talked it over with the owner ('DGA' in dutch, mine was a minority share), suggested that I would talk to a friend of mine, he said, fine, go ahead. That's the correct sequence. Incidentally, my friend still works there today!

amalcon 16y ago
"If you work for bigcorp x" being the operative term here. If you work in a small business, you know the owner personally, and you know this would be appreciated, knock yourself out. That's a lot of "if's", so the post could've used a lot more context, but in a certain situation I can see doing this.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Even in a smaller corporation I'd be very careful. I try to put myself in the place of the boss there and to have some sysadmin walk up to me and say hey Jacques, I'm leaving today, here is the guy that I trained while you weren't looking, he already has all the passwords and would very much like my job, I can promise you I'd be less than thrilled about it. There are two things wrong with it, it presumes that it is his right to make these decisions and presents his boss with an impossible situation, either accept and you might have continuity, or don't accept and have an immediate problem. Master salesmanship to get away with it but not everybody is quite as timid as his boss was there. I can't find a better term than blackmail, but that isn't quite it because he doesn't expect any payout, maybe someone else has a better term for this, but something really isn't right here. That decision was simply not his to make.

alexandros 16y ago

It's interesting to see the contrast in comments here vs. the comments on Derek's blog.

henrikschroder 16y ago
Sycophants and praise in the comments on the blog itself, rational discussion elsewhere. It's not that surprising or interesting. :-)
- alexandros 16y ago
  68 comments and not a single one pointing out the obvious flaw with the article? If that was my blog, I'd be worried. (Of course my blog is happy to have 3 comments on a post, but that is another matter entirely)
hugh3 16y ago
Indeed. Like the first one: Derek - what a remarkable guy you are. More individuals like you, sharing viewpoints that make the world a more productive place, is what helps shape a culture and push things in a more positive direction. Thanks for taking the time to do so. If people started posting comments like that on my blog I think I'd be too embarrassed to ever post again. Continuing on with Derek's theme of naivety though (no, I'm not going to track down the correct key combination for the double-dotted i) I feel privileged to have no idea who Derek Sivers is, and hence no need to praise his rather ordinary and somewhat flawed blog posts. Hooray, beginner's mind!

enterneo 16y ago

I want to quit my job to go for MS this fall, but there is a service agreement binding (2 years) that makes me work for them until Jan 2011, otherwise I need to pay a huge compensation for the bond breakage. curious to know, is it only in India that I see such binding agreements, or are they prevalent worldwide? UPDATE: they reason because we invested money to train you, we expect you to serve us for 1 year after the training. after a generic training, you need to get trained in any specific technology (which you don't get to choose). I was forced into mainframe; I have a web app development background from college, and due to lack of interest in mainframe and eventually realizing how tantalizing it could be to do something you don't want to do, I decided to apply for MS, and got decent admissions, and now I am not able to go.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
I have worked in America all my life, never had such an agreement.
- metageek 16y ago
  In America it would be banned by the Thirteenth Amendment.
  - btilly 16y ago
    Really? I know a number of people who got advanced degrees (eg MDs) paid for by the military. The terms say that if you work for the military for a certain period after graduation, your tuition is paid in full. If you don't, then you owe your tuition. Either way you have an MD. (I know people who have gone both ways on that.) That sounds very similar to this situation. And I've never heard of any legal objections to the arrangement.
    - henrikschroder 16y ago
      But that tuition is unrelated to your military work, and it's a contract you enter beforehand where the tuition costs is essentially a bonus. In the grandparent case the company decided to train him in whatever, and after the fact used that training to guilt him into staying.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

This is believable, if you assume this guy has never seen a television, listened to the radio or read a newspaper for the last 25 years.

davidu 16y ago
Many of Derek's posts are a vehicle used to illustrate a point. I thought that was generally well accepted.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  You mean, made up? Like, a fable? Didn't read like that.
  - davidu 16y ago
    Perhaps embellished or selective memory driven. For example, I'm sure he is aware of how people elsewhere quit, and I'm sure at CDBaby he had someone quit over his tenure of running it. But by leaving that out, the story is so much better and the point is made crystal clear.
    - sivers 16y ago
      Thanks David. You're right on and said it better than I could. :-)

mallipeddi 16y ago

If that's what the employer expects, shouldn't he put in a longer notice period in the contract and also reciprocate the courtesy while firing someone's ass off?

tjmaxal 16y ago

I've never had an employer offer to find me my next job, why would an employee offer to find their next employee?

galactus 16y ago

So, if he has to fire someone does he find him another job first?

timwiseman 16y ago
Fire for cause, certainly not. But layoff in a restructuring or downsizing? Many of the better companies will offer some form of support in finding the next job in that situation. What form that support comes in and whether it is really useful or not is another topic, of course.

dkersten 16y ago

I don't get all the articles on HN about quitting.. having recently quit a job I've worked in for 1 year and 9 months, and never having quit a serious job before that, all I can say is its not that hard. Give them whatever length of advance notice as your contract says (I hear its typically 2 weeks in the US? Where I am, a month is the standard length), tell them in person. Be polite. Make sure you pass on any information that they may need for someone to take over your job. Thats it. Employers should be used to people leaving - and if not, they should get used to it. It may not be the employers fault you want to leave (or maybe it is?), but its still not your job to find replacements - thats their HR departments job. Also, I keep hearing things on HN about people feeling bad for leaving - don't. The employer doesn't feel bad when they make money off your hard work without giving you a reward or bonus, they don't feel bad when they downsize the company to save money. They don't feel bad when they replace you for someone better/cheaper. (Ok, they might and you might feel bad for leaving, but its normal and it happens. Loyalty shouldn't get in the way of fulfilling your career goals or your happiness). I got stressed over quitting my job, but then I decided screw it, I'll tell them this morning. I IM'ed my boss to ask him when would be a good time for a chat and then I went to him in person and told him straight out that I want to leave to work on personal projects and possibly travel for a few months. We then briefly talked about exactly when I'll be leaving and then we chatted about about how I found my time working there and my future plans. He then wished me well and offered to contact him if I ever needed advice or help with anything. That was it. I worked for the month and then on my last day everyone went for a few drinks. I'm still in contact with some of my former workmates.

jacquesm 16y ago
It depends on so many circumstances whether quitting is a big deal or not that it is probably not possible to say which without knowing a lot more about a person. Obligations matter a lot, savings obviously figure in there, the local economy and the job market. What's a non-issue for one can cause many sleepless nights for someone else.

mkramlich 16y ago

Social, economic and technological innovation is disproportionately made by the supposedly naive.

nedwin 16y ago

This article isn't about the fact that he quit his job or how he went about it, it's about challenging the norms of society and not just accepting them. I think it's this naivety that let's many entrepreneurs, young and old, think that they can tackle established players or entire industries head on and win. It's this naivety that helps them identify the right way to do something rather than the established way.