8 ms·

Ask HN: How much work do you do during your notice period?

29 points by hemloc_io 5y ago

Do you actually do work? Surf the web? It's only like day 4 and there's six more to do and I'm useless.

wink 5y ago
I think there's a difference if your employer locks you in to an unreasonably long notice period. (Which is usually something I like about German employment law, but let me elaborate). So I guess if we're talking the first couple weeks, there's always stuff to wrap up and document better - unless you've already done that. I also like not taking on any new tickets which are big in scope, but support your coworkers with their stuff. Or schedule dedicated handover meetings for subsystems you've had a big part of. It can get really annoying if you have to sit out some 3 months though and I think that's the reason why many companies might actually let you leave earlier than stated by your contract - they know you will not be 100% in anymore if you're already looking forward to your next gig. That said, I 100% prefer this over at-will.
borealis-dev 5y ago
One time I actually came in on the Saturday after my last day to put the finishing touches on my final deliverable. I don't think you should follow my example to that extreme, but it's advisable to try to wrap up everything before you go to leave a good impression on your co-workers; they won't be too happy if you leave a mess for them to clean up. For me, personally, those contacts led to multiple later employment opportunities.
jleyank 5y ago
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.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  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 :-)
  - euroderf 5y ago
    Did you answer it with a freebie or with the billing clock running ?
    - uranium 5y ago
      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 =*).
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      This was a freebie since I was sympathetic: supply chain issues hit them really hard. The employer before that, it was $200/hour and they were happy to pay it.
- uranium 5y ago
  This. 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.
MattGaiser 5y ago
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.
bananarchist 5y ago
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.
markus_zhang 5y ago
I usually do more than I'm used to during normal period. I offer extra help to colleagues and put extra time planning tranfer of knowledge.
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chiefalchemist 5y ago
It depends. 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?
drakonka 5y ago
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.
onion2k 5y ago
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?
- simonblack 5y ago
  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.)
  - deleted 5y ago
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- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Standard US practice is 2 weeks, 10 business days notice.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_period#Notice_periods_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_period#Notice_periods_i...
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Haha I'm in the USA. 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.
  - ruh-roh 5y ago
    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.
jstx1 5y ago
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.
- awb 5y ago
  Where are you located? Just because it’s in your contract doesn’t mean it’s legal or enforceable.
  - jstx1 5y ago
    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.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  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. Location: Germany
dr_awkward 5y ago
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.
honkycat 5y ago
I do a normal amount of work but I'm not about to work a bunch of overtime. 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.
justanotherbody 5y ago
Handoff if I can find takers documenting if I can't 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
artistminute 5y ago
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
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Hah that's pretty much where I am rn. Just want to document everything and next week you have me if you need me lol.
krnlpnc 5y ago
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.
jedberg 5y ago
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.
- deleted 5y ago
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- nickff 5y ago
  >"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).
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    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.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    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. Edit: why downvote?
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  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.
penjelly 5y ago
document how you performed your daily duties so that the next person can reference your notes/videos. After that youve done more than enough
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
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.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
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.
spike021 5y ago
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.
somenewaccount1 5y ago
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.
globular-toast 5y ago
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.
foogazi 5y ago
For me it’s a steep drop-off of productivity going from “I really want to complete this” to realizing after a couple of days that it doesn’t matter Other people have there own lanes to worry about
mcronce 5y ago
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.
aggie 5y ago
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.
mindcrime 5y ago
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.
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  > 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.
karaterobot 5y ago
At the last job I left, I liked my coworkers, and wanted to leave my work in a good position for them to pick up, knowing we were now understaffed. I was working right up until 4pm on the last Friday, and only stopped because I had my own going away party to attend. I believe I put in some after work time in the last couple of weeks, to get everything documented and ship-shape. At the previous job, I quit because the management was awful, and I was more or less working by myself. So, I absolutely did not put in much effort after giving notice. I didn't feel I owed anybody anything more than the minimum.
ravenstine 5y ago
It can depend. If I've been with the company for a while and there are still projects that actually need wrapping up or documenting, sure, I'll fill my final days with work. In other cases I've done very little during the notice period because there maybe nothing I need to "wrap up", the only thing left for me to do being general tasks. No, I can't say that I'll work very hard in my last days in this case. I'm of the belief that, if you have nothing to do for your final days, you should just quit without the whole "2 weeks notice" thing. Some good employers will say they don't mind if you don't work 2 more weeks before you even have a chance to explain why you are quitting immediately. Surfing HN 8 hours a day for 2 weeks doesn't do you or the employer any good.
8note 5y ago
When people on my team anounce they're leaving, I try to get them to do the first week finishing out whatever bits of code/docs they have half written, then the second week putting together and sharing transition documents.
gundamdoubleO 5y ago
I make sure everything I was directly responsible for is in the hands of someone else, whether that be writing documentation or just letting them know casually. I cleanup any messy code I would consider myself responsible for and that I know probably won't get looked at - mostly for my own sanity's sake. Once those things are done I largely get by doing smaller tasks and helping out where I can rather than directly involving myself in anything. Nobody has really seemed to mind. Funnily enough, the last two days at my previous job involved HR and IT slowly revoking my access to most of the systems and groups we used at work (email, repositories, etc), to the surprise of my manager who said I could just kick back and relax until my last day.
mgarfias 5y ago
Depends on where I'm at. Some places where I'm leaving on good terms, like the people, etc I'll work until the very end. The current place I'm leaving is f'ing toxic, and I'm doing as very little as possible. Basically just documenting what I've been up to.
amriksohata 5y ago
4 week notice periods are common in the UK. Some employers negotiate longers ones, but often recognise that a leaving employee is never an asset. Usually in the first couple of weeks I will carry on as if I am still at the company forever as it does take time to sink in. Tidy up tasks, work etc. Then the last couple of weeks is tapering off, knowledge transfers etc.
snakeoil 5y ago
I'd focus mostly on enriching the documentation and slow down on work towards other projects. Having though a document first approach for everything that touches production should leave one with very few work to do during notice period and would mostly mean clarifying to the others what is already documented.
sys_64738 5y ago
You want to transition as much as possible as quickly as possible. It usually depends on the manager if this is successful or not. But you should be ramping down quickly and go into Q&A mode in final rundown.
warrenm 5y ago
Every time I've been in a "notice period" (changing jobs internally, or going elsewhere), it's been all about handing-off whatever I've been working on to whomever is going to take my workload
mooreds 5y ago
I run through the finish line, so the full effort. People notice. Of course, you should not do anything that will leave work hanging around for others, but in most environments I've been in, there's plenty of clean up work and documentation to be done.
muzani 5y ago
Probably harder than usual. It's not for the company, reputation, or even friends. It's for me. Working days are often filled up with some long term crap like meetings and training. Notice period is a good time to actually deal with the issues that matter. Cleaning out and flagging legacy code, documenting stuff, mentoring people, actually having lunch with colleagues. Sometimes there's that client they really want to land. Maybe let's focus on that instead of Q3 planning.
blaser-waffle 5y ago
One of the first things I do after Mgmt and HR know is to get with the bosses and outline exactly what is due and what isn't. I'm usually pretty aggressive in setting expectations. "I'll try to close out X & Y, and I'll stand-in on Z for calls but I don't plan on finishing anything but the outline." I've straight up ask my boss: what is the minimum I need to do in this 2-weeks to ensure I can get a favorable review later, keeping in mind the past few years of work as well? And that's alls I do.

29 points by hemloc_io 5y ago

Do you actually do work? Surf the web? It's only like day 4 and there's six more to do and I'm useless.

wink 5y ago

I think there's a difference if your employer locks you in to an unreasonably long notice period. (Which is usually something I like about German employment law, but let me elaborate). So I guess if we're talking the first couple weeks, there's always stuff to wrap up and document better - unless you've already done that. I also like not taking on any new tickets which are big in scope, but support your coworkers with their stuff. Or schedule dedicated handover meetings for subsystems you've had a big part of. It can get really annoying if you have to sit out some 3 months though and I think that's the reason why many companies might actually let you leave earlier than stated by your contract - they know you will not be 100% in anymore if you're already looking forward to your next gig. That said, I 100% prefer this over at-will.

borealis-dev 5y ago

One time I actually came in on the Saturday after my last day to put the finishing touches on my final deliverable. I don't think you should follow my example to that extreme, but it's advisable to try to wrap up everything before you go to leave a good impression on your co-workers; they won't be too happy if you leave a mess for them to clean up. For me, personally, those contacts led to multiple later employment opportunities.

jleyank 5y ago

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.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
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 :-)
- euroderf 5y ago
  Did you answer it with a freebie or with the billing clock running ?
  - uranium 5y ago
    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 =*).
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    This was a freebie since I was sympathetic: supply chain issues hit them really hard. The employer before that, it was $200/hour and they were happy to pay it.
uranium 5y ago
This. 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.

MattGaiser 5y ago

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.

bananarchist 5y ago

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.

markus_zhang 5y ago

I usually do more than I'm used to during normal period. I offer extra help to colleagues and put extra time planning tranfer of knowledge.

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chiefalchemist 5y ago

It depends. 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?

drakonka 5y ago

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.

onion2k 5y ago

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?

simonblack 5y ago
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.)
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andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Standard US practice is 2 weeks, 10 business days notice.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_period#Notice_periods_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notice_period#Notice_periods_i...
hemloc_io 5y ago
Haha I'm in the USA. 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.
- ruh-roh 5y ago
  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.

jstx1 5y ago

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.

awb 5y ago
Where are you located? Just because it’s in your contract doesn’t mean it’s legal or enforceable.
- jstx1 5y ago
  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.
DocTomoe 5y ago
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. Location: Germany

dr_awkward 5y ago

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.

honkycat 5y ago

I do a normal amount of work but I'm not about to work a bunch of overtime. 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.

justanotherbody 5y ago

Handoff if I can find takers documenting if I can't 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

artistminute 5y ago

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

hemloc_io 5y ago
Hah that's pretty much where I am rn. Just want to document everything and next week you have me if you need me lol.

krnlpnc 5y ago

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.

jedberg 5y ago

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.

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nickff 5y ago
>"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).
- PeterisP 5y ago
  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.
- giantg2 5y ago
  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. Edit: why downvote?
skeeter2020 5y ago
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.

penjelly 5y ago

document how you performed your daily duties so that the next person can reference your notes/videos. After that youve done more than enough

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

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.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

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.

spike021 5y ago

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.

somenewaccount1 5y ago

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.

globular-toast 5y ago

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.

foogazi 5y ago

For me it’s a steep drop-off of productivity going from “I really want to complete this” to realizing after a couple of days that it doesn’t matter Other people have there own lanes to worry about

mcronce 5y ago

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.

aggie 5y ago

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.

mindcrime 5y ago

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.

hemloc_io 5y ago
> 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.

karaterobot 5y ago

At the last job I left, I liked my coworkers, and wanted to leave my work in a good position for them to pick up, knowing we were now understaffed. I was working right up until 4pm on the last Friday, and only stopped because I had my own going away party to attend. I believe I put in some after work time in the last couple of weeks, to get everything documented and ship-shape. At the previous job, I quit because the management was awful, and I was more or less working by myself. So, I absolutely did not put in much effort after giving notice. I didn't feel I owed anybody anything more than the minimum.

ravenstine 5y ago

It can depend. If I've been with the company for a while and there are still projects that actually need wrapping up or documenting, sure, I'll fill my final days with work. In other cases I've done very little during the notice period because there maybe nothing I need to "wrap up", the only thing left for me to do being general tasks. No, I can't say that I'll work very hard in my last days in this case. I'm of the belief that, if you have nothing to do for your final days, you should just quit without the whole "2 weeks notice" thing. Some good employers will say they don't mind if you don't work 2 more weeks before you even have a chance to explain why you are quitting immediately. Surfing HN 8 hours a day for 2 weeks doesn't do you or the employer any good.

8note 5y ago

When people on my team anounce they're leaving, I try to get them to do the first week finishing out whatever bits of code/docs they have half written, then the second week putting together and sharing transition documents.

gundamdoubleO 5y ago

I make sure everything I was directly responsible for is in the hands of someone else, whether that be writing documentation or just letting them know casually. I cleanup any messy code I would consider myself responsible for and that I know probably won't get looked at - mostly for my own sanity's sake. Once those things are done I largely get by doing smaller tasks and helping out where I can rather than directly involving myself in anything. Nobody has really seemed to mind. Funnily enough, the last two days at my previous job involved HR and IT slowly revoking my access to most of the systems and groups we used at work (email, repositories, etc), to the surprise of my manager who said I could just kick back and relax until my last day.

mgarfias 5y ago

Depends on where I'm at. Some places where I'm leaving on good terms, like the people, etc I'll work until the very end. The current place I'm leaving is f'ing toxic, and I'm doing as very little as possible. Basically just documenting what I've been up to.

amriksohata 5y ago

4 week notice periods are common in the UK. Some employers negotiate longers ones, but often recognise that a leaving employee is never an asset. Usually in the first couple of weeks I will carry on as if I am still at the company forever as it does take time to sink in. Tidy up tasks, work etc. Then the last couple of weeks is tapering off, knowledge transfers etc.

snakeoil 5y ago

I'd focus mostly on enriching the documentation and slow down on work towards other projects. Having though a document first approach for everything that touches production should leave one with very few work to do during notice period and would mostly mean clarifying to the others what is already documented.

sys_64738 5y ago

You want to transition as much as possible as quickly as possible. It usually depends on the manager if this is successful or not. But you should be ramping down quickly and go into Q&A mode in final rundown.

warrenm 5y ago

Every time I've been in a "notice period" (changing jobs internally, or going elsewhere), it's been all about handing-off whatever I've been working on to whomever is going to take my workload

mooreds 5y ago

I run through the finish line, so the full effort. People notice. Of course, you should not do anything that will leave work hanging around for others, but in most environments I've been in, there's plenty of clean up work and documentation to be done.

muzani 5y ago

Probably harder than usual. It's not for the company, reputation, or even friends. It's for me. Working days are often filled up with some long term crap like meetings and training. Notice period is a good time to actually deal with the issues that matter. Cleaning out and flagging legacy code, documenting stuff, mentoring people, actually having lunch with colleagues. Sometimes there's that client they really want to land. Maybe let's focus on that instead of Q3 planning.

blaser-waffle 5y ago

One of the first things I do after Mgmt and HR know is to get with the bosses and outline exactly what is due and what isn't. I'm usually pretty aggressive in setting expectations. "I'll try to close out X & Y, and I'll stand-in on Z for calls but I don't plan on finishing anything but the outline." I've straight up ask my boss: what is the minimum I need to do in this 2-weeks to ensure I can get a favorable review later, keeping in mind the past few years of work as well? And that's alls I do.