> A contract stating that you're not allowed to leave without 3 months of notice seems extraordinarily restrictive. (What happens if you ignore it?) You answer

> A contract stating that you're not allowed to leave without 3 months of notice seems extraordinarily restrictive. (What happens if you ignore it?) You answered it by yourself, you just stop going to work, what are they gonna do, fire you? Worst case you will just lose some part of salary you already earned, but usually you can agree on some more reasonable notice period like one month to make both parties happy to handover the job, but of course there are employers who will tell you you don't really need to come to work during notice period to not cause more damage than good. Under absolutely extreme unrealistic circumstances employer can sue you for expenses you caused by not showing up for work during notice period, but honestly nobodyis enforcing this because it's PITA taking many years in courtrooms, so it's not worth. This notice period by law is made mostly to protect the employees so they will have enough time to find replacement job and not end up without income within 2 weeks. Also while you are often paid by weeks in US, standard in US is to get only monthly payment. When people switch jobs the future employer is aware there might be notice period before you can join, so nobody realistic really expect you will join next day and they always ask when you can join. Also if you have shitty employer who don't wanna deal with notice period they will give you fix term contract like for one year and then they will just decide not to extend it (you can do same) and there is no notice period at all. Of course some countries have laws against fixed term contracts, like you can have only 2-3 terms in row to avoid abusing this. Other solution is to use work agency to hire workers and not hire them directly, these are employed officially in agency, so you will just tell agency you don't want worker anymore and agency has to deal with his job assignment.