Someone just alerted me to this thread, and WOW - there's a lot here! Instead of responding to each individual comment, let me just note two things. First, my

Someone just alerted me to this thread, and WOW - there's a lot here! Instead of responding to each individual comment, let me just note two things. First, my post was not intended to be general advice to employees of all companies on how to handle a situation where they're starting to look for jobs. Of course, many environments would not respond well to that approach. My point was just that that's how we encourage employees to handle the situation at Return Path, and we have created a safe environment to do so. By the way, it doesn't happen here 100% of the time either, by any stretch of the imagination. But I wish it did. When it happens, it's better for everyone -- the company as well as the employee, who either (a) ends up staying because we resolve some issue we weren't aware of, or (b) has a less stressful and more graceful transition out. Second, the way we run our business is around a bit of a social contract -- that is to say, a two-way street. And just as we ask employees to start a dialog with us when they are thinking of leaving, we absolutely, 100% of the time, are open and transparent with employees when they are in danger of being fired (other than the occasional urgent "for cause" situation). We give people ample opportunity to correct performance and even fit issues. In terms of someone's question below about lay-offs, we fortunately haven't had to do those since 2001, but if I recall, even then, we were extremely transparent about our financial position and that we might need to cut jobs in 30 days. Happy to jump in on other comments as well or respond individually at matt at returnpath dot com.