It has to go both ways, though. At my last job, when I first talked to the CTO (my boss) about leaving, he asked me to think about it and talk again the next day. The next day he postponed the meeting. Then, at the day of the meeting, he was out of the office. It had been 5 days since the first talk so I chose to escalate the matter and, in an Arrested-Development-episode kind of situation, I learned that the CEO and the CTO decided to mysteriously leave for vacation because they felt burnout.
I'm curious what would have happened, had you also taken a sick vacation then.
BTW, generally, people are less likely to pull off shit like that if you motivate your resignation with some health/moving/whatever external factors. Just shift the focus way from "I don't want to work with you assholes" to "my wife got reassigned to %STATENAME%, so I guess I have to follow" or whatever sounds plausible and you're good to go.
My best quit excuse was that I had Crohn's disease. It let me step away immediately, because I didn't want to poop myself in the office.
I also offered to work from home for my final two weeks, to help them train my replacement, but it had to be from home, because of the pooping issue.
What's really nice is that I had a ton of options. I could even apply to have my job back, if I couldn't find remote work, in a few months if I had success with the treatment and felt more comfortable in an office environment.
Resigning seems hard, but it's a little bit like giving regular feedback in my opinion. First of all it's best done face to face, because you don't want to be misunderstood, and you want to give the other party a fair chance at replying.
Second, you give the compliment sandwich. You start out with thanking them for the opportunity (any job is an opportunity, no matter how shitty it was, you made money and you learned something, sadder but wiser you may be). Then you tell them you would wish to quit your job after the contractual resignation period. Don't neglect mentioning that! If you just say you want to resign, they might just accept your immediate resignation and you'll miss out on the period you might have planned on. The final compliment has to make sure you'll be able to work together through the final period, just assure them you'll keep up your efforts and help transfer your knowledge to colleagues.
I'll do it for you for $450 if your employers speak English or Dutch ;)
I think like most "weird Japan" articles this one is being mischaracterised somewhat.
It is often somewhat difficult in Japan to get your legal entitlement when leaving a so called "black" company. They might not easily pay out your remaining holiday, or they might use "power harassment" to otherwise make your exit process difficult.
So I can see that a company like this, while not providing legal services, removes the possibility of applying harassment to coerce employees to stay a bit longer or not take their full legal entitlement.
I mean, there's also the fact that these stories never tell you how prevalent or not these services are. All the attention showered on these unusual services can give you the idea that every second person in Japan is using them when that's far from true.
No, but this service did also do the rounds in Japan. In this case it's most likely not very useful, but I think people can understand what the utility might be (and the social context in Japan in a little different).
Don't know, but I would guess that in most cases they want to coerce people into giving up their rights. I.e. "sign this to agree you give up your right to X". That might be remaining holiday pay or something else.
Actually... thinking back I've literally had an ex-boss in Japan try to get me to sign releases to various things. In the end I paid a lawyer to tell the guy to stop harassing me. This service would have been cheaper...
> First of all it's best done face to face, because you don't want to be misunderstood, and you want to give the other party a fair chance at replying.
You're making an assumption here: that one is leaving for amicable reasons (e.g., a better paying job elsewhere, a new career path, going back to school, etc.). There's another mindset that this sort of company is perfect for: "I don't give a hoot about my soon-to-be-ex-employer, I just want out."
In that case, a company like this might even be the better means of quitting -- as the saying goes, "if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all." This company provides (IMO) a valuable ways of communicating without having to get personal feelings involved (at least for the departing employee).
Amicable reasons or not, face to face is best. At work you sometimes have to face situations that are not pleasant. Staying calm and professional pays dividends. One can (and should) still be quick and firm during the resignation meeting.
And the world is a small place -- exiting right can help you in the future, even if you think you will never work with that company again. My 2c.
Not always, and especially for those that don't "think on their feet". I'm one of those, and I prefer writing, simply because I can make sure I've said everything I want to say in the exact way that I want to say it. I get flustered when put on the spot, and sometimes say what I don't mean, or say what I do mean but ambiguously.
Point is, people are different, so face to face cannot always be best.
I often have a hard time networking because I was raised by two very serious people who took their jobs very seriously. I made the mistake of moving to Chicago where it seems like the accepted way to "make friends" at work is for everyone to pick someone to be "Dwight Shrute" and they bond by crapping all over them as much as they can.
I can't begin to tell you how utterly distasteful, unprofessional, and pretty shocking this I find this considering I work in a field full of nerds.
I have no qualms about leaving workplaces with toxic cultures like this (about 90% in Chicago). I have no desire to recommend or be recommended by people who's idea of bonding is forming a clique of bullies, find job security in doing as little training and professional development for new employees as they can get away with, and excuse their own poor performance by drinking until they can't remember their own name.
My work speaks for itself and has been enough to get me in the door wherever I want to go at the salaray I deserve.
All other things being equal it's better to leave amicably. But sometimes it's just not possible. For instance, if you are being subjected to flagrant harassment, I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue you need to do anything beyond the legal minimum out of some sense of obligation.
It's an incredibly patronizing way to give feedback: "Hey, you'd never be able to handle criticism on its own, let me window dress it for you. I assume you'll be stupid enough to never notice"
There are plenty of ways to deliver negative feedback with empathy, in a non-hurtful way. This, however, isn't one of them.
I disagree. Using a shit sandwich is a way to show empathy in a conversation and have your words heard by the other party.
Contrast:
I think the functionality of the application is very useful. The UI is really lacking, especially when doing X, Y and Z. I really like the Q feature it would save me some time.
Remember the part where I said "with empathy, in a non-hurtful way"?
"The UI sucks" is not that. Neither is the shit sandwich - it tells me that there are issues with XYZ, but it's buried in unrelated information. Are you saying that the app is helpful? That you want Q? Or that you want XYZ fixed? And if you want XYZ fixed, why are you burying it?
"Hey, we have a couple of issues with XYZ. I know, you're currently looking at something else, but if we don't fix them, we'll cause problems for $USER_GROUP". Clear communication of the problem, that you're aware of the impact it has on the person, and why it's important to address the problem.
Haha, honestly, this is so common that when someone at work wants to talk about a product and starts with a compliment, my mind immediately tries to figure out what could be wrong with it.
These all seen like great reasons to resign in writing. You can be very clear and you won't forget anything important in the heat of the moment. Your manager can similarly provide a measured response.
I always do this and I've maintained cordial relations with former employers.
I'm sure this is similar in other cultures but Japan still has a strong attitude that you're lucky to have a job. Contrast that to us (myself included) spoiled Silicon Valley type engineer who gets job offers often and companies trying to entice us with free food, game rooms, etc...
From that, people who have a job in Japan often feel obligated as in "You gave my a job and made it possible to live my life. You invested N years in training me. I'm now responsible for various parts of your business. If I leave it will feel like not paying you back for all you've given me. It will also put you out for weeks to months.".
Japanese have an acute sense of obligation as well. There's a reason why you say "Don't worry this is really nothing" when you give a gift in Japan as you're trying to avoid adding to the receiver's obligation to reciprocate.
Of course as a westerner that attitude used to bug the crap out of me. I knew a person who wanted to quit, their boss said "no, you can't quit", and they stayed on for several more months. At some point in my life my attitude would have probably been something along the lines of "If it's that important I stick around what's it worth to you?"
The longer I'm in Japan the more I'm mellowing on some of my western and spoiled engineer attitudes. Of course not totally but I feel like the it's "me vs them" attitude I see so much on HN leads to worse outcomes than the "we're all in this together" attitude or the "it takes a village" attitude I see more of in Japan. I think both extremes are bad but if my meter was pointing at the 100% me side before it's now around the 75% me side, 25% us side, now.
Well, there's also the fact that traditionally, if you quit a seishain (full time) job in Japan, you're seen as damaged goods (why else would you quit/be forced by your company to quit?) and it's exceedingly unlikely that another company would want to hire you. Obviously this is no longer true in the IT sphere, but in other industries this remains more or less the norm.
I'm sorry, but I absolutely cannot get behind any of this "spoiled engineer" stuff. Mainly because employers here, not completely in tech but in general in the US are shit, and treat their staff like shit. That "You gave my a job and made it possible to live my life. You invested N years in training me. I'm now responsible for various parts of your business." doesn't apply here, because most employers simply don't do that.
> I'm sure this is similar in other cultures but Japan still has a strong attitude that you're lucky to have a job. Contrast that to us (myself included) spoiled Silicon Valley type engineer who gets job offers often and companies trying to entice us with free food, game rooms, etc...
[...]
> The longer I'm in Japan the more I'm mellowing on some of my western and spoiled engineer attitudes.
Could this all plausibly be explained simply by buyer's market vs sellers's market for the respective jobs? I mean: if there exist far less good programmers than demand for them on the market, employees will easily become entitled (side story: for example in Germany, the job market for programmers is very different from what I read about the situation in the Silicon Valley on HN). On the other hand, if employers have lots of potential employees to choose from, the power dynamics is entirely different.
The problem is that, while employees still feel this sense of obligation, management has gradually undergone "Americanization" and has far fewer qualms about not holding up their end of the bargain.
> I knew a person who wanted to quit, their boss said "no, you can't quit", and they stayed on for several more months
[...]
> I feel like the it's "me vs them" attitude I see so much on HN leads to worse outcomes
I think your anecdote there proves otherwise. That person was asked to act against their own interest and did it out of feebleness. They didn't gain anything in return, it was not a equitable exchange where e.g the boss paid out an additional bonus for the employee continuing to stay against their wish.
In a capitalist society, it is always workers vs employers. Do not mistake Japan's social cohesion for some kind of workplace utopia. It is one of the worst countries on earth in terms of work life balance - which is currently destroying their entire society as childbirth rates plummet. This is not hyperbole. By 2030 years ~85% of the population will be elderly people.
Because by 2030 there will certainly NOT be 85% of the population as elderly (well except if some new sickness kills all the people below 65 obviously).
There might be 35% though, which is already quite high but not unmanageable.
My bad, it was meant to be 2080 but I can't edit the post anymore.
Either way, japan's population is not only ageing but declining at an exponential rate due to low childbirth - which has been directly attributed to the piss poor work life balance. The Japan as we know it today will not exist in a few decades. It will either be a far less populous country, or full of immigrants.
So I don't think we can take their 'not us vs them' attitude in the workplace as any kind of precursor for a successful or happy society.
I don't know where you got the idea I thought Japan was a workplace utopia. Yea I know it sucks. My point was the social cohesion has it's pluses. I didn't name any of them so I guess that makes my point poorly made.
Maybe this will make it clearer? Let's say you do a contract for $1000. As the contract progresses they promote you to fellow business people. "This guy's great. You should contract him for your needs". At the end of the contract you get paid the $1000. You're then asked, "hey, could you print 1 extra copy of that report"
Possible responses
1. Sure, That will be $50
2. Sure, on problem. Here you go.
Probably a bad example but I'd argue that (1) is the "me" attitude and (2) is the "us" attitude. They gave you free PR. I guess they should have been "Oh, you want me to tell me business contacts about you? Give me 10% for each successful contract".
I want to live in world (1) where people help each other unless it's total unreasonable.. Staying extra months at the company could arguably be unreasonable but it's also possible to feel obligation. You don't know how much training that employee received or what else they got from the relationship.
As another example, some company could hire you with zero experience (taking a chance). You'd applied to 25 places but everyone said "no experience no hire". You work at this company and mostly they get very little good work out of you because they're giving you so much training. Not only are you slower than the experienced people but those experienced people have to spend time explaining better ways to do things to you, time they could be spending directly on their other responsibilities.
At the end of year you now have "experience" so you ditch the company for another job. Some people would see that as close to theft. You just took a free paid education from them when they were hoping the deal was they'd train you, even paying you while you're being trained vs you having to pay a school to train you, and then they expected you to be a productive employee for at least a year or two after the training.
From the site linked in the article, "Proper Etiquette for Quitting Your Job in Japan":
Show your appreciation to every member of the company, or at least those you have been working with directly. Sweets, small gifts such as mugs, tea sets, a thank-you card or other similar items will be appreciated by everyone. Prepare those for your last day on the job. Usually, Japanese companies will see you off by hosting a small party and presenting you with a flower bouquet, so having something to give in return always makes a good impression. You may also be asked to give a speech, so prepare a few farewell words just in case—but keep it short and sweet.
Skipping these niceties in order to save embarrassment makes the world a little colder.
When those niceties are not a free choice, but "strongly encouraged" by management, they quickly stop being nice.
For a person who spent a lifetime at the firm (which used to be pretty common in Japan) and is retiring from work altogether, they may be a warm touch. For someone who hates the job and wants to leave, maybe not so much. Not burning bridges is always a good idea, but I can understand avoiding long, scripted performances in this case.
>When those niceties are not a free choice, but "strongly encouraged" by management, they quickly stop being nice.
It isn't about being nice though - it's about giving the appearance of nice. If everyone is being nice and courteous to one another for the sake of group harmony, then I think it is good. I can understand why many people would be irritated by it, but then this kind of culture isn't for them.
I visit Japan often and I'm aware of just how much of the culture is a "bullshit front". That's not surprising when an important concept is around being two-faced[0]. If this type of culture bothers you - it's a terrible country to live in. But the constant "faking for group harmony" leads to actual group harmony as far as I can tell. It's enjoyable being in a culture where people try to support one another than one that's an individualistic - "everyone fend for themselves" - culture like the U.S.A.
When I visited there the first time I thought wow everyone is so friendly and the customer service is great!
But the more I visited and spoke with my friends who live there, realize that a lot of it is just to put up a face because that is what society there requires them to do.
On a personal level it is quite sad in a way, but I also wish the customer service would be like that everywhere else in the world.
This is called being professionally courteous. There is no implication of heart felt warmth, simply that someone is giving their job their best effort.
It's while I'll never leave my US state where courtesy is built into the local culture even when you're having a bad day. I'd rather be surrounded by people at a minimum respecting the idea we're all stuck here together than a bunch of grouses letting everyone know how unhappy they are, thus making everyone share their misery.
That is what society requires us to do. It's very seldom that you can say and act the way you really feel. I'd argue that every culture/society at the moment has this and requires this of the members, to various degrees and in different manners. It just sounds like it's a whole lot more pronounced/obvious in Japan?
Not that I mind, they're a miracle of a country, based on what they appear to have accomplished in the last half-century or so. Compare that to most other war-torn places or places that have struggled in the past, and maybe you could posit that there is something intrinsically good/effective about their culture. And this particular facet might just be that thing.
It's sad on an individual level - and I'm sure it contributes to Japan's high suicide rate and people who choose to withdraw from society [0]. Many cultures have a similar concept of "putting your personal feelings aside" but to varying degrees. In the US you put on a "professional persona" and may set your personal feelings aside while at work. But if you're at a job where your personal and professional personas are at ends with one another - you're going to be very unhappy.
If your personal and public personas are at ends with one another, in a society where you're almost always required to put on your "public persona", you're going to be unhappy all the time. You can choose to withdraw from society so you no longer need to fake a public persona - but even that is very difficult and can make people unhappy (using the old "we're meant to be social animals" excuse).
I think the culture works for people who's personal and public personas are mostly in agreement with one another and people who have made peace with setting their own selves aside for "the greater good" (if "societal harmony" is an acceptable "greater good", which I personally feel it is).
All in my own opinion of course. I don't have data on hand to support any of my claims. :)
Regarding suicide, I blame relatively poor mental healthcare, rigid societal expectations of people's lives (family & career track), and a (supposed) history of suicide as a solution.
Or maybe in the West, with cultural roots in Christianity, which strongly discourages suicide, we might just be benefiting from more social taboo around it.
Adding to the other comment on suicide, I point one big fat finger at dangerous work hours, from age 5 on.
Suicide becomes a pretty attractive option when your brain isn't working from lack of sleep, and all you're looking forward to is a lifetime of 80-100 hour work weeks.
The "everyone fend for themselves" trope of American in my opinion is only perceived this way due to a concerted effort by Libertarians and Conservatives to push this thinking, and during periods where those views have power (such as now) it becomes even more engrained that this is "America" and further fuels efforts to remove those social nets and other social connectivity that was promoted and emphasized during periods of increased interconnectivity (ex. Obama - Public Service, Healthcare, Living Wages, Consumer Protection, Environment, Battery and Clean Energy foundations, Net neutrality, Auto-rescue, open government data, LGBTQ).
As long as we remember and push against this false "fend for themselves", it need not become America.
I mean, Japanese society is like this everywhere and there are tons of services set up to make it easy for you. For instance, I stayed at a hotel near Narita airport, and they had a book organized by continent where you could order souvenirs from whatever place you had just been to send to friends and family (in case you forgot or didn't bother to pick them up while you were there).
I recently watched the movie "Oh Lucy" (with Shinobu Terajima, Josh Hartnett, Kaho Minami)[1] where we (outsiders) can see the traditional mentality/way of thinking of a working environment in Japan. I do understand that this is a movie, so some things are softened/exagerated, and reading the article I immediately understood that the "normality" is and how the movie represented this elegantly.
I don't know why, but I found it really hard to resign at my old job. I actively disliked it and I didn't owe them anything. But still I found it really hard to resign and tell my colleagues that I was resigning, I didn't even care about them.
Most of the team only learned that I was leaving on my last week (I had given 3 weeks notice). I just felt really awkward telling them for some unknown reason. Funnily enough, I worked in a coworking space, and most other people in the space knew I was leaving before my coworkers. My coworkers only found out because they put my leaving party on the "this week" board in the kitchen.
It's hard to quit anything you've invested time and energy into, especially when it involves relationships with other people. Only way to get better at it, though, is to do it, however hard it is. I awkwardly (and abruptly) quit my first job (for another one) and later ran into my old manager. She brought up how awkward it was, and I replied that I should have done it better. The thing is, I think it was mostly out of shyness, or worry about disappointing someone. But I think that you learn by doing. You get better at framing it correctly, or dealing with objections, and you can quit in a way that brings closure to both parties. People from my past often pop back into it from time to time. It's important to try to leave on good terms whenever possible.
So you should quit more often and you'll get better at it. Thats my kind of advice.
Quitting a job is like leaving a party. You probably didn't like everyone there. You probably avoided some people. That's where the Irish Goodbye shines. You get to leave without having to decide who to say goodbye to, and avoid long winded and shallow well wishes. As long as you aren't burning bridges, it actually benefits both sides in a lot of ways to just ghost on coworkers.
No, ghosting a job is a terrible idea. If two parties invested any amount of time into a relationship, be an adult and own up to your responsibility to end it in a way that gives closure and respects the other person. A job is not a party, a job is a big commitment with a lot of value exchanged both ways.
Funny how the companies don't extend that courtesy to employees. When they're done with you, you're walked out the door. Sure, you should tell them you've quit and not ghost them, but why go to any extra lengths like a two weeks notice when they wouldnt do the same for you?
I've been at multiple companies where people get zero minutes notice of a layoff -- "Hey, come meet with me -- btw IT just took your machine." Despite that, the team I worked with were people I was close to, whose skill and wisdom I respect. It was as a courtesy to my _manager_ (and my team) that I gave N>=2 weeks notice. After all, every single one of these people are people I would love to work with again, and I'd like to preserve those good work relationships.
I've been very lucky to never have a boss or team that I didn't feel that way about.
I've seen every kind of way a company handles a firing or layoff, good, bad, everything in between. Doesn't matter. That's not you. What kind of impression and what kind of legacy do you want to leave? It costs you nothing to be the bigger person in any case. But hopefully, you leave a toxic company long before they do this kind of thing to you.
It costs you (14/365)*the salary increase at a new job. Additionally it puts you in a legal gray zone where you have quit employer A, but dont work at employer B yet. Employer B can rescind the job offer which leaves you with no job and no unemployment payments because the states views it as you voluntarily becoming unemployed. I have gone through that situation so it's not theoretical, and it does have an actual cost.
As for keeping a personal relationship, giving two weeks to maintain friendly relationships with a manager is just something weve all decide to do for seemingly no reason. Unless you work in a no skill job, you are not going to be replaced in 2 weeks. You are also not going to be able get an actual knowledge transfer done in two weeks unless your team had already done this before you quit, in which case the notice period doesn't matter anyway.
The two weeks notice period just let's companies get another two weeks of work from you, at a job you have explicitly decided you dont want to stay at
For a professional job, there's usually a waiting period of a couple weeks before the job is ready to onboard you. It's extremely rare and unexpected that a company gives you an offer on Friday and expects you to start on the following Monday.
It's not just your manager, it's your coworkers, it's your team. You don't want to leave them hanging at a critical juncture with no time to find a replacement. It's not for no reason, it's because relationships matter, more than you know, and it pays a lot of dividends to invest in long-lasting relationships that carry on even beyond your job.
I guess we hang out in different crowds then. The other software engineers I know would congratulate someone for leaving with no notice. The only reason we haven't is fear that your managers might start trashing you in the community here, there is zero concern that coworkers would be upset.
I get the concept of not burning bridges, but you gotta ask if the bridge is gonna take you somewhere you want to go
Edit: Additionally, every job I've worked at in my career has wanted me to start ASAP. I've even had one explicitly ask me if I could give my previous employer less notice so I could start earlier
Which companies don't extend that courtesy? Any company I've worked at gives 1-3months notice for low performers. They call it a "Performance Improvement Plan" or somesuch, and basically pay you while you search for another job. For layoffs, there's a severance payment equivalent to several weeks. No salaried job at a going concern would skip severance, because severance is on condition of promising not to sue the company for anything.
Whenever I (or anyone else I've seen) have been laid off, and I've been laid off from several jobs, I would have about fifteen minutes to pack my things and say my goodbyes, and be ushered out the door right away.
People that resign may or may not be allowed to stay for the two weeks, depending on how much the company was relying on them (often the companies didn't really have much redundancy or documentation in place and needed to train someone new and/or do a few meetings with infodumps with these people)
References? It is relatively common to call a former employer of a prospective employee and verify employment and ask if they would hire the person again.
Every place I've worked has a policy of only confirming when an employee worked at a company. I'd get references from personal contacts, but they don't care how I left the company
As another person commented, a job is not a commitment. It's a transaction, and it's very impersonal in nature. The second I am not profitable for my employer my ass is out the door, and generally they won't give me any sort of notice. I don't owe my employer anything other than work for my paycheck. If my manager or employer needs "closure" from an employee leaving, they're overly attached to their employees.
I think that's it. I invested years of my life into building that product (that I owned exactly zero of). It felt weird giving it up to someone else, I had a lot of pride in the code I wrote.
It's because of the way our brain deals with commitment: the more your invest yourself in something, the harder it is to quit.
E.G:
Put your bad next to a person and leave. A thief comes and steal the bag. You have a low change of the person to protect your bag.
Do the same, but just ask quickly if the person can keep an eye on the bag. You now have a much higher change that the person will protect it. The risks are the same for the person, and the gains are still zero, but they committed.
This have plenty of application in sales, politics, etc.
For a very fun ride about this, read "Small Treatise About Manipulation for Honest People ". It explains very well how we trick ourselves into taking weird decisions because of commitments.
I've never had any issue resigning, but perhaps this could be a new hire perk. "We offer free snacks, 401k matching, and previous employer termination service."
Sounds quite reasonable to me, after all that is exactly how telephony and electricity suppliers, and insurance companies work here in Norway. You just tell the one you want to switch to and they deal with closing your accounts at the one you are switching from.
I'm conflicted -- mainly because this doesn't seem sustainable, but maybe it works in Japanese culture. Not only are you not quitting in-person, but you're not doing it yourself. If you think quitting over text is bad, how would they feel if you asked your old buddy from college to quit over text for you? On the other hand, I could see this being the norm in some dystopia where nobody talks to each other anymore or employees are just fluid hands.
In my country (India), quitting is a nightmare, especially in the IT consultancies. We have to serve a 3 months notice period. HRs and managers will threaten you (had multiple personal experiences). Then if you somehow quit, you are still at the mercy of previous manager and HR for service (experience) letter, which is needed for future jobs.
If you are on H1B, quitting can be even more challenging. Some companies that sponsor your visa from India wants you to serve a 3-12 months notice period. You cannot quit from US, you have to come back to India and quit. Otherwise, you have to pay several lakhs of rupees to the company. Its not just Indian companies, some US companies who are top in what they do in the world also do this.
I have been wanting to quit my current job working for the US division of an Indian IT company for a while now, but the thought of having the talk with my manager makes me anxious. Same manager threatened me last time with service letter, and he got what he wanted.
I'm in Australia. Notice to serve is 2-4 weeks, some get 'stress' sick leave for the period, but most don't. Threatening you how? In AU its criminal, nobody does that.
No letter is required here for the job, but references are. Just names and phone numbers of mates you worked with, checks are done on personal level, not through HR.
First time I wanted to quit was when they forced me to relocate from one state to another. They just decided among themselves and asked me to relocate. I luckily found another job within 3 days, and went to resign. The manager yelled at me and said I have no way but to move to the other place and serve 2 months notice. I didn't give in, and ended up quitting in 2 weeks. On the last day, the manager said "don't take it personally, its just business". Thankfully, they didn't create any issues after that. I had a friend who had to pay 2 lakh rupees bond amount since he quit 3 months before his 2 year bond expired.
Second time happened when I was in US. They were forcing me to go back to India, and I found another job. Went in to quit and the manager indirectly told me that I may face issues with my service letter. I ended up not quitting because of all the stress and uncertainties.
We need this service letter for finding new jobs in India, and may also be needed if applying for green card.
On what legal grounds are they asking you to pay them money? Did you sign a bond or something similar on joining? I have heard anecdata of that not being enforceable.
Company HR will ask you to sign a bond once you get selected in the visa lottery. We have to sign this bond if we want them to go ahead with our H1B process. This is different from the bond they have for freshers (which usually lasts for 2 years at the start of your career).
Once we sign this bond, we have to accept whatever salary they offer for our onsite assignment (deputation to US). People won't even know their US salary until 1 or 2 days before travel. Then come to US and work for them for the bond period doing whatever they tell us to do. If we were to quit during this time for another job in US, HR can treat us as "absconding" and refuse to give the service letter unless we either pay the bond amount or come back to India and serve whatever notice period is on the bond.
>> People won't even know their US salary until 1 or 2 days before travel
That is messed up. Why is that "service letter" that valuable?
On a side note, as an H1B holder, I am really happy with a current administration's crackdown on work visa abuse. Companies like yours seriously need to be dealt with.
I don't know about India, but in UK if you have a notice period on your contract and leave before it's served, then the company can totally sue you for the work you promised you would do and didn't. So yes, a company can totally say "you can leave right now without working your notice period, but you need to pay us the equivalent of your salary for that time". Or they can say you can't leave until you worked the last day of the notice period - it's their right and something you have agreed to in the contract.
Wow, hard to believe this is turning a profit. I definitely don't enjoy resigning but unlike other 'difficult' employment conversations I usually have a hard deadline to meet the start date of the next job and these things are never as bad as you expect.
Did once have to give it to my boss's boss though because it was an unexpected snow day and we were 2/3 of the people in the office!
It's my opinion that how you manage career transitions, forgive me for using an unnecessarily gender-specific idiom, separates the men from the boys when it comes to professionalism.
The ideal is that you use things like exit interviews as a canvas on which to have a broader discussion about both career and business priorities that will leave them very interested in bringing you back on in an expanded capacity once you've grown in your career more.
This requires the ability to clearly understand and distill why you couldn't get what you needed out of your current job. Nobody's really expecting you to be unhappy, but at the same time, there's a kind of expectation that you raise issues and work them out before they reach the point where you go find another job.
Naturally, something like compensation isn't part of this expectation, if another company is offering you $30k more, you won't be expected to have asked for that before handing in your notice, because obviously you weren't going to get it. But if compensation is the primary reason you're leaving, then rationally speaking, you should be open to accepting a counter-offer. If you're not open to that, then you need to clarify more reasons why you're leaving.
My understanding is that it's best to tie what you want and why you couldn't get it to the business model of the company. That offers the least-offensive pathway through an exit interview that results in no legal issues and the utmost in professional candor. They can't change the business model, so another job is a perfectly appropriate pathway to getting what you want. This naturally requires you to understand the company's biz model and this is best accomplished by having discussions with your manager.
If you want career advancement, doing it through your current job requires you to wait for an opportunity to open up. I would have happily stayed at my last job if I could have led a team, but that wasn't in the cards. But it was an option that we explored.
If you have a personal problem with someone working there, then the expected resolution is to restructure the teams so you don't have any interaction with them. This one is a bit tricky, I wouldn't bring it up in an exit interview, but behind closed doors long before you start looking. This way you can simply hint at it in the interview and everyone knows what you mean without having to actually discuss it, while the surface discussion is about business priorities. A personal problem affects team cohesiveness though, and if management isn't willing to resolve them, then that points to a political problem with the organization.
Anyway, I hope this offers some frameworks and tools to help with career management.
I have quit jobs several times in Japan and while quitting was not difficult in itself, I did not like one bit the fact that resignations are almost kept secret to most employees. Like some of my more distant colleagues noticed weeks after I left that I was not in the office anymore and found out by asking around that I resigned. Always amazes me.
I saw this several times in my first post-college engineering job in America; it's not unique to Japan. I didn't notice the guy in the cubicle had left the company for about a week, and there were other people who "mysteriously" vanished. It's a company culture thing: this (small) company just didn't bother telling anyone what was going on with other employees.
At the big companies I've worked at, this would be unheard of: they always had nice going-away parties etc. They even had going-away parties when people transferred to another department.
The secret approach seems to happen in America as well. I've seen it several times. Some quits and no one is told until a few days beforehand. People on other teams are not told until later, etc.
In Canada its much more open. Everyone knows, you give more 4-2 weeks depending on how senior you are. Usually there is gift-giving/going for lunch/etc.
Why in the world would you want someone else to do that for you? You are leaving for a reason and in my experience it was incredibly liberating to put notice in.
How many bullshit does Japan have, I wonder? for as much as I admire them for their achievements I lament them for these strange things.
My favorite method of quiting is the following: I enter the manager's office, I say, "I quit" (signing any documents required), then I leave and they never see me again.
