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.
