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Two Weeks' Notice

I have been told I tend to take the side of the economist in some debates. It was this mode of thinking that had me contemplating the device of giving two weeks notice when resigning. I was pecking this out at Austin International Airport a few days ago when I arrived uncharacteristically early for a plane that left unacceptably late.

Rather than post it at the time, I wanted to get some perspective. It is quite easy to find the standard advice. It took just a little more digging to find someone who advised against the traditional approach.

James Carlini is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and his advice is to take your personal effects home a day or two before your last day and then give notice and be done with it on the spot. He wrote a follow up article and both have a lot of comments that are worth skimming.

His point is that not only do companies no longer have any loyalty towards their employees, but giving notice can actually put you at risk and in many cases, the need to maintain SarbOx security compliance may make it more tempting to just walk you out the door. I don't really disagree with Mr. Carlini, but I don't like to operate from a place where my primary focus is simply risk mitigation.

The traditional approach advises you to "not burn any bridges" and to consider what kind of reference you will get of you leave without notice. Setting aside that some people may have contractual obligations to live up to, most of the United States is working under "at will" employment. Depending on local laws, your former employer might not have to pay you for your vacation days or they might label you as "ineligible for rehire" and of course, that could come out in a reference.

My take was based more on the economics of the transition. First, there is no worse time for a recruiter than the time immediately after one of our candidates accepts an offer until the time that person reports for work at their new job. It does not matter how great the opportunity, how large the increase, how horrible their old company is, we do not get paid until they show up and in that dangerous, agonizing time, literally anything can happen.

Believe me - there is nobody in the world that wants to eliminate the tradition of "two weeks' notice" more than the third party recruiter. We tell everyone to give two weeks notice because we do not want to sound ridiculously self serving. Two weeks is bad enough, but when people say they want to give 3 or 4 or more, we freak out.

It's not the waiting, not at all. It's that Murphy's Law kicks in and most people can't afford to keep a Murphy's Lawyer on retainer. Just last week, a recruiter I know placed a CIO with his client in Houston. Everything was on track until the candidate gave notice. The CEO of a $5Billion company flew from Chicago to Houston that same morning and spent the entire day talking him into staying. That can only happen when someone gives notice.

Rarely do business trends emerge as a result of what recruiters want. The real reason I believe this practice is going to decline sooner rather than later is economics. 2 weeks in business today is much longer than it was 20 years ago. Product cycles are shorter, companies are smaller and more nimble and 2 weeks represents, as a percentage, a much larger chunk of any business plan than it did before the internet. Compounding the situation is the impending  labor shortage which is going to take the battle for talent out of the bronze age and into the nuclear age.

I predict that in the next 5 years, we will begin to see sign on bonuses structured around giving little to no notice for certain kinds of workers. This will probably be seen as an abomination by the more traditional minded, but many Gen X/Y workers will see it as the logical result of the shift in the employment paradigm that began in the 1980s. When you start treating individuals like mini corporations whose services you can engage or decline on an almost hour by hour basis, it should not be surprising that people start to act like corporations and begin making business decisions based on what is best for "Me, Inc".

Trifecta

We are back in Yuba City, California for Christmas. My wife grew up here and my family settled here in 1987 after fleeing the oil slump induced recession in Alaska. We have not lived here for nearly 15 years but we come every Christmas to see my wifes family and visit my family in nearby Sacramento.

Our boys have been incredibly good on numerous shopping trips with their mom (who arrived a couple weeks ahead of me) and grand parents so we decided to take them out for something fun. About half of the games and rides at the arcade are out of order but we played air hockey, ski ball and a few other ticket generating games which are highly efficient at turning a twenty five cent token into five cents worth of tickets that you can spend on over priced trinkets and candy. They loved it.

In the end, my 6 year old and nearly 4 year old son scored a whoopee cushion, a tootsie pop and dual light up ninja swords with swish and clank sounds. Probably $5 worth of toys that cost nearly $20 in tokens, but what made it great was the sense of pride, accomplishment and joy they had in contending for their haul -  no longer mere toys, this was loot.

Abandon

I had a blog I worked on earlier this year. I worked very hard on it but ultimately stopped. I stopped the blog because it was about a niche I was recruiting in (Analog and RF semiconductors aka "chips for cell phones") and I decided to stop working that niche.

I stopped working that niche for one simple reason: it was too hard. I have less than 3 years in the recruiting business and I thought that I could handle it because I found the field interesting. The technology was not the problem, I could say the industry is too picky or that the people are this or that, but every field and every sector has their challenges. The problem was me - I took on that niche out of pride. I wanted to conquer the highest mountain, catch the biggest fish. Bygones.

I thought of deleting the blog as potentially embarrassing. Something started and not finished. After thinking about it, I decided that what would have been worse would be to continue to plod on and act as if it was working for me.

I, David Rees, am the author of an abandoned blog and I am not ashamed of that fact. So if you have started and stopped, even many times, but you know you need to write, pick it up again. Keep moving forward.

Risk

I was sitting at my desk, minding my business when our receptionist pulled my boss out of a closed door conference call. One of the newest recruiters in our office was on the phone. This would not have registered if I had not overheard the dialog:

"Totaled?"
"was anyone hurt?"
"yeah, whatever you need to do, take care of it, don't worry about it..."

Truly ironic because this person was on his way to - of all things - pay on some traffic tickets in South Austin.

He showed up in the office a couple hours later with the stiff gait of someone who is clearly in pain, but is loathe to concede any more ground to calamity. Details began to emerge.

He was hurrying to run his errands and was talking to his mother on the phone when he ran the red light and collided with another car. I can't imagine anything worse for a parent than to hear their son or daughter get into an accident in mid phone conversation. It seems he was dazed and unconscious for a few moments and when he regained he faculties, he picked up the phone to hear his mother frantically screaming his name. Nobody else seems to have been seriously injured.

As he made a feeble attempt to pack up his laptop, I intervened. While I was putting his things together for him, I was also trying to convince him he needed to go to the doctor because if he is stiff now, he is going to be in much worse pain in the morning.

On the way down the elevator he was telling me that he needs to change the way he drives.

"Thats my new years resolution - I have to change the way I drive, it's causing too many problems..."

Perceiving it as a question, I told him of an article I had read years ago about a theory that people tend to maintain what they perceive as a constant level of risk in their life. When we are young, we do crazy things because we are so sheltered by our parents and relative lack of responsibility that we have room to be risky - we express it in different ways through extreme sports, casual hookups, various substances and behaviors but the idea is that based on what is happening at the core of our life, we will adjust our behaviors to maintain a comfortable risk profile.

I told him that I used to be a crazy driver, but over time, as I got married and had kids and had other elements of risk exposure (whether financial, emotional or physical), I ended up changing my driving habits over time until these days, I drive like a Sunday school teacher. I asked if he thought just wanting to change would be enough or if he thought he might have to look at the risk in his life differently and make some changes (especially now that he works only on commission).

OK, so it sounds a little preachy. I didn't sell it as preachy, I sold it as "this theory I heard about... what do you think?" and he liked it. He liked it a lot. It's just a theory, it's not hard science and it might not be true at all, but it feels true and sometimes that is enough.