How can I ethically "ease into" quitting a job?

Question

This is a first for me, as I've never quit a full-time job before. I've been with my company for several years now and my relationship with my team is great; however, a better opportunity has opened up for me and after lots of deliberation it's time for me to move on.

Because of the good relationship that I have with the team, I feel a little bit guilty to just go up to my boss one day and say "Hi boss, I'm out!" At the moment, I have a set date for when I need to quit and serve my notice period and I'm acting as if there's nothing happening until the day, doing my work as I normally do. As a result of this, however, I'm being continuously assigned new work, which is making me feel even worse about resigning!

Another key aspect of this is that I'm an expat on a work visa, which means once I accept work elsewhere, I can't just go back to my old company.

So my question is: am I approaching this the wrong way? Do I need to give hints or imply that I'm planning to leave before my notice period, to give my employer more time to replace me and move on without me? What other advice do you have for me in this situation?

Answer 1

As Billy Joel said - Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes

(say goodbye to hollywood, '76)

People get use to it. It is expected to have churn in the workplace.

Just leave on good terms. Make sure that you have crossed the t's and dotted the i's before you leave.

But make sure you have the new contract in the bag before leaving and handing in the notice.

Answer 2

Going up to your boss and saying "hi boss, I'm out!" would be abrupt, yes, especially given that you have been happy there, so presumably there hasn't been a trail of signs (like comments in 1:1 meetings about frustrations, unhappiness, etc). People leave jobs all the time, so it's certainly not wrong for you to leave for a better opportunity, but from what I see in your question,, you want to manage the transition to maintain good relations.

If you have a good relationship with your manager, you can have an informal conversation in advance of your formal notice. Your reason for doing this is to facilitate a good transition, which you should say explicitly. Try something like the following:

We have a great team here and this has been a good first job for me, but I've decided to pursue another opportunity that just came up. I don't want to leave anybody in the lurch, so I wanted to give you an early heads-up so we can have a smooth transition. I'm planning to leave on $date, so I'll give you a formal resignation letter closer to then. In the meantime, can we talk about how I can best use my remaining time to help the team?

Do this in a private meeting and schedule it in advance if at all possible; this is not the sort of thing where you want to poke your head into the boss's office and ask "hey, got a minute?" and then spring it. You want to make sure your boss has more than "a minute", so there's time to discuss any immediate concerns.

Finally, you should know that there is always a risk in giving advance notice; you might have been planning to stay for a month or six weeks only to have your boss say "ok, you're done in two weeks" (or whatever the conventional or contractual notice period is in your case). You should only do this if either (a) you're pretty confident that your boss isn't going to push you out early or (b) you can afford to be unemployed for the extra time before your new job starts. In my experience, longer notice tends to be something you see at higher levels of seniority; in a place where the norm is two weeks, a coworker who was the chief architect gave three months' notice, for example. Most of my coworkers who are in their first jobs post-college give the conventional two weeks' notice.

Answer 3

A notice period is a formal minimum you need to give, if you have accepted another offer and all the paperwork has been completed etc there's nothing stopping you giving your notice now.

This allows your current employer longer time to adjust and also helps them decide what work to give you now. The only downside I guess is they could potentially ask you to leave depending on the notice they are required to give you.