Of course if you have good reasons to stop working, there are good options. If it's stress or similar mental health issues, you can resign and spend your notice period on sick leave. If your employer assaults you or just stops paying, or otherwise grossly neglects their duties as an employer, you're legally entitled to quit immediately.
If you don't respect your notice period they'll remove your salary over the missed time from that final payment. So in that case they'd remove 3-month salary. Sometimes it goes into the negative, and some companies actually send a bill, but there's basically no consequence for ignoring it. Usually companies don't push the matter.
There are federal laws that limit this, typically applied to larger employers making entire business lines redundant (closing a factory, etc). State laws very, some with zero extra protection, some with a bit more, but AFAIK none with European-style rules.
In professional jobs, it's traditional for an employee to give 2+ weeks notice. Most employees will try to stay long enough for a reasonable transition - depending on position/project status, that could be 2 weeks or a month or two.
It's traditional for employers to give 2+ weeks severance. Most white-collar employers have periods that start at 2 weeks and grow with tenure. Including benefits is hit or miss, and a HUGE issue because health insurance/care in the US is so expensive.
I think what you are thinking about is the court almost certainly won't order you to go back to work after you quit.
Just like they have also ruled that mandatory Jury duty is not in violation of the 13th amendment either. Funny how the system protects and perpetuates itself.
But with respect to your point, I am nearly 100% sure that it is not the case that employers can use financial penalties to enforce such a contract. Anything you are paid as wages is pretty much untouchable after it is paid out, unless it was paid in mistake or you intentionally damaged the company or something. The best the company can do is withhold potential future earnings or bonuses, or take back conditional non-wage payments like bonuses within a certain window of time.
This is part of why golden parachutes exist. Your contract has very generous severance clauses which award you lots of money if you follow a certain procedures for leaving, which involves advance notice and such. Fail to follow that and your paycheck just stops the day you walk off. So there are incentives, but they can't go after your already earned wages, paid or still due to you.
That's pretty much what I meant although, as noted in another comment, I assume there are cases where they would try to claw back relocation or signing bonuses. Also, of course, things like RSU vesting.
>they can't go after your already earned wages, paid or still due to you.
Certainly, and depending on how paid time off accrues, anything earned there--which is one of the drivers with "unlimited" PTO because that's not owed when you leave.
Oh, I agree. But 3 months seems crazy to me. If I have an open position and it isn't filled in ~4-6 weeks, it often gets given to some other team (on the basis that if I really needed that position filled, I'd do so). I can't plan hiring over that timeframe.
And when hiring employees in India, we've had them claim a 2-month resignation period, but they just end up using that time to find some other opportunity on the previous employer's time. It's a real mess.
If you're in a culture (locality + industry) where a position can be filled in 4 weeks, that's one thing. If you're in a culture where every experienced person has 3 months of notice, then nobody would take your inability to fill a position within weeks to mean that you don't really need it.
I have some experience with part-time contracting with US customers. Seeing how quickly people can join or leave there is certainly a culture shock!
We have a bunch of employees in Europe and everyone involved except the very marginal employees sees this situation as strongly negative (and, in fact, an argument to not hire in Europe at all).
I don't need my 3 months now. They might be useful if my employer axes a whole department. They're useful for people with family commitments giving them less mobility.
What you might not realise is that these three months would be the default legal position in case of disagreement. If you want to leave earlier and the employer agrees, you can usually leave earlier, too (with them being off the financial hook).
It wasn't a problem. I was on good terms with the previous company (I'm still getting invited to their anniversary parties and stuff like that), so there was no issue in working something out.
Also, remember that ~6 weeks of vacation per year is common outside the US, so often it boils down to taking your remaining vacation. (Though I think you need to be careful with taxes and other regulations if the contracts overlap.)
I’m senior enough that I give at least a month, often more, and this made me realize that I’ve been perhaps overly generous.
Three months is the typical notice period for tech workers and other highly-skilled jobs. One month is the legal minimum in Sweden, and certainly several other countries. Of course it goes both ways, in fact it's even more difficult for the employer to get rid of an employee. An employee doesn't need a reason to resign, an employer needs a valid reason to fire an employee, in addition to observing the notice period.
To complete the picture, it's necessary to say that probation periods exist. Employees may be initially hired on probation (typical for fresh graduates), which has a shorter notice period, and either side may unilaterally decide not to continue past probation. That is, an employer unhappy with a probation employee doesn't need additional legal grounds to say "we're not proceeding with full employment after the probation period is over".