> Geez, are you supposed to not give your current employer even two weeks notice, but not tell them you're leaving until your first day at a new job, to avoid getting screwed?

No, don't do this in a professional developer job.

These rescinded offer stories are rare. That's why they make headlines. It's a newsworthy event, not a common occurrence.

Don't compromise your reputation and burn bridges on the way out the door just to compensate for the remote possibility of being subject to an outlier event like this.

Leaving on a good note and maintaining positive references is far more valuable than hedging against perceived downside risk of having an offer rescinded.

> These rescinded offer stories are rare.

Used to be rare.

This happened to plenty of people I knew personally during the covid layoffs and I see no reason it won't happen again (in fact we're discussing a pretty well known company doing it right now in these very comments).

> Don't compromise your reputation

Your reputation with who? I've never considered working for a previous employer in my entire career and never, ever known hiring managers at one company to have influence over another.

I used to feel very safe when leaving a role but it's unfortunately just not the way things are these days. Same goes for "ghosting". I used to think it was repulsive for candidates to ghost a potential employer during an interview, however I've been on the receiving end of companies ghosting a shocking number of times.

I wish we lived in the world you are describing, but we don't.

Might be true in FAANG/consulting but in the tier below FAANG reputation with a company is so useless it’s not worth considering. That even assumes it’s possible to be rehired or considered for employment by the same bosses, and that they didn’t just write you off forever for having the audacity to every be disloyal to them.

If you’re in an area with few employers, don’t want to move, _and_ don’t want to work, then maybe don’t give notice, otherwise you’re just leaving value on the table for people who only like you when you leave value on the table

It depends. I don't think bad of any of my coworker who went on PTO and gave their notice on the Friday before coming back. What I remember of them is how great they were. This little snag at the end is just people being human, having had enough and not wanting to get screwed by a company's HR department. I'd recommend them anytime and they never suffered from it either, many even being hired by startups created by their ex-leaders.

No, no. You wait until you start at the new job and then you give two weeks. This works the best since the last two weeks at a job you don't really do to much and the first week a new job is just onboarding.

Plus you get the added bonus of an additional two weeks pay.

Young people might not even realize, but back in the olden times of non-"unlimited vacation" employers were required to payout your unused vacation time when you left (usually leaving you with a fair bit of extra cash).

Unlimited vacation means that you no longer get this even though you probably take the same amount of leave, so you have to figure out a way to make up for this yourself.

Wow, sounds crazy enough to work

It's more than just a crazy idea. I joined a high-risk small startup coming from a very stable job with a new baby to take care of. Being unemployed at the time was absolutely not an option. The new company seemed amazing and like a great opportunity, but they didn't even have health insurance for remote employees (this was awhile back), so I was very worried that something would fall through at the last moment.

I've heard stories of people working two remote jobs to double their income, but based on my experience of just two weeks overlap the stress induced from secretly having two jobs indefinitely seems to outweigh the financial benefit.

> I've heard stories of people working two remote jobs to double their income, but based on my experience of just two weeks overlap the stress induced from secretly having two jobs indefinitely seems to outweigh the financial benefit.

Same here. I read about this happening, but can't imagine wanting to deal with that kind of stress and anxiety personally.

Unironically, yes.

On top of all this, you also lose unemployment benefits if you quit your job and the new one has rescinded their offer. As far as the states are concerned, you voluntarily quit your previous job, and never started a new one

That is a problem with how the governments treat layoffs vs quitting. In attempting to make companies and individuals responsible for more unemployment benefits, they made a number of large cracks for people to fall through.

It a problem with corporations too. They’re not bound by the laws of physics to leave you high and dry. Anyway, the point of the GP question was if it was necessary to give notice after you started your new job.

Given that companies are almost always choosing to leave people high and dry, the rational response is to not let yourself get into that situation by not giving your employer advanced notice

Employers have PIPs as a way to give themselves optionality in deciding to fire someone or not. Seems a bit unfair that employees don’t have much way today of saying, “hey, I might peace out any day now, and don’t take it personally if I do, but I expect that things should still be cool between us if I end up sticking around.”

Much like many employees take PIP as a "well fuck that" and plan their departure (indeed, when it's discussed here that's the common advice), I can't see companies not taking an employee's "maybe I'll leave" notice in the same way.

Spend the 2 weeks in silence but prepare good handover documentation to soften the blow at old company

Yes, can confirm from personal experience. Better someone else than yourself gets screwed.

Anyone who had had the rug pulled under them knows how immense the dollar cost can be, especially when you have already arranged a relocation.

It could work for you

If you haven't quit your job and the offer is pulled but they pay you out a month or two..