It’s not quite like this in New Zealand, but wow would an employer be foolish to have an employee leave under a cloud and not immediately block all access.

It’s borderline impossible to fire someone here, so it’s not US style lockdown, but cutting access seems basic.

For well paying jobs it’s pretty rare unless you do something bad. Obviously if they just did that to random people it would really hurt morale and other workers may want to leave.

But it’s legal. On the other side, with similar exceptions, on any day you can walk into your job and say goodbye forever and never come back.

Except in reality, almost nobody can do that, because they need to eat and pay rent. And if you did, you'd burn a lot of bridges.

And I am left thinking, if in the future I see a coworker leave on the day by his own choice. I wouldn’t hold it against him. The company has shown how easily they are willing to let go of a huge number of people. Why should I be mad at any of my coworkers if they decide to leave on the day? The company already set the bar for how this works.

I've quit without notice once in my career. I already had the next job line up though.

Leaving without notice is a good way to alienate a lot of contacts that most people will really want to maintain. But even beyond that from what I understand most places have policies in place to prevent employees coming back if they've left without notice.

Meanwhile, if my employer fires me without notice and I've got a mortgage, mouths to feed, and/or medical bills, then I don't really have the leverage to say "I'm sorry, by firing me without notice, you are ineligible from asking to rehire me."

There are A TON of people people who would probably love to walk in and quit tomorrow if they had another job lined up or the means to go without one for a short while.

Or there are layoffs.

when I was an intern, a person next to me just didn't come back one work. And wefound a large-font printout of employment contract with corresponding section highlighted by marker.

I still wonder what made him quit, but as an intern I didn't talk to to people much and didn't care about company politics.

But not always; my kid resigned from AWS in November and they asked him to work the two weeks, even having him push to prod on the second to last day.

If I have unlimited vacation - I'll take 4 weeks every month!

https://www.helpside.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Vacation...

Especially wild if you consider health insurance is tied to the employment.

3-6 months notice period is standard in EU countries. Unless you are sabotaging or always drunk there are no ways they will fire you quickly.

At Will employment cuts both ways.

Company fires their employee at 8:30AM on the spot: Employee is now without income and likely health insurance and his ability to pay rent, buy food and merely exist might now be in jeopardy.

Employee quits at 8:30AM on the spot: Company is at worst set back a bit until they backfill that job. At best they don't even notice. Unless that employee was some keystone that held the whole business together, there is no existential threat to the company.

Ps: without at will system you can simply stop showing off at work with the same results.

I've personally been involved on the employer side of such a situation with an irrational person and it's a pretty scary deal when you're in a small team where each dev has a lot of power.

I think even in Europe it's relatively rare to make someone work their notice period if they've been fired due to the risk of retaliation. They just pay them to not work instead. In certain high-risk professions (sales is a big one) you don't even work your notice period if you resign.

I'm a software developer. I'm hired, retained, and often promoted on my ability to look at situations, contemplate actions, and predict their consequences. If I have a piece of paper in hand that announces my resignation, I've been interviewing for weeks, signing acceptance letters, stalking my boss trying to figure out when in the next 36-72 hours I can get him alone and show him the piece of paper.

If I can manage all of that without my head catching on fire, then if I meant the company harm it would have already been accomplished prior to cornering my boss. I have probably known for days that my time here is up. We don't just wake up one morning to a phone call telling us we have a new job.