8 Steps to Take After You've Given Notice

Welcome to my newsletter! I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. I write this newsletter I've called Scarlet Ink, which is a weekly newsletter on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

Free members can read some amount of each article, while paid members can read the full article. For some, part of the article is plenty! But if you'd like to read more, I'd love you to consider becoming a paid member. All of my articles are intended to be evergreen (readable and valid forever). Some weeks I have fresh content; other weeks I'll update/rewrite something from 4+ years ago because I want to keep the quality of all articles high.

One of my specialties I've talked excitedly about in the past is ramping up in new roles. I absolutely felt that my ability to ramp up in a new position was a huge competitive advantage. I liked switching teams, and I liked learning new things, so I learned how to do this well.

What I haven't talked about in the past (until now), is the other side of getting new roles. I also left a good number of jobs, and I feel there's a skill to that as well.

Let's say you've gotten your new offer. You've accepted it, and you've told your company that you're resigning. Good for you! Now, let's make certain you're leaving with good standing.

Before I get into the 8 steps, let me make one important point.

Everyone early in their career underestimates what we mean by burning bridges.

While I was growing up, I heard the phrase "don't burn bridges!" and I understood the concept. If you annoy a college professor by skipping their classes, they'll be less likely to give you slack when you flub a quiz, or need help during office hours.

And when I joined the workforce and went to leave my first job, a few people suggested, "Don't burn bridges!"

But I didn't really understand the gravity of how many bridges there were. Like, holy cow. Let me just go through some examples off the top of my head.

When I went to move to Facebook, part of getting an offer was that they "looked into my background", which sounded mysterious and fancy. But it consisted of a few ex-Amazon people at Facebook who had friends at Amazon who worked with me. They asked for private feedback on me. Yeah, your reputation certainly follows you.

(This happened more than once.) We had someone pass the interview process, and we were finalizing the offer, deciding on compensation, etc. But while doing those final steps, we noticed someone in our organization had overlapped with this person at a previous company. When asked for feedback (generally to decide how hard we should fight to hire them), the person in our organization told us that we should absolutely not hire that person. And so we didn't.

Someone left a team at Amazon in a bad way to change teams to another at Amazon. They gave notice but then went on vacation for most of that leave period. They also didn't hand things over well, and left a bunch of things uncompleted. Their old and new manager agreed that this wasn't an appropriate transition, and the employee was moved back for a few weeks to do a proper transition. And they absolutely started on the wrong foot with their new manager.

I know people at almost every major tech company. Not because I'm particularly extroverted (I'm not!), but because if you're in the industry long enough, people move around. It's like the six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon thing. It feels like you can just leave a company, and they disappear. Except they don't. Your reputation follows you, because this industry, as big as it is, is very small.

So when we talk about how to preserve your reputation, we're purposefully not talking about your reputation with this specific manager, or this specific team. We're talking about your professional reputation. And it's shocking how much that reputation (good or bad) can spread across the entire field. Don't be shortsighted.

1. Don't check out before your time is up.

This is a common issue, particularly for junior employees. They'll get a new job, and they're over the moon excited about that new team. They give their two week notice.

They spend their spare time reading about the new company. They look into the technology that the new company uses. They message their new team, asking questions about their new role. And they coast through their final 2 weeks at their old company, spending an awful lot of time at nearby coffee shops.

Nothing burns bridges faster than someone with a 2-week notice who is clearly only giving me 1-week or less.

That 2-week notice is not just a tradition. And it's not for you to sit in a chair for 2-weeks twiddling your thumbs.

Do a proper transition. Like the first few weeks of a new job, the last couple of weeks in your role should be energetic and thoughtful.

Now certainly, as you hand things off, you may end up with fewer things to do. That's totally fine. But that relaxing time should happen at the end of your notice period, not the beginning. And if anything is left dangling when you leave, that idle time will be remembered as an insult to the team you left. Don't let that happen.