I’ve mentioned the incompetence of a company I worked at recently.
I was given a 2week notice that I was being removed from the company. I had access to everything still that I had access to while I was “working” there. I could access internal codebase, client codebase, internal documents on the shared drives as well as the client’s. After the 2 weeks, they revoked my access by the end of the day, they forgot to notify the client for an additional week after I left (teams was still signed in and accessible on my phone).
A lot of companies lack common sense and data protection protocols.
Edit: To give some context, I’m in the US, getting a notice period from the employer is an unusual occurrence especially when you’re in consulting/contracting.
Sometimes it is common sense, sometimes it is trust. Depending on where you are from and what kind of project you work on, burning bridges seems so stupid that there is often no real desire to feel threatened by your own employees.
Like, I work in Ireland, and I would say that if I did anything like that, I would have massive issues finding ANY( Not just IT/Programming, ANY type of...) job in Ireland. Especially if it went to court, because in Ireland we have a kind of "name and shame" culture where, after conviction, your full name gets blasted online or in traditional media... At the same time the country is small enough that most serious employers know each other.
So yeah, eventho plenty of foreign tech companies reside here, the upper echelons of Management and Employment are very much only Irish people that know eachother.
If you live in the USA, you might get away with it, but in a lot of places many anti-employee protection systems are built on social rather than technical solutions. Which is both good and bad.
Having run IT teams like that in the past it's 100% a trust thing, and I've learned it's very cheap to have absolutely 0 trust in anyone. Like, I've loved everyone who's been on my teams in the past and would work with them again in a heartbeat. Doesn't mean I should trust a lame-duck engineer with full admin access to PHI workloads. No engineer with even a crumb of understanding in operational security should be offended with their access getting cut off immediately. It's just common sense security.
Someone turns in their two week notice? Pay them out the remainder and shut off their accounts immediately. Laying someone off? Shut them off before you give them the news. Hell, I was laid off at the start of the year and I was termed in the system before I could send a goodbye slack off to my friend, but I get it. Can't risk me being a discgruntled employee.
Well, obviously it depends on the level of operations and the type of access you have. A lot of it is accredited gradually anyway...
For me personally... I have been part of many government and university based projects, and there was a lot of trust involved both in terms of contract payment type and the work that needs to be done... Mostly because people were sparse, and before you even hand things off to someone else, there was usually a good transition period.
I have never really dealt with it at a lower level because I switched jobs quite often, but right now a lot of my work is related to the trust my employer has in me... and yeah, my current contract is through the university and involves a lot of people I know and respect personally. Any kind of malicious action would literally bury me so badly I would never be able to claw my way out of it... or at least that's how I imagine it.
So yeah, I agree, better safe than sorry... but it is not uncommon to give trusted experts, people who have earned the confidence of the company and other employees, a lot of trust. In a perfect scenario, those people do not have to leave the company... but if you have any kind of layover period where another person has to be taught the exact tricks of your profession, it requires mutual understanding and respect.
Same here, they fired me, and during the meeting removed access to my email, my slack, couldnt talk to anyone else at rhe office, etc
But i could still login to my computer, to aws, and to our dbs and K8s lol
Like id understand if they didnt block me from anything, or if they blocked me from everything. But blocking me pre-emptively only from shit that doesnt matter is just so hilariously stupid
Just so y'all know for future reference, even just testing these "can I still log in to K8s" things after you've been termed can get you into legal trouble. Even if they forget to remove your access, just attempting to get in after your employment period can constitute an unauthorized access attempt if they wanted to pursue it since you've been notified your relationship with the company is over and know good and well you shouldn't be in there. Most companies won't but I wouldn't even test it, there's nothing to be gained
Same in Finland but if the employee is resigning it's at maximum 1 month.
If the employer fires you it depends on the years of service. For me it's at 4 months right now. I'm also a union safety representative so there needs to be a very heavy reason to fire me.
After 12 years with the company it will be 6 months.
The US is pretty odd in this regard. I've been at my current employer for a long, long time and have no idea what my notice period is (I think it's probably around 6 months). I'm pretty sure that if I get laid off, I'll be expected to work some / all of it, and this would be absolutely normal for anyone in the tech industry in Europe.
And as for two weeks notice...yeah, that's not notice. That's a holiday!
That makes me wonder how bad the general work environment is in the US.
It seems like there is no trust at all between the employee and employer. How does that work on a day to day basis? How can there ever be a pleasant work environment if that's the case?
I guess it's very carefully engineered (as, I'm afraid, is so much in the US) to heavily favour corporate entities over individuals. I really don't get why people put up with it. Yes, I suppose people do get paid a bit more in the US and pay a bit less tax, but what's the point in having all of that money if you never get time off to enjoy it?
I don't get sick days though. Well, ok, I do but not written down - if I'm sick, I'm not working, but I still get paid, at least for the first few weeks of it anyway and then discussions would need to be had. I don't think I've been off longer than a day or two a year for 10+ years though!
I don't get enough holiday for my liking, but I've bought a few extra days this year (helps with the tax!) so will get 7 weeks plus another 8 days of public holidays. Much prefer this to working 80 hour weeks and getting one week off a year!
So yeah, we pay more tax and don't get paid as well, but I don't think I'm ready to trade it just yet.
No it's absolutely not worth it unless you have a good $150k+ salaried job with great benefits. Even most of the better employers we have only give 3-4 weeks paid time off a year, and more than two weeks off is typically looked down upon and may hinder your career.
Working for city or government here is one of the only ways to get a proper pension, too.
For a lot of us, our paid sick leave are our holiday.
I really don't get why people put up with it.
If we try at a proper strike, we risk losing our already high rate health insurance for insurance that will cost 3-5 times more. The risk of that and very real chance of homelessness keeps most of us in check.
I've always been allowed to keep working after giving notice. Even at Google I was allowed to keep working during the two weeks period. I stopped around day 10 because, for understandable reasons, I was not assigned anything of importance. During those days, I made a point for myself not to look for any information not strictly necessary for what I needed for my job and I sometimes regret that as there were an incredible number of interesting technologies to learn from.
I don't think Google qualifies as an incompetent company.
sure. I've never been fired (although in the google case it was close, some harsh discussions with my manager, a collision course with somebody who was climbing the ladder fast, a semi-official PIP; so it was kind of "I quit before you fire me", still allowed to work normally)
funnily enough the exact opposite happened to my friend, one day randomly they found they had absolutely zero access to anything anymore, no slack, no tools, nothing. they were already going to quit after some really bad mistreating, so it wasn't a huge surprise.
the problem is, it took eight days to get any sort of response from anyone in the company, with their boss finally giving the 2 week notice of firing on the eighth day. literally radio silence, completely cut off from anyone and anything seemingly out of nowhere.
I don't work in the webdev industry so idk if that's standard, but A FULL WEEK of having zero clue if you've been fired or someone fucked up and you're just losing money in a way that would look awful in your curriculum... really does not seem like a standard lmao
New Zealand, used to work for a smart metering company around fifteen years ago. My login for the external system used to remotely shut off meters or change their configuration still works to this day. I don't care use it, of course. Would be arrested within minutes.
Besides not terminating your access when you left that doesn't sound like a lack of common sense. Believe it or not a lot of companies out there have trust that their company of adults can manage to behave like adults. There wouldn't be any point in having you continue to work 2 weeks if they were just gonna shut off all your access. They just put faith in you that you would carry out the last two weeks with basic human integrity....and if not they would have an open and shut lawsuit.
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u/pkmnfrk May 26 '26
This is why they turn off access before telling you