We had a contract employee send an e-mail at 4:00 on Friday announcing that that was his last day right when we were in the middle of "crunch time" in a project. I relay that story to his coworkers at his new company whenever I find someone who knows him.

Yep, never burn your bridges!

From my experience, most temp/contractors are shown the door "immediately" once a decision has been made to reduce headcount. That is one of the very reasons the position is not a permanent one to begin with, and it's a two way street. Everything should be done with professionalism, but imo a "two week" notice to the employer (for a temp position) is a lot to expect given the circumstances. I can assure you that most employer's would not, and will not think twice about the abrupt termination of ANY temporary employee. In fact, in my experience with the corporate decision making process, they don't even enter the equation...they are just a resource :(.

Engineering as a profession is project oriented. Companies are constantly staffing up and down to accomodate project schedules.

Your wife should bring her assignment to a level of "completeness" to where someone else could pick it up - even another temp - and run with it.

Every engineering manager understands leaving for a better job. They don't look too favorably to key people leaving a project at a key moment in the schedule.

Two weeks would be about perfect to not only get the work ready to be handed over and for the company to bring another engineer on board.

Letter of resignation. I like to offer two weeks no matter what. If I'm in a position that less than 2 weeks would be good, I offer two and ask if one would be sufficient for them. That's usually enough to give most folks a warm fuzzy. Who knows, the place she's currently working may say, "take a hike today."

Sometimes that's not a bad thing.

Have had to resort to it a couple of times myself.

Usually it's a long term employee who has accumulated bad juju.

They feel freed to walk around and air their grievances and become a bad pill.

Best to just give them an extra "vacation" and call it a day.

If possible always leave on good terms. My background is Engineering and as a matter of professional pride I always want to say after each project/job I have done the right thing by all as much as possible. This included delay of start of another job to tie up a major project milestone. That in itself ended up having another company who heard about that come up and offer me a role.
Not all companies treat their people like crap, depends on the Management and many other factors.

Agreed to the new job terms, dropped the bomb on the temp job this morning. They said she could leave today or when ever. Thanked her for the work she did and good luck.

She'll start the perm gig next Wed and start looking for her BMW or Boxster this weekend, hehehe :D

John, congratulations again to your wife and to you! Pics of the new car when you get it!

My take on this was, that as an engineer, she acted as a consultant and not as a "temp". There is a difference.


Over the years I've written way too many consultant agreements and most work was not day-to-day. Also, many vendors ask for some type of notice previous to a client canning them. This helps the consulting firm limit bench time for their resources.

Sounds like she did the right thing by working it out with the "employer".

Yea, I agree. One week seems appropriate, but don't burn bridges either.

The #1 most important question for an employee in a technical position (engineering, architecture, etc.) to ask is "how many people have been 'involuntarily terminated' due to staffing cutbacks in this firm in the last five years". It's an uncomfortable question to ask, but I'd say it's critically important to be able to identify whether a firm is a "we-hire-long-term" kind of operation or a "hire/fire" kind of operation.

There are LOTS of the latter out there, and if you simply ask, the H.R. person (whose job it is to get warm bodies into seats to get such-and-such project done) will simply say "of course we hire long term". Asking the specific question gives you a way to screen out the honest ones from the bull****ters.

Of course, if you're okay with working for a hire/fire place on a "per-project" basis, that's fine too, but for one, I'd have a bit of a hard time putting 100% into such a position. Being able to bolster one's own career growth is a big motivator.

Since I manage a temporary company - I would have recommended that you do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. Never burn bridges. Always use an appropriate amount of notice, if it's a one week job - a day's notice is appropriate. If it's 6 month - then a week would be appropriate, a year's assignment - then two weeks is appropriate.

Even in large cities - if you have specific talents - those employment circles are pretty small. You don't want to be denied an opportunity in the future because you were an ass clown in the past.

Lots of folks work "temporary" for one reason or another. No reason to look down your nose. Actually my largest client was a temp at one point in his career. He's now the CFO of this large company that just got bought by a super large F100 company. At the end of his employment agreement, he'll walk with millions. We should all be so lucky.

Nothing against temporary at all - if you want to get right down to it, you can say ANY job is temporary. . . Anyone is only employed as long as they continue to be worthwhile to keep around (that's the way it's supposed to work, anyway. . .)

For one though, I hate the thought of constantly having to polish up resumes, pour through a morass of job ads (many of which are deliberately misleading), deal with time-wasting morons like "headhunters", etc. I've "job-hopped" enough in the early days of my career to land me where I am now, in a position where I have an honest shot at becoming a partner. If it doesn't pan out, fine - I'll go open my own shop. No biggie. But at this point, "temp" work just wouldn't appeal to me. For some, fine, but I'd say for most people (me included) there's a HUGE difference between going to a "job" and a "career". The former tends to yield minimum standards only, since there's no incentive to do anything else (unless you have very specific bonus incentives built in, which such jobs almost never do). The latter tends to motivate, especially if people know there's no "glass ceiling" and anything is possible - up to and including ownership stake.

Wait till payday, if the check arrives at 9:00 then get there at 8:00 and box everything up, when the check hits the inbox grab it and hit the door walking slightly fassssster than normal....

Don't look back and laugh loudly all the way to the P-Car waving the envelope containing your check.....

If you can't laugh loudly or have a dry laugh then try singing a few bars from the ole Johnny Paycheck song " take this job and shove it "..... as you walk out the door.

Giving notice is kinda like that commercial, two weeks notice ten bucks, one weeks notice twenty bucks, no notice and walking out the door singing, priceless ....lol

Course if you get paid by direct deposit, just clean out your stuff the night before and sneak away at the end of the day and dont go back after you confirm your money is in the bank, don't answer your phone either for a few days...lol

Todd http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/wat6.gif

Just duck out the back, Jack...form a new plan, Stan...just set yourself free.

Like this young woman did....

Inetta the Moodsetta