Issue 27 · Thursday, 9 July 2026
Three people wrote to me last month about the same confusion, so here is the whole thing in one place. Nothing here is legal advice; it is what I have watched happen.
The two-week notice period is a custom, not a rule. In most of the United States, employment is at will, which means either side may end it at any time for almost any reason. Your two weeks is a courtesy you are extending, and your employer is under no obligation to accept it. They may thank you and walk you out that afternoon.
That last point is the one people are unprepared for, and it has consequences worth planning around.
Whether you are paid for the remainder depends entirely on policy and on what the handbook says, and handbooks vary wildly. Some organisations pay out the notice as a matter of course. Some pay nothing after the last day worked. A very common middle position is to pay the notice but end benefits at the end of that month, which quietly matters if you have a procedure scheduled.
So before you resign, find out three things: whether accrued vacation is paid out in your state and under your policy, when coverage actually ends, and whether any bonus or equity has a “must be employed on the payment date” clause. That third one has cost people more money than every salary negotiation they ever had. Vesting dates and bonus payment dates are the two calendar entries that should determine your last day.
Garden leave — where you remain employed, paid, and explicitly not working — is common in finance and in senior roles with client relationships, and rare elsewhere. It is a contractual term, so it will be in your agreement or it will not exist. Its purpose is to keep you off the market and away from clients while your knowledge goes stale. If you have it, you are being paid to do nothing, you remain bound by your duties to your employer for the duration, and you generally cannot start somewhere else until it ends.
People conflate this with non-competes. They are separate instruments and they behave differently. Garden leave is paid, defined in length, and largely enforceable because you are still on payroll. A non-compete is unpaid, often broader, and its enforceability varies enormously by state — some will not enforce it at all against most workers.
Write the document anyway. One page per recurring responsibility: what it is, when it happens, who it affects, where the credentials live and who to ask. Not for their benefit — for the reference conversation in issue 30, and for the version of you in three years who wants a warm door back.
And resign in a meeting, on a weekday morning, then send the written note afterwards. Not by email at five o'clock on a Friday. It costs you nothing and it is remembered for years.
Written by Nadia Prewitt. Every issue goes to the list first and lands here a day or two afterwards. There is no tracking pixel in the email and there is none on this page; if you want me to know you read it, tell me.