[run414]

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

[Xixi]

In France the standard notice for engineers is three months, and goes both way. It's not unheard of for a corporation to pay the three months notice when firing someone, without the employee actually coming in anymore, precisely to avoid theft, or the moral hazard towards other employees.

But what's the rational the other way around? When an employee resigns, they obviously know that they are resigning before actually handling in their resignation. If they wanted to leave with something, surely they would have already stolen it? Or it's just an expectation of lazyness, in case nothing has been stolen yet?

[lb1lf]

It is basically CYA.

If the employee should later indeed be found to have taken IP or other assets during their last weeks at work, it would reflect poorly on whomever decided they should work during the resignation period.

Hence, you let them go immediately, so you can shrug and say 'well, we did what we could' in case of problems down the road.

[Lio]

In the UK they would have to put the person on “gardening leave”.

Firing in this way when someone’s done nothing wrong would be constructive dismissal and prohibited by law.

The fact that Amazon treats their resigning employees in this way doesn’t increase my trust in them.

It actually just makes them look viscous and petty.

[wil421]

Many companies do the same thing. The employee isn’t fired they are just asked not to return for the 2 weeks. I’ve never heard of the employer not paying out the 2 weeks.

[KptMarchewa]

What's the difference between this and gardening leave? Does Amazon not pay for those two weeks or what?

[Lio]

Apart from whether Amazon are paying the two weeks notice that they morally owe, one obvious difference would be if your next employer asks have you ever been terminated from a previous position.

Who would want to be placed in the position of saying yes I was fired because I was suspected of being a security risk?

[xyzzy_plugh]

Does anyone ever answer this question truthfully? I generally assume not. The only way to verify this is through a back channel (AIUI corps generally won't disclose the reason due to libel liability), unless the employee really screwed up and didn't sign a separation agreement, which (again AIUI) you'd only decline if you plan on pursuing legal action against your employer.

And if you're already on a back channel, then you don't care about playing fair.

[Aeolun]

You can just say that you were terminated because your manager at Amazon was insecure and didn’t trust you to not fuck things up?

[Lio]

Well you can of course but interviewers often discount candidates that slag off their old employers on the grounds that they’ll be difficult to manage.

[User23]

I personally know someone who gave a two week notice at Amazon and had his manager ask him to stay out the quarter. It's all about relationships and reputation. People with a proven track record of quality work and strong ethics are valued there.

[Talanes]

What leads you to believe the difference is in the quality of the employee and not the quality of the manager?

[User23]

Nothing. Relationships are by definition bidirectional. Being able to have a good relationship with a manager implies that that manager is at least not awful, and most likely also good. The person I refer to would never have delayed starting his new job as long as he did if he didn't have professional respect for his manager.

[Aeolun]

They don’t think someone would have taken the data before handing in their notice?

Feels a bit silly to me.

[aka1234]

Must depend on the org and how you do it. My personal experience is that if you are open and up-front with going to a competitor, they'll cut your access and pay you for the remaining time left on your resignation letter/month.

If you go to a competitor and aren't open about it? You might find yourself terminated with no additional pay.

And it makes sense. At Amazon, most people have varying levels of customer data and/or confidential company data. Amazon has to protect itself from data exfiltration/data theft.

[themeiguoren]

If someone was going to steal company info for a competitor, they’d do it before they gave notice that they were leaving. And they wouldn’t tell their current employer where they were going.

This might catch extraordinarily stupid people from conducting industrial espionage, but really I see it as the company encouraging people to not give any notice at all (which, remember, is just a courtesy) when they quit. It’s shortsighted on the company’s part.

[ponker]

Fired as in not paid for the two weeks? That’s very unusual but being shown the door when you give notice and having your desk effects delivered to you is not at all uncommon.

[jsizzle]

This is not atypical though, and it happens in non high tech industries. Why is this an issue?

[run414]

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply a moral judgement on the issue. I was just trying to provide an example that furthers the parent's point on Amazon being very protective of their data.