Don't Act Differently After You Give Notice

Authenticity matters.

Sometimes when people give notice that they are quitting they start acting differently:

• Some people get very bold. They start having stronger opinions than normal.

• Some people are obviously playing Mario Kart during team meetings.

• Some people start to spend more and more time talking in the break room, seemingly enjoying the new celebrity a soon-to-be-gone status has given them.

• Some very cheerful people start to show a little bit of their inner nastiness. Some very lethargic people start to show their inner ambition (where was it while you were here?)

In any case, changing behavior once you’ve given notice always makes you look bad. Even if you are being nicer, or happier, or trying to be helpful - large changes in behavior make everyone think you were lying to them throughout your time, that you were not being authentic.

Inauthentic behavior is one of the most off-putting things you can do for your reputation. People can forgive mistakes and character flaws, but if they feel like they don’t know who you really are, they will resent you. Something in our pre-modern-era DNA is hardwired to despise sneakiness and false pretenses more than unapologetically bad behavior.

Once you give notice, just be normal. Do your job. Have a final happy hour. Move on with your life. The industry is small, and people remember their last impression of you even more powerfully than their first. You want to make sure that the last impression you leave is something like “they were a great teammate for years, they were still a great teammate at the moment the door closed behind them, and maybe we’ll be teammates again in the future.”

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