AskABoss: 'Do you have advice on how to bring up that I want to leave without losing my current job before I’m ready?'
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos:Getty Images Doing the Most is a special series about ambition — how we define it, harness it, and conquer it.I have a question about how much notice to give my boss before leaving my role. While I have not received any offers of employment yet, I have begun actively applying for jobs.
Here’s the thing about providing an unusually long lead time: It can result in you getting pushed out earlier than you’d planned. Once your manager is alerted to your job search, she’s likely to start making plans for your departure and looking for your replacement. And if she finds someone she wants to hire, maybe it’ll be okay for you to have a lengthy overlap with that person … or maybe she’ll start pressing you to set an end date before you’re ready.
Now, all that said, if your manager has established a solid track record of accommodating long notice periods without ever pushing anyone out earlier than they wanted to leave, you might not need to take quite as hard a line on this. But even then, I’d be cautious. Your circumstances — or the company’s — could end up being different in some way this time around, and the stakes are pretty high for that gamble.