Ask Slashdot: When Is the Right Time To Discuss Retirement With Your Employer?

An anonymous reader writes: As I am sliding down the far side of 60, retirement is something coming up in two or three years.

The usual notice time is two weeks, but I'm one of two people (maybe three if they pull one back in off other projects he's done the past four years) who do what I do, and is fairly important to the company's product. Yeah, we'd be in serious hurt if one of us were hit by a truck.

I'd like to give a lot of notice. It took them six months to find me for this position half a decade ago. But I don't want to be let go before I'm ready to go, either.

Most slashdotters seem to be a lot younger than me, so maybe I'm asking in the wrong place, but has anyone else dealt with this issue?

Comments

The day of

[PopeRatzo]

I can tell you from personal experience that the best time to discuss retirement with your employer is the day you are walking out the door for the last time. It's so satisfying. I still got my party and when the time comes, I'll still get my pension.

If your employer is going to end your employment, he almost certainly won't tell you about it until the last day. You already gave them their money's worth and you don't owe them anything.

Better yet, call them at 9am on the first day of your retirement to let them know you won't be in ever again.

Re:No good dead goes unpunished

[Fast Ben]

My current employer will not pay out my unused vacation if I do not give at least two weeks notice.

Depending on which state you're in, that may be illegal. It certainly is in California.

Re:No good dead goes unpunished

[networkBoy]

This!
We have a guy at my office much like you.
He gets hit by a truck, we stay in business, but we slip all sorts of deadlines, and likely contractual obligations, and our bug escape count will go way up.

He's a greybeard and greatly valued, but he wants to retire. He gave us a year notice, and he was in a position that if we said "bye" he'd have been fine (bored, but fine). As it is we are grateful for the year's notice and have him advising Jr devs when they get stuck. We're 6 mo in and he's down to 4 days a week (his choice, but good for us as it's driving home the point we need to learn everything we can from him first).

Honestly, if you're that valuable I predict that you will be fine having the "1 year warning" retirement convo, particularly if you approach it with something along the lines of:
"I've loved working here, but as I'm sure you can guess I am getting to the age where retirement is looming. I don't want to leave this team in a lurch, so I was thinking about working out a (1yr|6mo|nn week) transition plan where I can mentor a replacement. What do you think about that?"

This puts you in a position of relative power in that they can say okay, or you can leave and they have no choice but to hold the bag. Naturally if you have some trigger that needs to happen, like stock options vesting, wait till *after* the trigger, just in case.

In a reverse version of this I know a guy who knew his value, but when we were bought by Intel he simply didn't want to work for such a big company. He offered a similar resignation, a transition plan, knowledge transfer/training. He was rebuked and told "If you're quitting then we'll have your final paycheck to you plus some severance".
6 months later we were hiring him on a *LUDICHRIST* contract of $20,000 + expenses and $500 per diem for 4 days of work to crash course a group of devs to get past some roadblock.

Re:No good dead goes unpunished

[grasshoppa]

I'd play this a tad differently.

I'm still on board with the "Day Of" method, and I'd give them a month extra after notification. After that, my pending retirement becomes a negotiation tactic. You want me around for another 2 months? Cool, here are my terms, and they're expensive.

This works on a couple different levels. First, you are GIVING them a month extra, and how nice of you to do so. Second, you are being compensated for the extra time ( generously ). Third, you are giving them a strong incentive to find your replacement.

I've seen places say, "Oh, we're looking for your replacement"...but then not. So this poor, kind, soul gets stuck because he said he'd stick around until they find a replacement. This way you can charge them commiserate with how much you don't want to be there, and they really have incentive to find your replacement.

Re:Gold Mine

[torkus]

You're right, but wrong.

At-will employment does allow either party to terminate the employment with zero notice for no reason. However that absolutely DOES NOT absolve either party of obeying laws around employment. You can terminate me for no reason, but you can't pretend a reason doesn't exist. i.e. if a company terminates someone a week after they announce they're pregnant there are sufficient grounds for a lawsuit - at which point the company would need to justify the termination was not on illegal grounds.

Age is protected status.

Retaliation is also illegal. You can't fire someone because they gave notice to terminate their employment. Many companies DO decide to go with leave in lieu of notice for employees with privileged access. I've had that more than once and it amounts to a couple-week vacation where I'm technically on-call but have all my access cut so can't do anything.

If you give notice of retirement in 6 months and they are stupid enough to fire you for "no reason" shortly after, you'd have a pretty solid lawsuit in the making. Not to mention they'd easily get crucified in the media over it and any cost to just pay you out even for 6 months would be minor in comparison.

Re: Retirement?

[ZipK]

Waiting until you qualify for Medicare may make sense.

Not for long.