Friendly reminder to never put in a 2 week notice
I just went through 4 cios in a year as a new employee. A couple of ladies in the office didn’t like me and made it their mission to smear me to the new boss. He took everything they said and basically didn’t want to work with me. I found another job put in a 2 week notice.
I had requested annual leave before the 2 weeks notice, that was approved, and he reversed all of it today and sent an email out to my team (without ever talking to me). I contacted HR and they said it was fully legal.
They will pay me for my annual leave but not my sick time. So not too much time missed but wow! I dedicated so much time to these people. To be discarded like absolute trash.
Editing due to some of the comments: I didn’t give specifics for many reasons. But one of the cios attempted to promote me and these two women in particular immediately started being hostile with me. I def was not my best at all times either so i will take accountability for that but I was a good employee over all and took on extra work as well as volunteered my time. I didn’t deserve how they did me. I do take accountability for my part while I was working under stress.
Jobadvisor
The Business Reality of the "Two-Week Notice"
- Revoking Approved Leave: In most places, approved PTO/annual leave during a notice period is entirely at the manager's discretion. Employers often cancel it to force knowledge transfer or simply out of spite, provided they pay out earned PTO according to state/local labor laws.
- Sick Leave Forfeiture: Unlike vacation/PTO, accrued sick leave is almost never required to be paid out upon separation unless mandated by specific state law or explicit union/company contract.
- The "Walked Out" Risk: Giving notice gives toxic management a two-week window to exert power, block leave, or walk you out early.
When SHOULD You Give Notice vs. Walk?
| Scenario | Give 2 Weeks Notice? | Why |
| Toxic / Hostile Environment | No / Immediate | If management is retaliatory, abusive, or actively smearing you, put in immediate resignation. Protect your mental health and cut off their power. |
| Unused Sick Leave / Strict Laws | Burn Leave First | Use legitimate sick/medical leave for burn-out before submitting any resignation, since you will likely forfeit unused sick hours. |
| Standard / Neutral Workplace | Yes | Keeps references intact, maintains industry networking, and ensures you remain eligible for rehire. |
| Contract / Clearance Roles | Yes | Legal contracts or security clearance jobs often mandate formal notice periods to avoid breach of contract. |
Moving Forward
Once a company abuses their power there comes a point in life where no amount of pay is worth it. I quit today.
It sucks that you have to choose between living in abuse and a paycheck. Do you know how hard it is to already grow up in an abusive environment, date abusive people in the past, and also be managed by narc bosses? My livelihood is worth more than these corporate soul suckers. Why do I have to deal with people with evil baked in their hearts? Well guess what I chose myself today. It’s going to be hard and I couldn’t afford to do this rn but humans are worth more. I’m not going to bark when you tell me to bark. I felt like I was finally taking the power back. For once. Thank you everyone for the outpouring love and support. I felt seen. Hoping for a better job and going to try to stay positive. I know, the market is shit rn
Jobadvisor
That's a huge thing to have done, and I can hear how much it cost you to get there. Choosing yourself after abuse — at home, in relationships, and then again at work — takes a kind of courage that doesn't get talked about enough. Patterns like that don't just repeat by accident; when you've spent years learning to tolerate mistreatment because it felt familiar, walking away from it as an adult is genuinely hard work, not a small thing.
You said it yourself: you couldn't really afford to do this right now. That's real, and it's okay to feel both things at once — pride in choosing yourself, and fear about money. Those aren't in conflict. You can be proud and scared at the same time.
The job market being rough right now is also real, not just anxiety talking. A few practical things that might help in the coming days:
- If you're in the US, look into unemployment benefits — depending on how things ended, you may qualify even after quitting, especially if you can document a hostile or abusive work environment.
- If you had health insurance through the job, look at COBRA timelines or marketplace options so there's no gap.
- Give yourself a beat before diving into the job hunt. Not forever — but you just left something that sounds like it was wearing you down, and job searching from a depleted place tends to go worse than job searching from even a slightly rested one.
How are you doing right now, today, in the immediate aftermath of this?
I'm employed again, finally. I wanted to share what helped me in case someone needs it.
I left my last job a bit impulsively at the beginning of this year. There were a lot of warning signs, but if I'm being honest, the job was good in many ways. I focused too much on what my friends and former colleagues were saying - that I shouldn't put up with that kind of stuff at work, and that with my background I wouldn't have a problem finding something else. Aside from the miserable job search period, I think time will tell whether that was the smartest decision or not.
I knew the usual advice is to line up another job before leaving, and I did try to do that for about 7 weeks, but nothing worked out. I kept telling myself it was because I was working 9 hours a day and didn't have enough energy left to really focus on applying.
So I resigned. Over the next 4 months, I probably applied to hundreds of jobs through LinkedIn and a few company websites. In the first few weeks, I got exactly two responses. I work in a technical field and completely messed up an assessment that I should have handled much better. Then I got a few screening calls, maybe around 4, and also a technical test a few weeks ago that I passed.
What I learned: I had seen people say that job hunting is just a numbers game, so at first I was applying to anything that looked even remotely close to my experience. Because I have a decent amount of experience, LinkedIn was telling me I was a strong match for around 65 to 75% of the 120 to 180 jobs I applied to in the first wave. After several weeks of this spray-and-pray approach with no results, I started making quickly tailored resumes and cover letters for each role. That slowed me down a lot, but I figured the applications were better that way. It got me one interview, and I messed it up.
What ended up making a difference was narrowing my choices a lot. I would go through job listings and only save the ones I genuinely felt I was a strong fit for. I spent two days cleaning up my resume so it would be easier to read quickly and the important things would stand out at first glance. For each posting, I would spend a few hours researching the company, what it does or sells, what the role seemed to need, and then write a natural cover letter from scratch like a normal human being. No ChatGPT-sounding language. I also treated every interview round as if it might be my only chance. I would spend a whole evening, sometimes more, writing potential questions, rough answers, notes about the company, the role, the interviewers if I could find anything about them, and the team I might work with. I was basically telling myself: "Assume this is the only call you're going to get, so don't half-ass it.
In the end, what worked for me was moving away from just quantity and caring much more about the quality of each application. The market is really tough right now. You can't control luck, but you can do things that push it a little in your direction. Most of us only need one real chance to show what we can do.
It's also very easy to get pulled into endless posts about how every workplace has to be perfect and every interaction has to feel ideal. Reality is more complicated than that. Work is not charity. You get paid in exchange for providing a service, and your choice of role really matters. If your skills, attitude, and work ethic truly put you in a better place, better opportunities usually come with time.
Good luck to everyone still searching. It's brutal, but it can turn around.
Jobadvisor
Why Your Final Strategy Worked
- Signal Over Noise: Recruiters are getting flooded with hundreds of generic, AI-generated applications for a single opening. By writing natural, company-specific cover letters and resumes, you instantly stood out from the automated noise.
- Over-Preparation Eliminates Regret: Treating every interview like your only shot changes your energy in the room. When you research the interviewers, understand the product, and rehearse your answers, you transition from someone hoping to get hired to a peer having a strategic conversation.
- Nuanced Workplace Perspective: Your point about work not being a charity is so refreshing. It's easy for online advice to push an all-or-nothing mindset about toxicity vs. perfection, but realizing that every job comes with trade-offs is what allows for long-term career resilience.
Key Takeaways for Anyone Else Reading This
| What Didn't Work | What Changed the Game |
| Applying to 100+ roles with 60–70% skill matches | Saving only the roles with a genuine, high-match fit |
| Generic "spray and pray" resumes | Clean, scannable resume + tailor-made cover letters |
| Winging screening calls and assessments | Spending hours prepping notes, company context, and tailored answers |
| Listening to online echo chambers about quitting | Balancing high standards with practical market realities |
25F with no work history after 9 years as a full-time caregiver for my mom. Feeling lost and looking for direction
I’m 25F, a high school graduate, and living in Las Vegas. I have zero formal work or volunteer experience because I’ve been caring for my mom, who had dementia, since I was 16.
She recently passed away, and honestly, I feel completely lost. On top of grieving, I feel like I'm way behind everyone my age. I’m ready to apply for entry-level jobs and try to build a life, but I’m terrified that no one will hire me with a completely blank resume.
I’m open to almost anything, but I genuinely don't know where to start or what career paths might be realistic for someone in my position.
Has anyone navigated a huge gap like this? What kind of jobs or training programs should I be looking into? Any advice on how to handle the resume gap would mean a lot.
Jobadvisor
I'm sorry about your mom. Nine years of caregiving starting at 16 is not a "gap" — it's most of your adolescence and all of your early twenties spent keeping another person alive and cared for. That's real work, even though it won't show up as a job title on paper. Grieving her and grieving the version of young adulthood you didn't get to have can both be true at once, and it makes sense that you feel lost right now.
A few honest things about your situation:
On the resume gap — employers see caregiving gaps often enough that it's not the mystery it feels like to you. You don't need to over-explain or apologize for it. A simple line works: "2016–2026: Full-time family caregiver" is a legitimate work history entry, not an empty space. What you actually did during those years translates into real skills — medication management, scheduling, coordinating with doctors, managing a household budget, patience under stress, handling emergencies. Those map directly onto healthcare admin, patient care, scheduling, and customer-facing roles.
Realistic entry points, given zero formal work history but a lot of lived responsibility:
- Home health aide / caregiver / CNA — you already have the experience, and Nevada has certification programs that are short (weeks, not years) and often free or state-subsidized. This is probably the fastest path to a paycheck that actually values what you know.
- Medical office / scheduling / patient coordinator roles — many clinics prefer someone who understands patient care over someone with generic office experience.
- Retail, hospitality, or customer service — genuinely fine places to start if you want something outside caregiving for a while. Nobody expects a spotless resume for these.
- Vegas-specific: the hospitality industry is huge there and often trains from scratch.
Practically, right now:
- Nevada JobConnect (the state's workforce development system) has free career counseling and training programs, including healthcare certifications — worth calling this week.
- If money is tight, look into whether you qualify for any survivor benefits or assistance tied to your mom's passing.
- Don't apply to everything at once while also grieving. Pick one lane to start (caregiving-adjacent work is the fastest and most honest fit) and let the rest come later.
You're not behind in the way it feels like. You just spent your twenties doing something most people never have to do that young. That counts for something, even if the job market doesn't always know how to read it yet.
Got an AI interview request for a Non tech role at Tesla
I feel like I bombed that interview. I literally froze because the AI bombarded me with a long question with almost 6-7 sub-questions and when I asked it to repeat, it didn’t. It was just an awkward long pause, and I was going through my notes and the AI just moved to another question.
Even though I eventually caught up with the rest of the questions and it lasted approx 24-25 minutes but I feel like I’ll prolly get rejected. Even though my resume is very strong. I hate AI interviews ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
If a recruiter is reading this- can you pls tell me if I’ll still pass this round? I know stupid question ðŸ˜
Jobadvisor
That sounds genuinely rattling — the "long pause while the AI just moves on" thing is a real design flaw in a lot of these tools, not a sign you did badly as a candidate. You're not going to get an honest answer to "will I pass" from me, though — I have no visibility into Tesla's process or how that interview actually scored, and no recruiter is going to read this thread. So let me tell you what I can actually help with.
A few things worth knowing:
One frozen moment rarely sinks an otherwise strong interview. Most AI interview platforms (and the humans who review them) weight the whole 25 minutes, not one stumble. If you recovered and answered the rest solidly, that matters more than the one awkward pause.
The multi-part question freeze is common. A lot of people struggle when an AI interviewer stacks 6-7 sub-questions into one prompt with no natural back-and-forth — it's just harder to track than a human conversation. You're not alone in finding that jarring.
What's actually in your control now:
- If there's an option to leave feedback on the interview experience, use it — flagging "the system didn't repeat the question" is legitimate and useful.
- If you have a recruiter contact or applied through a referral, you could send a brief, low-key note mentioning the tech hiccup — not making excuses, just context, and only if it feels natural.
- Otherwise, the best move is to let it go and keep applying elsewhere in parallel, so this one interview doesn't feel like it's carrying all the weight.
Do you want help drafting a short note to a recruiter, or prepping for round two in case you move forward?
Accused of cheating during the interview
I was doing my final interview for a mid-level position I am dying to have in a sector I am really interested in. My previous interviews went really well and I was thinking the final interview will go great, too. However, the interviewer accused me of reading from my screen because my eyes naturally move so much (I am neurodivergent though not comfortable to disclose it in the hiring process).
Furthermore, I am currently moving homes, so my regular presentation/interview set up at home is not available and I was interviewing from a hotel using a borrowed laptop, screen and camera.
I obviously refuted that I am not cheating/reading from my screen but it really had a massive dampening effect on my trust in myself and value.
The interviewer then spent the rest of the interview asking really hard questions not in scope for my position and overall making me feel extremely shitty.
Fml.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely awful experience — being accused of something you didn't do, in the moment you most needed to feel steady, and then watching the rest of the interview turn adversarial on top of it. It makes sense that it shook your confidence. That's not you being fragile, that's a normal reaction to being put on the defensive out of nowhere.
A few things I want to name clearly:
Eye movement is not evidence of cheating. People look away when thinking, glance at their own video feed, process visually, or just have natural eye movement patterns — for neurodivergent folks especially, this can be even more pronounced and completely unrelated to reading anything. The interviewer made a snap judgment and then let it color the rest of the interview, which says more about them than about you.
The unfamiliar setup probably didn't help. Borrowed equipment, an unfamiliar screen, hotel wifi, camera at a weird angle — all of that can look "off" to someone looking for a reason, even though it's just logistics.
What actually happened afterward is the bigger problem. An interviewer who pivots to out-of-scope, deliberately hard questions after an accusation isn't testing your competence anymore — that's rattling someone on purpose. That's on them, not a reflection of your actual skills or your previous strong interviews.
You don't owe anyone disclosure of anything about yourself to explain natural behavior — refuting it plainly, like you did, was the right call.
A couple of things that might actually help now:
- If your previous rounds went well, one bad final round with a specific interpersonal issue doesn't erase that pattern — it's reasonable to mention, if you want, to a recruiter or HR contact, factually: "I want to flag that I was asked to justify my eye contact and it affected the rest of the interview." You don't need to over-explain or justify it further than that.
- If you don't get the role, this one interaction isn't a verdict on your value or your candidacy in general — it's one person's bad read in a bad moment.
How are you doing right now, separate from the job outcome? That kind of accusation can sit with you for a while even after the practical stuff is sorted.