That has never been the case at any company I have ever worked for. My impression is that two weeks notice with continued access is pretty standard so long as you're leaving on good terms.
Facebook was classified as a competitor, Amazon was not.
Amazon has rapid termination processes as well but I’m not as clear on their criteria.
If you work for a big technology company and are jumping to a perceived competitor, and/or if you have access to sensitive information, then you should expect that the day you give notice will be your last day.
Which is nonsense, because it’s the employee that chooses when to tell the employer. If I want to exfiltrate confidential data, I’ll do it first, then I resign.
It’s different on layoffs, where disgruntled employees could break havoc.
If you exfiltrated confidential data prior to tendering your resignation then no one remaining in the organization is responsible for your actions. It may trigger a policy review to minimize the exfiltration of confidential data, but no one remaining is accountable. Moreover, the exfiltration of confidential data will put you in felony land and your employer will prosecute. You're guaranteed to lose your new job too, and likely never work again.
No, what most employees do instead - for those who do these kinds of things, which is exceedingly rare - is destroy data. That is extremely damaging to an enterprise.
There are plenty of motivations to get your rear end away from the keyboard! Some are legally mandated, depending upon which industry you're working in.
So the employee could destroy data first, then resign.
> If you tender your resignation and I continue to provide you access to the systems then I'm accountable for having continued your access to those systems.
Well, if the employee is still an employee, and they need access to the systems to do their work… what would the alternative be? How could you honour the pre-resignation time otherwise?
I’m perplexed by the sudden drop in trust at resignation time. If an employee is trustworthy, why should their attitude change just because they resigned? And if they aren’t trustworthy, you have a problem even before their resigning.
Think about making a 2x2 matrix (nod to Pascal’s wager):
Across the top: fire immediately, don’t fire immediately.
Down the side: employee is benign, employee is malicious.
There’s only one square where the company is at risk- bottom right.
The algebra is easy: terminate immediately and the company is not at risk.
If entire countries can run on the other squares, why can't the US?
Not unusual in the finance industry, somewhat unusual (but I have heard of it) in "more pure tech". Probably also more common the further up you get in the corporate hierarchy.
I saw Apple do this. Not to me.
My friends in health and finance have said they have similar mandates. Us folks in IT can mess up too many things to be granted continued access. We need to be cut off.
Even prior to working for a utility I've worked at places where people were escorted off the property by security when they tendered their resignation. Their personal items in their office would be packed up and shipped to them. This has been going on for decades.
There was one job I had where I was so well-liked and we had considerable mutual respect that I was still granted visitor access to the facilities, meaning I required an escort. I no longer had access to any of the systems, but I could guide those who did. That worked out really well, too. Heck, they negotiated an extra six weeks instead of two and paid me 50% more to boot! That made a helluva impression at my new company! Then I got a great sign-on bonus at my new company! Boy, those were the days!
I have almost 30 years in tech and thankfully have never run across that. But I can see how that could be a thing for other companies/industries.
Every place I have worked I have given 3 week notice, and every potential employer has been ok with me starting in 3 weeks (except one).
The one exception was a company that balked at my request to start in 3 weeks in order to give my current employer time. They countered with "Well, take it now and start immediately, or leave it. You must not be serious about working here." I countered with "You are probably looking to hire people with no sense of responsibility to their current employer". Bullet dodged.
I have quit before I have started. I accepted an offer from a company (after being jobless) but my interaction with their HR the day before I was to start was so rude and combative that after I left, called my future boss there (who I really liked) and told him I was rescinding my acceptance. I then grovelled back to another job whose offer I had turned down (and they re-made the offer). It all worked out.
Many companies are essentially antagonistic with all IT resources. It's very common where positions are not well paid or the company is not tech-centric, eg Mike Ferry Organization