Hello, it's Sam here from Financial Samurai and in this episode I'm going to talk about why quitting your job is selfish and why Engineering your layoff is the ethical and right way to go So when some people find out that I engineered my layoff They kind of look at me funny and say well, what is that?

And when I explain to them what engineering your layoff is They look at me further and say you know what that sounds ethical and that's not right for me And I'm always always surprised by this response in this day and age of zero job security Most people do not have pensions anymore You know Maybe it's like less than 20% of employees have pensions because I certainly didn't and many people who work in any private industry Don't have pensions either Further no longer do employers keep their employees around for decades because the world is just too competitive now It's cutthroat thanks to globalization and much poorer people around the world Looking at our lifestyles in America and wanting to eat our lunch dinner and breakfast And then of course technology has done away with a lot of jobs and have made a lot of jobs redundant during my days on Wall Street We would have traders and equity sales traders and now everything is done algorithmically or Online electronic trading so clients don't have to talk to anybody and these jobs that once paid 500,000 to 2 million dollars are really no more So going back to the ethical comment or the unethical comment of engineering your layoff One could argue that if you're not doing everything possible to fight for yourself and your family's financial security You're the one being unethical That or you're just ignorant Quitting your job is selfish compared to negotiating a severance I really want to make this point clear in this podcast The only way quitting your job is not selfish is if you were a terrible deadweight employee Who was a cancer to your team in such a scenario you quitting is like?

your colleagues and your managers throwing a party and saying hallelujah because oftentimes it is very Very hard to remove an underperforming employee Even though there is a fire at will clause because of potential discrimination lawsuits and so forth So let's go through in detail why it's always best to engineer your layoff instead of quitting your job So first of all, if you quit your job, you're leaving your colleagues and your manager in a bind So if you broadside your manager and colleagues by quitting you're dumping all your work onto them The reason why you had a job was because you provided more value than you cost otherwise, you didn't wouldn't have a job right so it often takes months to find a replacement and Months more to train your replacement to do a proper job for my job in equity sales and trading It could take easily three months to find a replacement and then three to six months to train someone to take over the accounts And do all that stuff.

So quitting your job creates a lot of lost productivity and ultimately lost revenue and time - you hurt your clients who depended on your services if you're in a revenue-producing role quitting your job one day means your clients can No longer count on you for advice or service This is especially disruptive if you've been their point person for years and years and years Clients come to rely on people and by quitting you're telling them you don't care about them and only yourself Three you're hurting your future job prospects If you haven't lined one up already and even if you have I got to say if you're so selfish as to quit on your colleagues and your clients You will have fewer supporters when you apply for a new job in the future and that will be an inevitability Or if you want to start your own business people will be a little bit suspect Nobody's gonna write you a favorable recommendation letter when you didn't give them a chance to properly transition your work and coverage For you hurt your reputation Nobody likes a quitter.

Let's be honest Especially if you quit a job to lounge around on the beach for months while your old colleagues and ex-clients still have to work They will resent you trust me. Although today it's common to job hop every one to three years Repeatedly quitting your job creates distrust when I'm looking at a resume and I see a new job on the resume every one Year for the past five six years.

There is no way in hell I'm hiring that person because I know they're gonna quit on me sometime in the future Your managers will not want to invest time or money in you because they're afraid you're gonna be gonzo, right? So as a result your reputation does suffer Next five you hurt your finances at the end of the day.

This should be really obvious if you quit your job You aren't eligible for a severance You're not eligible for 26 weeks of unemployment benefits That's for state unemployment benefits during the financial crisis. It went up to all the way to 99 weeks. That was pretty interesting You're not eligible for subsidized Cobra health care You don't get Warn Act mandatory federal pay and you don't get any job search help So if you successfully negotiate a severance You'll have a financial runway that allows you to be pickier in doing something more meaningful with your life You won't feel the pressure to take immediately any soul-sucking job Because of your need for money and think about how much happier you will be as a result You know, you can spend more time with your family.

You can go travel the world. You can explore new business opportunities You can go back to school having this severance as a financial runway is so awesome for me I just spend the time writing on financial samurai slowly, you know three times a week I spend time consulting with FinTech companies and I did a lot of traveling and during this time I really found myself and I found what I really really wanted to do So not having to rush into something is really important because oftentimes when you rush into something You often just rush out because you made a wrong choice So given these very logical reasons Why would anybody quit their jobs if they can negotiate a severance and I think there are three main reasons Why number one people simply don't know better They think they are powerless employees who have no chance at walking away with money in their pocket But given there are plenty of free blog posts out there Free podcasts now out there and also a book teaching you how to engineer your layoff Nobody can plead ignorance anymore, which brings us to the second most common reason why people quit Which is selfishness if you are selfish, you don't care if you dump your work onto your colleagues You're thinking to yourself.

Nah, not my problem Go deal with it. I'm out of here guys selfish people don't care about the well-being of their clients who've come to depend on them and Selfish people even compromise the well-being of their family because they're too afraid to negotiate a severance You know, it really sucks to be selfish if you don't think about other people you're just screwing yourself Ultimately pretend you're a landlord.

Okay, this has happened to me before Wouldn't you much prefer getting a six months heads up from your tenants saying hey, they accepted a job overseas Instead of a two-week notice before Christmas. I never got a two-week notice because in the lease It says give me at least a 30-day notice But I did get a 30-day notice last year right before Christmas because my tenants said hey, you know what?

We're gonna go and move to New York City. So that really sucked But the good thing is they found tenants for me because they had friends who are moving to San Francisco from Boston So that was really nice, but if that didn't happen, I would be really bummed out So the final most common reason why people quit their jobs instead of engineering their laugh is due to fear Weak people are afraid of confrontation partly because they lack the communication skills necessary to create a win-win scenario You know who these people are they'd rather quit or break up with someone by text message instead of calling them on the phone Let alone seeing someone face to face to relay the news Heck if they could ghost the other side and I just understood what ghosting means it means to completely ignore someone They probably would do that as well but the funny thing is Managers also fear confrontation.

It's the worst thing ever if you're a manager to try to lay someone off Can you imagine having to go through your employees that you've worked with for years and tell them you know what? Their services are no longer needed because they're not good enough. They're not worthy enough, you know Obviously, you're not gonna say that but to sit down and have that conversation to someone you don't hate you Respect because you probably hired them that they're gonna get laid off is a really really tough thing.

So by volunteering Your layoff obviously with the servants you're helping the manager make the decision for her and You're probably saving someone a job That really needs a job and that's really really powerful. That's the opposite of being selfish. That's being Magnanimous that's being thoughtful and that's being kind So some of you may ask what if you're stuck in a toxic work environment?

You can't stand and in such a scenario, it's even more important to attempt to engineer your layoff while concurrently looking for another job This is where you have power you have leverage Because you literally have nothing to lose because you would probably happily walk away with nothing But as a financial samurai as someone who wants to optimize their financial situation and achieve financial independence You don't want to waste these opportunities where you really couldn't give a damn and would happily quit You want to use this opportunity to negotiate more aggressively?

You just need to do so in a more respectful way listen, you can tell yourself that negotiating severance is beneath you or unethical or just Weird, but you'd be lying to yourself That's the only person you'd be lying to the more you can help provide a smooth transition for those affected by your departure the better everything will be after you've departed and the better everything will be The more friends you will have in your industry in your community Around the globe because people want to work with people and help people who've made things better So don't let your pride get in the way of doing what's right for everyone Don't let your fear or ignorance get in the way either Engineering your layoff is a win for you your family your ex-colleagues and your previous employer And if you need more examples, just click over to financial samurai and type in the search box severance negotiation examples You'll find a lot of examples and you'll also learn why negotiating a severance Engineering your layoff is more and more feasible today than ever before.

Thanks so much everybody