“at our company, employees just disappear”

by Alison Green on February 24, 2025

Ever realized you haven’t seen a particular coworker in weeks, asked around, and discovered they left the company a month ago and no one bothered to tell anyone? If you’ve worked for reasonably functional companies, hopefully the answer is “no.” But, whether through incompetence or design, a startling number of employers don’t announce it when employees depart — leaving their colleagues to piece it together themselves after their emails go unanswered for weeks.

At Slate today, I wrote about this bizarre and inefficient phenomenon. You can read it here.

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{ 164 comments }

{ 164 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. CommanderBanana*

    My favorite was when the clueless HR director at my last org would sometimes get around to sending out an email letting people now someone had left and she would misspell the name of the person leaving. Like, thanks for your 20 years of service, I couldn’t be arsed to spell your name right.

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    2. KHB*

      So is that better or worse than if she’d misspelled the names of current employees to their faces?

      I ask because this just happened to me. I’ve been with my employer for 18 years. Our CFO, who’s been here just as long, recently had occasion to mention me briefly (not for anything important) during an all-staff meeting. And on her Powerpoint slide, she spelled my name wrong (by one letter, like “Sara” instead of “Sarah”).

      Further context: There used to be another employee here named Sara. And people were always getting the two of us confused, like delivering mail to me that was addressed to her. Our last names are nothing alike, but this is one of those hip modern employers that likes to pretend that everyone’s on first-name terms even when we’re not, so everyone just thought of us as Sara and Sarah. Sara left a year or two ago, and the CFO apparently still thinks I’m her.

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      1. CommanderBanana*

        Ugh, I’m sorry. I have a common name with an uncommon pronunciation (think, An-DRAY-uh vs. An-DREE-ah) and someone persistently mispronouncing it at work has been a pretty good indicator that they’re also going to suck to work with.

        This HR director (now mercifully retired) was an all-around horror show to work with (think, telling employees that if they got sexually harassed at events it was “their fault for not leaving right away,” scheduling all-staff events on important Jewish holidays and then saying she didn’t realize that “we were still here” because the one employee she knew was Jewish had left, and that’s only two examples).

        The org handled staff departures horribly, which given what an all-encompassing house of bees that place was, was no surprise.

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      2. Not Nick*

        Our CFO is my boss. He initiated our weekly 1:1’s and the title of the meeting is “Weekly 1:1 Nicholas”.

        My name is Nichole.

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    3. Caramel & Cheddar*

      This has happened several times in my workplace and it’s such a quick an easy way to signal to your remaining employees that the company just does not care about you.

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    4. why me>-*

      i met a fellow old coworker at an event, years later, and she just assumed i still worked there. no one ever announced i left. ever. 10 years of work. you are welcome..lol cry

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  2. juliebulie*

    It is like that where I work. They don’t announce resignations (and there have been plenty). Sometimes it takes a while to figure out that someone is gone. And then having to ask around to find out who is picking up their work.

    But, they do not hesitate to announce new people! This gives me the impression that they really are embarrassed by the resignations and don’t want to draw attention to them. I think this behavior is actually more embarrassing, because it does not give priority to real business needs.

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    1. tina turner*

      Do these companies have clients? Vendors? Customers? They must have some outsiders who need to be informed. Very odd. And a bad idea.

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      1. Landry*

        I work for a place that does this, and I hate it. Yes, we work with clients. As far as I know, nobody tells them either, unless the departing employee takes it upon themselves to reach out.

        My boss has said he doesn’t like to announce departures because it creates too much gossip and drama. It’s actually the opposite — the lack of information is what creates a vacuum that people want to fill, and without any clear details from management, gossip and rumors fill the void.

        And, we have a lot of turnover! I work with many other internal teams and I’m always worried I’m going to send someone something that goes into a void because they’re gone and no one bothered to say anything.

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        1. Not a spring chicken*

          Years ago I worked at a place for a good number of years. I was laid off in a big cutback. I emailed one customer I was very friendly with (had handled their account for years) to tell them I wasn’t with the company any longer and good luck. That customer emailed my former employer, asking who was going to handle their account. I got an email from HR threatening me with legal action if I dared contact a customer again. The NDA just had stuff about not soliciting business or trying to steal employees after you’d left. Had nothing about just contacting customers after you’d left. I didn’t have a new job so couldn’t solicit their business anyway.

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        2. Charlotte Lucas*

          I worked somewhere that was like this. And when I suggested that we should announce departures my director (who barely has two thoughts to rub together) said it could be “embarrassing” for someone who was laid off or fired. But… if they’re gone, they don’t get the emails anymore, and you don’t need to say why they’re gone.

          Keep in mind that this was in relation to someone whose job was eliminated and whose email was attached to a key function (always a mistake) so was still active. But my team started getting questions about why Heidi wasn’t responding to her emails. (We worked together on some things, but she was not part of our team. We were just known to be able to find answers. In this case, the answer was, “Ask Diane. We don’t know what’s going on.”

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          1. Great Frogs of Literature*

            When I got laid off as part of a big group of folks during COVID, we were told that they weren’t naming names to protect our privacy. And I was like, “So are you telling the people who are still there, or are they just going to have to figure it out by the email bounces?”

            I thought the privacy claim was kind of BS generally, and I would’ve liked a way that we could opt-out of having our privacy protected — it was a friendly place and I liked those people, and it would’ve been nice to have a group to job-search with.

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            1. Great Frogs of Literature*

              Like, I’M not embarrassed that our business tanked because no one is doing anything in-person and you can’t afford to pay me.

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    2. Antilles*

      I worked with a company like that once, where resignations/departures were treated like a state secret while hirings were announced with a company-wide (!) email. It always baffled me because as an existing employee, which information do I really need:
      1.) Someone working on my project team departs and someone needs to fill in.
      2.) An office on the other side of the country hires a new summer intern.

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      2. AnotherOne*

        I thought it was odd that my office has (or allows) people who resign send out emails saying “hey, I’m leaving. this is what i’m doing next. feel free to keep in touch with me at ”

        So it makes it really obvious when someone gets fired because than management sends out an email “so-and-so is moving on to new opportunities.”

        cuz we won’t notice the difference in the emails.

        thought to be fair, one of my coworkers never noticed the difference until some of us pointed it out. (and it is possible that some people opt to have management send out an email.)

        but it’s still so much better than the crazy things i hear about other places doing.

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    3. Eleri*

      My previous organization did that. When I resigned, I told my bosses and team, and my bosses said they would take care of telling others. I wanted to tell the people I worked with frequently – which was a lot of people, as I was in IT in a role that was tightly integrated with a lot of things – but the bosses wanted to handle that. I told people when I saw them and let the rumor mill handle the rest. It still led to plenty of people being surprised.

      I didn’t want or expect a big party or send off or anything, but it would have been kind of nice to have a shout-out at the bimonthly all-hands meetings – not just for me but for anyone leaving the organization. Like, “Thanks Eleri, for 15 years with IT, best of luck in the future” or “Letting everyone know Eleri is no longer with Company, please speak with your manager about logistics questions” if it was something like a firing.

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    4. Tea Monk*

      Same! I never know who is leaving unless I know someone who is close to them or I’m working withthem on something and they decide to say goodbye( someone is always leaving)

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    5. MigraineMonth*

      I worked at a place that had lots of hiring and lots of turnover. It handled new people and resigning people relatively normally (announcements to the team and contacts, not usually to the whole department), with two exceptions:

      1) If you were the longest-tenured person at the company with your first name, you were awarded the coveted yourfirstname@company.com email address (as an alias). If you resigned, instead of being retired/set to bounce back, it was passed to the next person. Soooo much email went to the wrong person.

      2) If you left and came back, you were called a “boomerang” employee. Unfortunately, this meant you had to stand on the stage at all-staff meeting (10,000+ people) and try to catch a boomerang tossed to you by another staff member.

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  3. Not That Kind of Doctor*

    My company is not this bad, in that if I email someone who’s left I’ll get a reply and explanation from whoever’s handling their email. But we don’t tend to do announcements and we’re also fully remote, so people I don’t work with directly can be gone for quite a while before I catch on.

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  4. hohumdrum*

    Yeah, my workplace doesn’t like to give us bad news, so instead they just give us no news. So to prevent creating an atmosphere of discontent due to bad news, they’ve instead fostered an atmosphere of ominous foreboding and we also all fill in the blanks with our own dark misgivings and paranoia.

    Its working really well, provided your goal is to create a lot of hostility towards upper management and constant doom and gloom, lololol

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    1. MigraineMonth*

      Speaking of not sharing bad news, I was frustrated with a coworker who hadn’t responded for a week. It was only then I found out they’d collapsed in the office and died the previous Friday.

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      1. Charming Kitten*

        holy crap, that’s bad. First of all, dying at work is sad in any case, but not sending out a message? Some of their colleagues might have wanted to attend the service or send a condolence note.

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      2. Seeking Second Childhood*

        I’m so sorry. I may have some complaints with my company, but our equivalent was one event they responded to very well.

        For any managers who have a similar tragedy here’s what my company did right: They called together everyone who had worked for or with him and announced it to all of us. Grief counselors were available at HR. We were encouraged to take the day off if we needed it. And his office was made into a conference room.

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  5. Momma Bear*

    Having to piece together who left after a round of layoffs was not fun. They’ll tell us (at the end of the day) who resigned throughout the year, but after layoffs we had to compare notes with folks who were still left. It’s demoralizing.

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    1. VaguelySpecific*

      My company did a round of layoffs at the start of December last year and gave them severance pay thru the start of January. Because of this, they were not showing as terminated in our system and my coworkers and I had to go and piece together who had left so we could keep approval workflows going thru the holidays when lots of people were on PTO. It was a mess. I’m glad they gave some severance to those affected but at least release a list of affected employees to those who need to monitor user access and approvals…

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      1. Zombeyonce*

        We had this happen with layoffs but it was a mix of people who left immediately and people who stayed and worked until their “administrative leave” was up…3 months later. Emailing was such a mess because you’d get no response from someone and weren’t sure if they left, but if you assumed they were already gone and they hadn’t yet, they’d get upset. There was no way to tell who fell into what category and HR wasn’t talking.

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  6. LinesInTheSand*

    I used to work at a small company that didn’t announce terminations so if you weren’t plugged into the gossip network, you’d find out when your emails to that person bounced back. It was big enough that I didn’t physically see everyone in the office, my department was about 150 employees, but that’s still small enough that I knew everyone by name and had to work directly with most of them at some time or another. And this was my first job out of college, so I was extremely junior.

    Look, either encourage collaboration or don’t, but don’t encourage collaboration and then pretend like it doesn’t affect everyone when someone leaves. Even if they were underperforming. Even if they were a problem. Just f^&*(ing put on your VP pants and tell people.

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    1. Paint N Drip*

      don’t encourage collaboration and then pretend like it doesn’t affect everyone when someone leaves
      Couldn’t agree more! At my previous job I was in a position where I really had to know who was where at what position – and I would be ‘in trouble’ when I wasn’t on top of it… because no one shares any of that info!! Ugh grow up and share news, even if it’s bad news

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  7. Amber Rose*

    We have enough turnover that only manager resignations are announced (usually late, but still). The biggest pet peeve I have is that they never announce the replacements! I just learned I’ve been leaving a manager off my monthly reporting for like three months but nobody told me that branch had hired a new manager.

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  8. Generic Name*

    I got a call about 6 months after I left my last company from a client wondering why [CEO] hadn’t signed a contract. They contacted me (on my personal cell, which I had used when I worked there) in desperation and were very confused as to why no one was returning their calls and emails. I told them I had left 6 months prior and that [Company] had a practice of not shutting down email addresses, which is why I was not responding to their emails. No idea why [CEO] was ignoring their emails, but I hope the name I gave them to contact responded to them. Apparently when a project manager left, they just gave access to their inbox to one of the principals, who rarely if ever went through their emails. Very strange and it reeked of “we don’t want clients to know about our turnover/who is leaving”.

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    1. Kevin Sours*

      Forwarding emails to a manager when somebody leaves is pretty normal practice. But the idea is that said manager can deal with whatever and update that contact. Not send everything into a black void.

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      1. Generic Name*

        Yep. And the reason I know that the principal never did anything with the email was because the guy showed me all of the inboxes he had access to and laughed and said he rarely looked at them. And this specific call wasn’t the only call I got from former clients after I left.

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    2. RedinSC*

      That whole “we don’t want clients to know about our turnover/who is leaving” thing is SO WEIRD TO ME.

      it really erodes trust in that organization, or at least it did for me when I was working with a company who did that.

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  9. Yup*

    One agency I worked at would often escort people who just resigned straight out the door, and tell them to come back after 5 to pick up their personal stuff–accompanied by a security guard. Not humiliating at all to decide to change jobs.

    We’d get a curt email the next day, though. “No longer working for us.”

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  10. Llama herder*

    I worked for a large corporation that did this. Layoffs of hundreds or even thousands and you’d have no idea who to contact for work to get done. Because of the WARN act, sometimes people would work during the notice period (60 days) and other times not (garden leave). So you’d be emailing people asking them about work and others would act like you’re an ogre like “didn’t you know Bob just found out he’s losing his job?!?!?” No, how TF would I know?????

    It was the worst and went on for months. Because they would layoff 1 org per week so it went on and on and on. Total psychological abuse.

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  11. Rachel*

    I worked at a company that would send an email when somebody was leaving, but these emails would differ based on whether the person quit voluntarily/retired or if they were fired. If they were leaving on their own, the email would say something like, “Jane Doe’s last day will be on Friday. Jane has worked here for 5 years but is now leaving to pursue a new role in teapot design. We will greatly miss her here in the office but wish her all the best in her new job. Be sure to stop by her desk to say goodbye sometime this week.” If the person was fired, we would get an email that would say, “Today was Jane Doe’s last day. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.” When I left that company voluntarily after several years, it was the day before I was leaving, and HR had not sent out an email. I had to ask them to please do so, or else I was afraid people would think I had been fired! Fortunately, they did follow up and send a very nice email about me after I reminded them!

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    1. LabRat*

      I worked at a place sort of like this. If it was on good terms, there was a good-bye cake; if not, there was a memo. Which turned into the shorthand of “Cake or memo?” when you found out someone no longer worked there.

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      1. Rachel*

        Ha, I like that shorthand! Where I work now, it’s totally up to the department. Some people get parties – which vary widely between catered hors d’oeuvres and a box of donuts on a conference table – and some people you never know they are leaving until they are already gone. If I ever leave, I definitely do not expect a party – my department is too disorganized. But it does seem unfair to people that it is not handled uniformly throughout the company.

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    2. ivy*

      We get a version of that
      For someone who is leaving – multiple paragraphs of everything they have ever done during their time with the company, no achievement too small.
      Firing “Jane Doe has left the company effective immediately. For any of her projects, please contact john.doe@xyz.com“

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    3. Occasionally Informed*

      I was the one who wrote the second anecdote, and the only reason I knew they “would inform only the immediate team” was because one time my teammate got RIF’d. The same company, the horrible HR person reply-all’ed to one particular “X has departed the company and we wish her the best” with a “Reminder: do not let anyone, especially ex-employees, tailgate you into the office.”

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  12. tsumommy*

    I work for a public library system, in the flagship library branch. Our branch director, the person in charge of a multi-department library and hundreds of employees, suddenly disappeared. Rumors flew, no one knew if they had been fired, had a personal issue, were sick, or what. Sixish weeks passed.

    We found out one morning through an online article that they are now the director of an entirely other library system. Within a couple hours we received an all-staff email about the departure of that director for another library system, and “we wish them well.”

    To me it seemed like a ham-fisted way to attempt to control the narrative of their departure. Which is absolutely ridiculous because we all know people leave for other jobs! We wasted so much time gossiping and texting coworkers trying to figure out what happened to the director. If there was a safety issue where we, at the branch, had to go to the director for help, we’d be S.O.L. Who was covering that person’s duties? Who knew?!?

    It felt just *bad* that someone could disappear and it was covered up. It made me feel like our administration really does not give one rat’s patootie about library staff.

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    1. Madame Desmortes*

      There’s some chance the person departed under a significant cloud. I know of one case (won’t give the name, not interested in either me or Alison defending a libel lawsuit!) where a university librarian got disappeared within a single day — gone from the workplace, obviously, but also wiped clean off the library and institutional websites — after serious allegations of financial malfeasance surfaced.

      That one was pretty extreme, but it’s not the only such case I’ve heard about. I don’t actually know what the most graceful and appropriate way to deal with this is! I’d be interested in Alison addressing it, actually, unless there’s a gem in the archives I’ve missed (which is quite possible).

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    4. Burnt Out Librarian*

      I have to say, for institutions that are supposed to be all about access to information and equity and all that… Libraries are the absolute WORST at communication. And they wonder why there is always gossip or a whisper network. TELL US THINGS, especially when they’re important to our jobs and the safety of our patrons!

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  13. KitKat*

    I’m curious how larger (1000+ employees) organizations handle this well. My previous employer (~300) would send departure emails to all managers, so managers could share if anyone on their team needed to know. This was great because ICs weren’t getting a slew of these emails but people who worked cross-functionally could still get an appropriate heads-up when there was a departure they might want to know about. At my new company (~1500) there’s no such email and as someone who works cross-functionally I feel like I’m constantly pulling people up on Slack to find they’ve been deactivated.

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    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      Same here—I’d love to hear examples of what works well.

      At my previous organization, every departure was announced, which ended up feeling pretty demoralizing. It made turnover seem higher than it actually was, even though our rates were below average. Plus, I often received emails about people leaving whom I didn’t know or had never worked with.

      At my current company, we occasionally get emails when a high-visibility person leaves, but most departures are just passed around through the grapevine.

      What’s the best balance?

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    2. Adverb*

      When I worked for a company whose initials might be similar to those derived from I’ve Been Moved (about 400K people world-wide), unless the person leaving announced it, nothing was said. When the quaterly layoffs occurred, it was a 1-2 week effort to determine who survived the latest purge and who did not. Lists of those involved in the latest “employment action” we top secret. We would often resort to a private Slack channel to track those we knew had been cut. I have 100% used Slack and Teams to find out who still worked there, too.

      So, in answer to your question, nope, it’s not better at a big company.

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      1. Adverb*

        Actually, at that same company, they were so bad at communication, that I was part of an “employment action” while I was on vacation. No one told me anything. I was back in the office for 2 weeks, after a 2 week vacation (we had 30 days to wrap-up/transition our work), when I received an email from a company who had been contracted to help those impacted by the “employment action” to apdate their resumes. I started asking questions and no one was allowed to tell me; my boss was not allowed to tell me I had been laid-off. Two hours later the SVP of our division called my cell phone with HR and read me the same prepared statement my colleagues had heard previously.

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    3. ThatGirl*

      My company has about 2500 employees globally (most in the US and Canada) but we’re spread across BUs and different cities, so we almost never get any all-company emails or memos.

      In my 4 years here though, I’ve seen lovely retirement parties to honor folks leaving after a long time, I’ve seen department-organized farewells for people going to new jobs, I’ve seen company-wide layoffs/RIFs, I’ve seen people either get fired or asked to leave after some kind of malfeasance, and most recently, someone collected their annual bonus on a Friday left their computer and badge on their desk and then emailed their manager Monday morning that Friday had been their last day.

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  14. Not a spring chicken*

    I once worked at a company that didn’t announce departures (of all types), but they also wouldn’t tell the customers the departed employees handled. Customers left because of it.

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    1. Elle Woods*

      I had this happen with a medical clinic that was not affiliated with any particular health group. Saw the same physician quarterly for nearly six years. Showed up for my next appointment with him and was told, “oh, he’s no longer practicing medicine at this clinic.” He was very well-liked and they were worried about losing his patients to other clinics so they decided not to tell patients at all.

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        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          Yeah, my dentist’s office did this — I showed up, had x-rays and my cleaning done by the hygienist, and then she said “Dr. So-and-So will be in to do your exam.” Not a name I’d ever heard before. I asked if the dentist I’d seen for 10+ years was sick or on vacation, and the hygienist said, “Nope, she retired.” Of course, it’s possible I missed an email or it went into spam. And thankfully the new person was fine! But it was weird.

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  15. Anon for this*

    Ooh I’d love to hear the commentariat’s take on how my old company handled people leaving. I always thought it was weird: There was an unspoken rule that whenever someone quit, the person leaving would send an email announcing their departure to the whole company the day before their last day, no earlier. It always seemed weird to wait that long but no one ever broke with the tradition. So when I left, I let my team know as soon as my notice and everything was finalized, then sent my own goodbye email a day ahead of my departure.

    Note that our teams were relatively siloed so it wasn’t a huge deal operationally but we were a small company (under 100 people) so we all knew each other at least from bumping into each other in the office. Also, people weren’t really fired while I was there but a few folks didn’t get through their probation period and in that case HR would handle the announcement.

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  16. Common Ordinary Yokel*

    At my former employer, departures would sometimes be announced, and sometimes they wouldn’t. And this was within my department, not company-wide, so it couldn’t be chalked up to different managers. Sometimes we would get an effusive goodbye email, and sometimes people would just disappear. I always wondered what it meant if you didn’t get the goodbye email. I was relieved that I got one when I left!

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    1. KitKat*

      At one former workplace you could always tell who got fired because the email ALWAYS went like this:

      “Today was FirstName LastName’s last day with XYZCorp. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.”

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      1. Wingo Staww*

        That is how my company is. If they left on good terms it would talk more about their accomplishments at the company – if there was nothing like that, they def got bagged.

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      2. Starbuck*

        At least they sent something! Not sure that there’s anything else to say really, other than if anyone needs a new point of contact.

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  17. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    We had a >50% layoff in a small company a few weeks ago, and I’m wondering how they handled it with clients. Quite a few of them have my personal cell phone number and I’m wondering when I’m going to get a “WTF?” text.

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  18. James*

    At one job, where I was in charge of updating the website (amongst other duties), I slowly got myself the job of managing the email server, telling them that it was really just the one job, much easier for me to do it in with everything else, streamlining, that type of nonsense. The real reason was that it meant I got told about the sudden lapse in existence of colleagues as I was now the one who redirected or deleted their email accounts. Saved me a tonne of work on the website where people’s customer-facing profiles and contact information could hang around out of date, with emails bouncing or not replied to, for weeks and weeks before I discovered by accident that the person had been disappeared.

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  19. Twinklefae*

    This is bizarre to me. I’ve worked in Early Childhood Ed for over 20 years and never had this happen. Even my current employer, who has 8 different sites, sends out an email every time someone starts or someone leaves.

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  20. Timothy*

    Yup, happened at one of my jobs too. You’d go by their pod (big table where five people sat together), and their spot would be completely empty. “Where Joe?” “Oh, they were let go last week.” “Oh.”

    Eventually it was my turn, after a ridiculous PIP for which I had to focus on a 12 week project — I delivered it one day late, and I’d been sick one day. The internal customer was happy with the result, but .. that didn’t matter. I think they were a little embarrassed to be firing me, so they told me I could come back later to clear out my desk — just leave my badge on a manager’s desk.

    What a stupid place to work. Remember kids, HR works for the company, not for you. That would be a union steward.

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  21. CoffeeCoffeeCoffee*

    At the last university I worked at before leaving Higher Ed; the day (it felt like the minute) you put in notice; IT would disable your email ability to send an email to more than two people. Our department head also never announced or shared when people left; so you had to tell people individually.

    So it meant that if an employee was someone you only worked with occasionally, you maybe wouldn’t know they’d departed until months went by. When I left I made it a point to draft my goodbye email to my team and coworkers before I put in my notice and scheduled the email to send on my last day.

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  22. Orange Cat Energy*

    I had this happen at a previous employer that had gotten acquired and was going through reorganization. Most of the time, we found our someone had been let go when we saw the notification “[person] has been removed.” on Microsoft Teams and then a formal email was sent later in the day. Strangely, when this employer laid my whole department off, 1) it was done with a year’s notice and 2) a few days later, the company sent an all staff email that announced a plan to replatform the website and thanked my department for our service (implicitly saying my dept. would be laid off but not exactly explicitly saying that.

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  23. Doug*

    I find out if they are someone I work with daily on my team or a very adjacent one. If it is a team that we talk to often but not daily, even where I know the people well, I often find out because their Slack shows deactivated, then I see if it autocompletes their email in our gmail, and if not, I know they are gone.

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    1. Doug*

      I will add that it wouldn’t be practical to announce every departure in a company of thousands – I don’t need to know when the CFO’s assistant leaves, and have never met them.
      I do feel there should be some designated groups though so that I hear of people within my team’s “monkeysphere” – the people we know regularly and depend on for things.

      Reply ↓
  24. Jennifer Strange*

    At a former company the controller went on vacation one day and just never came back. This was after I had left, so I heard about it from a former co-worker. I think he was even traveling somewhere that had seen a spike in risks for tourists, so we were wondering if something happened to him. I am happy to say he is still alive and well, working elsewhere (still no idea why he left, though).

    Reply ↓
  25. Sunflower*

    An employee disappeared one day after working there for at least a decade. All her stuff was left on her desk including personal things like money, pictures, decorations, etc.

    One of her coworker kept mailing pictures of her new baby. The letters were not returned but the missing employee never responded.

    Many months (I think it was almost a year) later, her manager finally packed up her things to mail back to her. I don’t know if upper management finally know what happened but the rest of us never found out.

    Reply ↓
      1. LifebeforeCorona*

        That’s awful because something could have happened to her. At the least the company could have done a wellness check.

        Reply ↓
        1. Sunflower*

          When people ask the managers, they remained vague but let us know they’ll take care of it. They probably called for a wellness check but didn’t tell us the results for privacy reasons.

          Reply ↓
  26. Snarkastic*

    I would show up to meetings, new people would be there and regulars would be MIA. No notice. I would constantly ask for better communication and updates. We received them once a quarter, if that.

    Reply ↓
  27. Pomegranates*

    Fascinatingly, at my work there was a guy who just up and disappeared one day and nobody, including management, knew where he’d gone. Turned out he was fine, he just decided he was done working and up and left.

    Reply ↓
    1. Generic Name*

      I’m pretty sure my ex did this at a job he had held for nearly 20 years. It happened after we divorced, and the reason I suspect this is because he moved temporarily from the area, and he gave me permission to go into his apartment to grab some stuff for our child. I found his (former) work laptop shoved in the hall closet when I went to get kiddo’s forgotten coat.

      Reply ↓
  28. Odd One Out*

    At a previous job, we were not told when someone was leaving. Not only that, when we learned someone had left, we were very strongly urged not to have further contact with that person.

    Reply ↓
    1. Burnt Out Librarian*

      Oh man, all you’d have to do is say “don’t interact with them” and I’d be on the phone inviting them out for drinks immediately. TELL ME EVERYTHING.

      Reply ↓
  29. AmINext*

    Timely. We just had another round of layoffs and I’ve been told nothing as usual. I’m having to piece it together from LinkedIn “open to work” posts.

    Reply ↓
  30. LifebeforeCorona*

    At one bad Old Job that had a high turnover we learned someone was gone if we saw them leaving in the middle of the day. The manager liked to fire people halfway through their shift. The other way to look at the punch cards at the time clock. If their card was missing, they were gone. They still have a hard keeping staff.

    Reply ↓
  31. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    I worked at this company for about two months (for obvious reasons). The first week I was there, they emailed that they had an involuntary termination and that they had security out. I thought, okay, fair, that happens.

    We started getting emails about involuntary terminations just about every other day. I worked on the first floor and security was ALWAYS there. I think there were maybe one or two days someone wasn’t there.

    It wasn’t a good place to work, which was why I was only there for two months.

    Reply ↓
  32. Righty Tighty Lefty Loosey*

    My employer routinely refuses to disclose who has been let go whenever they do layoffs. They say it’s to respect the privacy of the impacted employees. So it leaves the rest of us combing through the org chart to see what boxes are missing.

    Reply ↓
    1. anon-y*

      My old company did stealth, one-off layoffs. A high performing employee would be there in the morning, gone by lunch. No explanation.

      It was horrible.

      Reply ↓
    2. Momma Bear*

      Same. I don’t buy it because we know they are gone. It’s to protect the company. Also, if you work in a restricted office, you SHOULD be telling people who is gone so they don’t accidentally let someone in thinking “oh, they forgot their badge.” I mean, you shouldn’t let them do that anyway, but you know people do. If non-employees should be treated like visitors, there should be a list.

      Reply ↓
  33. Techie Boss*

    I just can’t imagine the cultural implications at a company where this happens. If someone is unexpectedly out sick and forgets to send an email to their team, do people assume they may have been fired, and the gossip train starts circulating rumors that have to be clarified after they get back? So many knock-on effects outside of actual layoffs or firings that I feel like would be part of everyone’s daily mundane interactions.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lalchi*

      In a small (or smallish) company I agree. But my company has a great culture, IMO, and they don’t announce departures. We have tens of thousands of employees, so it’s impractical to do on a company-wide basis. Generally managers will let their teams know when someone is leaving, in order to handle the hand off of work, and that’s it.

      Reply ↓
  34. Tau*

    Out of curiosity – fellow commentators not from the US, does this happen where you are?

    I ask because this approach has always seemed completely alien to me and I have trouble imagining it happening over here in Germany. My former company had two major rounds of layoffs (I survived the first but not the second, hence the “former”) and the way they went about it was totally different from pretty much any story I’ve heard on this site. I’ve been wondering if the unannounced cull, along with the immediate curtailing of all access up to the point of escorting the laid-off person out of the building, is an American thing.

    Reply ↓
    1. Miss Chanandler Bong*

      It depends on the company.

      I worked for a company that sent entire departments overseas. Contractors were let go at the ends of their contracts. This particular company had a layoff period for employees where they were brought on as contractors (and given the same benefits through the agency) for up to a year. A lot of them went on to find new jobs before that year was up. One of my former coworkers who I’ve stayed friends with still is with that agency and does consulting work for them; she landed on her feet.

      Another company I worked for got acquired. They literally tell no one about layoffs; people just disappear (including myself) and people outside of their teams would figure it out when they’d get a return message from Outlook. We’d find this out when people would get fired or leave; unless the person reached out before leaving, we’d find out via Outlook when they just weren’t there.

      My current company acquires businesses. We really try not to lay people off (and I can actually see this because I can see who we’re laying off verses who we’re keeping; we try very hard not to lay people off if we can help it). We do try to communicate who is staying verses who is not. It’s pretty rare for us to fire people.

      Reply ↓
    2. TechWorker*

      I posted below about my experience in the U.K., there’s no walking out but people absolutely do basically get told & then disappear (& are paid during the ‘at risk’ period)

      Reply ↓
  35. Blackbeard*

    In Toxic Job #4, the contract stated that in case an employee was fired, they had to keep silent and not tell coworkers. It was their manager’s decision when and if to give the news.

    Reply ↓
    1. Blackbeard*

      Also, to reply to @Tau: this job of mine was in Europe. So yes, this kind of bad management also happens outside the US (wherever local laws allow it, I might add). Crappy workplaces are everywhere.

      Reply ↓
  36. Construction Safety*

    My company treats all information like something precious. If they have it & give some to you , it diminishes the value of what they still have, so they just keep it.

    Reply ↓
  37. not nice, don't care*

    I like to periodically unearth old contact lists and highlight how many people have left since x year. Always gets a stunned reaction.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tammy 2*

      I worked with someone who would collect departed employee’s nameplates and keep them on a posterboard hidden under his desk, because HR never collected them promptly. He called it the graveyard. When I left, I delivered mine to him personally.

      Reply ↓
  38. Glengarry Glenn Close*

    A well known company I used to work for would send out announcements that a fired employee “graduated” from the company and are “on to their next adventure”

    Reply ↓
    1. Aggretsuko*

      My old job also used “on to their next adventure” but that was for people voluntarily leaving. Otherwise it was “so-and-so no longer works here.”

      Reply ↓
  39. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    All of the examples are bad. Though there is an extra layer of badness for the ones where even direct managers had no idea what the departing employees were even doing.

    Reply ↓
  40. I'm so old I'm historic*

    I used to be a manager at a place where seasonal staff would come and go. Sometimes staff would tell HR instead of me that they were leaving, and HR would never let me know. So many times I would ask about someone and be told “They put in their notice a week ago.” I feel like that’s something a manager should know! But they balked when I asked them to communicate notices to me, I had to literally send my request up the ladder to the directors to get HR to tell me when someone quit. Bizarre.

    Reply ↓
  41. Greg*

    During the pandemic, I was working for the US consulate of a foreign government. We had an interim consul general who started in early March 2020, and a week later everything shut down and they sent us home to work remotely. We had barely had a chance to get to know him, so there weren’t a ton of reasons to be in daily contact. That said, I was utterly shocked a few weeks later when I found out he had returned to his home country without notifying anyone on our team. I get that it was a stressful time, everyone was trying to figure things out on the fly, and as I said, it’s not like we had any sort of deep relationship with him. But still, not even an email to let us know he was leaving, or to update us on what was going on with the office? That’s as much on the remaining leadership as on him, and was definitely representative of a broader problem with communications in that office

    Reply ↓
  42. TechWorker*

    There’s some legal weirdness that makes this hard for employers, at least in the U.K… there’s a ‘consultation period’ where the employee is ‘at risk of redundancy’ & has the right to suggest alternatives to their redundancy. They are NOT ‘definitely being laid off’ and the company cannot legally do anything that makes it look like it’s a foregone conclusion (so you can say, reassign individual tasks in the same way you might if someone was on PTO, but you can’t completely reassign responsibilities). There’s also a notion of ‘privacy’ for the employee who has been put made at risk of redundancy (especially if for performance reasons) – so it’s not generally ok to send an all staff email. Yes it’s all a bit of a mess and leaves people in a weird state where they’re not 100% … but in that case I’m not sure theres all that much the company can do, and it’s actually not for nefarious reasons. (We did then send out emails when people formally left, but there was a month long limbo period).

    That said I don’t think there’s anything equivalent in the US, layoffs are confirmed ‘immediately’… but I still had a manager I work with insist on telling me who was leaving her team over IM & then.. deleting the message (?!). I have no idea what the benefit of that was given that IMs are already treated as secure communication and other personnel sensitive discussions absolutely do happen over IM and email.

    Reply ↓
  43. Minnie Ed*

    I feel like a big part of this is lack of being willing to take responsibility / skill in crafting a message that strikes the right tone. The most egregious example I’ve seen was in a school where I worked; a teacher went on FMLA leave, and HR decided to go to extremes with the confidentiality component. Thus, beyond simply keeping confidential WHY the teacher had stopped coming to work, they refused to even articulate THAT they were no longer teaching. Even though it was quite obvious we had a longterm sub. Finally, when the teacher officially resigned after several months, HR had to be dragged kicking and screaming to send a simple notice out to staff and families that Teacher X was no longer with the school.

    Reply ↓
    1. Angstrom*

      That’s why I think it’s fine to have a bland generic message that is used for all departures, whatever the cause. No disclosure issues. Much better than no message at all.
      “__________ is no longer employed at _________. We thank them for their contributions and wish them well for their future endeavors.”
      One of my old companies did this and it worked well. Information about a retirement party or other recognition, if forthcoming, was a separate communication.

      Reply ↓
    2. Parrhesia25*

      I’ll solve this problem for every company right now. Use the templates below for all communications regarding all departures and leaves of absence, regardless of reason. For people who need to know more, communicate with them like both you and they are both adults and professionals.

      For all departures:
      last day at was . We wish good luck in future endeavors. For issues please reach out to .

      For all leaves of absences
      Effective has taken a leave of absence. For now, will be handling all issues.

      Yes, I am salty. There is just no excuse for this nonsense and none should be accepted.

      Reply ↓
      1. Parrhesia25*

        Sorry, the WISIWIG used my message as a chew toy.

        I’ll solve this problem for every company right now. Use the templates below for all communications regarding all departures and leaves of absence, regardless of reason. For people who need to know more, communicate with them like both you and they are adults and professionals.

        For all departures:
        (Wile E. Coyote’s) last day at (Acme Corp) was (February 30). We wish (him) good luck in future endeavors. For (coyote-bothering device) issues please reach out to (R. Runner).

        For all leaves of absences
        Effective (February 30) (Wile E Coyote) has taken a leave of absence. For now, (R. Runner) will be handling all (coyote-bothering device) issues.

        Yes, I am salty. There is just no excuse for this nonsense and none should be accepted.

        Reply ↓
  44. Jester*

    I’m unsure if this was the company or just my awkward supervisor, but when a coworker was fired for watching corn at work, she just said he was no longer with us. Like, did he die?!

    Reply ↓
      2. Greg*

        Not a typo, it’s part of online discourse to write the word with a “c” instead of a “p”. Presumably it has something to do with getting around online filters

        Reply ↓
    2. juliebulie*

      Early-ish in the days of the www, I used to watch a webcam of a cornfield. I mean, not all day. Fortunately I never got caught, lol

      Reply ↓
  45. Zombeyonce*

    My company had layoffs and HR outright refused to tell us who was laid off. This was a big deal because my department was in charge of making sure certain things were taken care of (sometimes regulatory!), so we’d send messages to people and have to wonder if they weren’t responding because they were busy or because they weren’t there anymore. We never knew if we needed to contact their manager to find a replacement contact or not. It was a nightmare.

    Reply ↓
  46. Audiophile*

    I just experienced this recently. I recalled an employee starting around the same time as I did and we were in many of the same introduction/training sessions. After a brief LinkedIn search, I discovered they left at the end of the year. While we didn’t work together, it was weird not to see a company announcement and instead find out through their personal LinkedIn post.

    Reply ↓
  47. Elsewise*

    My previous employer, a very dysfunctional nonprofit of eight people, my boss forbade me from emailing anyone to let them know I was leaving. He wanted to send the announcement himself. But since another person had just announced she was leaving, he didn’t want to announce mine too close to hers. I only gave him two weeks, but he wanted to wait. I told a few coworkers in person when they came into the office at the same time as me (he never did), and I think word got around, but there were still a few people surprised by my farewell email on my last day. (They were also surprised by his plan to replace me, which was “we won’t, and we’ll figure it out”. My understanding from the gossip network is that they were not surprised six months later when the board announced he was leaving.)

    At my current employer, an email goes around every time someone leaves first to their team, then to their department, then to all staff. It usually includes a quote from them, their manager, and the department head. We have hundreds of employees, so even though there’s not a whole lot of turnover, we still see these emails pretty frequently. Unfortunately, they don’t tend to stick in my brain, so I’ve definitely emailed someone months after their departure was announced more than once.

    Reply ↓
  48. AndersonDarling*

    I was working at a healthcare system when Covid hit and we didn’t know if missing colleagues were laid off or died. Within one week, there were massive layoffs, hours were reduced, and nurses were getting sick…very sick.
    Between whispers of co-workers on ventilators, and emails going unanswered, we had no idea what to do. Those of us that were left with jobs just stopped working because so many people were missing and it was to terrifying to ask why they were missing.

    Reply ↓
  49. Armchair analyst*

    It was my job to give a safety orientation to employees on their first day. Of course a lot of safety information is department-specific, leading to “Ask your manager”

    Three guys show up for, say, project management safety orientation. I know the project management department – so I know they should ask their manager, Simon. “Ask Simon.” “Simon will help you.” “Simon knows this, so he’ll get this information for you.” The presentation goes on 30 minutes or so…

    the three newbies are looking at each other every time I say “Simon” and I’m feeling confused and finally one says, “Simon did hire us, but we learned from VP of HR an hour ago that he’s not here anymore.”

    I feel like an idiot. Turns out Simon put in his 2 weeks that morning and was asked to leave immediately.

    I felt like mentioning this disconnect to HR, that it made me look bad and made our organization of 200 employees or so look disorganized at best and cruel at worst, but I figured they would do the same to me any chance they got. I started looking for a new job for sure.

    Reply ↓
  50. Woot Woot*

    At one point, I worked for a large, prestigious, but slowly failing multinational conglomerate. And it was like Office Space in that they’d fire people by just shutting off their access to systems, like Stephen Root in Office Space. One time I was on our phone conferencing system and heard this message “hi, everyone. This is Steven from Anchorage. My login to the system didn’t work, but it’s ok — I’m visiting Dan in Arizona and he let me hop on the call.” Well, nobody ever saw or heard from either of them again — Steven from Anchorage had been fired, and then Dan was fired for letting him onto the call without authorization. Good times.

    Reply ↓
    1. not nice, don't care*

      I know someone who found out they were laid off when their vacation payout hit their bank account before he arrived at work that day. Dude had been told there were no more layoffs after the one a week previous that axed 25% of the company, so he signed papers on a house (with wife and newborn baby) the day before.

      Reply ↓
  51. Casey*

    This is making me realize that I’d LOVE if Alison ever felt like doing a critical analysis of Severance and the stories it’s telling about how companies treat people.

    Reply ↓
  52. JP*

    At my last company, not only would they not tell people if someone had quit / been fired, but you could get in trouble for discussing employees no longer with the company. You know, to avoid drama.

    The head of HR at the same place told me that women in the company needed to dress conservatively because otherwise we’d be inviting inappropriate comments from our male coworkers.

    So so glad I don’t work there anymore.

    Reply ↓
  53. Totally Hypothetical*

    We just had a ‘re-org’ and lost 15 people from a 150 person org. Leadership didn’t want to release a list so we all had to resort to checking who had disappeared from slack.

    Ironically (or something), we then had an employee pass away, and their slack stayed on for another week.

    Reply ↓
  54. Lacey*

    My employer used to announce resignations and firings and they happened pretty regularly (it’s a large-ish company) but I hadn’t noticed that they’d stopped until I got a request to update some graphics to remove a coworker.

    There was no message to all of us that she was gone.
    Just some work orders to take her off promos.

    And now I wonder how many other people I haven’t noticed leaving, just because their faces aren’t on promotional items.

    Reply ↓
  55. Noncommittal*

    At one dysfunctional nonprofit, we called it “being raptured,” and learned to physically walk over to the accounts payable department to see if anyone was actually sitting there before sending an invoice for payment. The President was fond of saying “We don’t have a morale problem, we have a commitment problem” and openly compared employees to cogs that would wear out and could be easily replaced. I was not sorry to be part of the ~70% annual turnover!

    Reply ↓
  56. Bast*

    When I worked more in personal injury and frequently had to reach out to adjusters at insurance companies, it could take MONTHS to find out that the adjuster assigned to your claim was no longer with the company. Some of them were not good at returning calls or emails anyway, so to not hear back in a prompt manner in of itself was not unusual. What would be part amusing and part annoying is that depending on the company, sometime no one else would know either. You’d have to call the main line or press 0 to speak with someone else, and oftentimes, they wouldn’t know that the specific individual was gone either. Even worse, sometimes you’d get someone in the know who would say, “John Smith isn’t with the company anymore, but the case has not been reassigned yet. Call back in a week and we can let you know who it is assigned to.” Call back in a week and the new person answering the phone says, “I’m sorry, John isn’t available, would you like to leave him a voicemail?” A voicemail to the wind since he doesn’t work there anymore. It was such mayhem. Some companies were better than others at handling this.

    Reply ↓
  57. Chocoholic*

    Are the companies where they don’t announce resignations really large companies? I’ve usually worked for smaller companies and so there are a lot of 1-of-a-kind positions, and so it would be very obvious/noticeable when someone was gone.

    And to some degree it probably does depend on the type of positions too. I did a stint for a while at a nursing home where we had about 80 employees. There was so much turnover and most of the direct care staff didn’t really use computers/email as part of their day to day work that notifying staff would not really be practical.

    My husband’s company has thousands of employees across the US and outside of the US and so notifying more than the immediate people he would work with wouldn’t probably be super practical either.

    Reply ↓
  58. Tuna Casserole*

    Around 30 years ago, I worked in a small public library. Our Children’s Programmer, let’s call her Deb, was just what you would expect a storytime lady to be: kind, bubbly, good with kids, hardworking. I went on maternity leave with my first, and when I came back months later, Deb was just gone. “Hey, where’s Deb?” No one had an answer. Not even the staff members who took over her work. They would just look away and change the subject. Did she move away? Get fired? Get abducted by aliens? I eventually stopped asking, but sometimes I still wonder.

    Reply ↓
  59. StressedButOkay*

    One of the weirdest things I’ve seen that happens so often – I’m in nonprofit – is that companies will not turn on a “I’m no longer with the company, please contact X”. I’ve spent months trying to contact someone by email, and phone, only for someone to finally respond only to tell me they’ve been gone nearly as long as I’ve been trying to get a hold of them.

    Stop making emails into black holes of silence!

    Reply ↓
  61. Taskmistress*

    I used to work at a company like that. Our director disappeared without warning, as did plenty of my coworkers. Lots of paranoia and mistrust. (Our CEO hired an outside firm to conduct an assessment on the org’s psychological safety and then threw it out because it made him look bad)

    When it was my turn to be “disappeared” I was so glad to be free of the dysfunction.

    Reply ↓
  62. X*

    My company announces individual departures and arrivals in a weekly newsletter. I don’t actually know whether they announce firings in the same newsletter, I can’t remember the last time I knew someone’s departure was…not voluntary. But, we have layoffs every few years when our financials hit a hiccup, and those are never announced – the weekly newsletter that includes arrivals and departures simply does not go out that week. And we always ask for a list, we’re always told someone will look into getting us a list, we get a partial list (“I don’t know all the names but in your role, you most likely interact with John Smith and Suzy Jones, and they were let go.”) Then come to find out days, weeks, or months later, I’ve quietly lost colleagues that I didn’t work closely with now, but people I started with, people I’d worked closely with in the past, or people in totally separate divisions who I worked on projects with but didn’t have an obvious connection outside of those specific projects. (You’d expect a project manager to go through the project team and notify the group of anyone on the team who was let go and who to work with instead, but more often than not, I AM the project manager and I simply don’t know.)

    Reply ↓
  63. SicktomyStomach*

    I’ve worked at several companies that did this. It was very disconcerting. People were just suddenly gone. One of my recent jobs liked to run through sales people at an alarming rate. And even though I was a department head who worked closely with Sales, they never told me anything. Then I’d get frantic emails from clients or my team members saying that they received a bounce back message and where was their sales person!? It was increasingly embarrassing.

    Reply ↓
  64. Burnt Out Librarian*

    A previous POW was such a revolving door that if they announced every departure we’d be mistaken for an airport. I have a feeling part of folks ~mysteriously leaving~ had to do with the director being in hot water for the turnover rate, especially since I know she was named and shamed in many exit interviews (including my own).

    The worst part of that was when COVID was happening. Did that person leave or die? Who knows. Don’t tell anyone or we might not get to have our crappy language festival or let people come in the building to check out their Patterson novels.

    Reply ↓
  65. Seal*

    My last job had a mass exodus (over half of its 50-60 staff members in less than 2 years) after the controversial hiring of a new director. Announcements that someone was leaving were rarely sent out; in at least one case, the announcement was buried at the end of a long message of irrelevant announcements that most people didn’t read. Most people took it upon themselves to notify others that they were leaving.

    A few of us, including me, left abruptly (and not necessarily voluntarily) before they could hand things off to someone else. Since the new director didn’t know or care what these people did, no one bothered to take the departed staff member’s off contact lists, including emergency contact lists that had personal cell phone numbers. I found this out over a year after I left when someone from security called me one weekend about building issue. After I told them I no longer worked there, security said they’d call the backup contact, who had left a few months after I did. Absolutely mind-boggling but not surprising.

    Reply ↓
  66. soontoberetired*

    We have gone thru multiple layoffs where they don’t tell us who was let go. It has been brought up that not knowing a contact you had was no longer here was bad, and why can’t they tell us? It has impacted projects since it seems no one bothered to find out who would take over things once someone was gone. the keeping of all of this as a state secret is bad for morale – evidence that every morale type survey that happens within month of a layoff ends up with negative feedback.

    The last time a key resource for a project was let go, and we didn’t now for 6 weeks.

    Reply ↓
  67. merida*

    I’m glad this topic is getting some light! All the disappearances and secrecy destroys trust. I wish my company could read Alison’s article and this comment section.

    At my current job, most of the time when people leave voluntarily for another job there’s still no announcement. When my boss (C suite who worked with a lot of departments) gave a month long notice, there was no all staff announcement so other departments were still finding out from me that my boss left months after. It makes no sense to have such secrecy but I think their idea must be to let leaving employees take the lead – some people don’t want to make a big deal of the goodbye or don’t want to share where they’re going or whatever, so management must assume they’ll tell people on a need to know basis as they see fit. But then no one knows what’s happening. Actual firings and lay offs here are also happening secretly with zero announcement as well (I accidently heard about a layoff that happened only because the walls are paper thin, but there has still been no announcement months later). We don’t have an up-to-date org chart (probably because it changes all the time) so I genuinely never know who to contact about what. I just have unanswered emails and then eventually someone is like “why did you say emailed Jane about that? Jane left months ago?” Gah.

    Reply ↓
  68. BellStell*

    Three people I worked with had been fired last year. Never knew anything and was never told … one day we were all just told to email John instead. Ooookkkkk, but is he doing all of their work? Wtf. We know now layoffs of maybe 45 people may be coming because of elmo and his tangerine sidekick’s decisions to cut US funding…. but no one in management wants to have a meeting etc to discuss this. Or tell us who they are….

    Reply ↓
  69. BlueJay*

    This is something I find frustrating. I don’t think it’s that resignations are handled under a cloak of secrecy, it’s more that there’s no standard process so it’s up to each team’s manager. Sometimes they’ll send an email or general teams message saying that someone is moving on, and inviting people to contribute to a card or share their good wishes. Sometimes the person themselves sends an email. Sometimes a farewell drinks/morning tea is organised. Sometimes there is nothing, and I realise when I see that person posting about their new job on LinkedIn!

    We’re a big company and so I *don’t* know everyone who might be leaving, but there’s definitely been times I wished I’d known because I would have liked the opportunity to wish someone the best, thank them for something, and make sure I had their details so we’d stay connected on social media or something. It would be great if our HR laid out a standardised guideline.

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  70. QV_ContractHR*

    I worked at a big CWF MSP for a large manufacturing corp. A manager I worked with closely but never in person with suddenly just disappeared. Several MONTHS later, I was saying how weird it was that she just up and left, it seemed so out of character, and then she never replied to my LinkedIn message. Turns out she had died from cancer and my boss didn’t tell anyone. There was no announcement from the company or anything. I was so sad. I would have gone to her funeral had I known, sent a card or flowers to her family. She deserved better.

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  71. Kelly White*

    When I left my last job, they didn’t let me tell any clients I was leaving, and after I was gone they answered people from my email so it seemed like I was still there.
    I don’t know how long that lasted but I’ve been gone for 4 years.

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  72. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    Maybe defenestration? Keep checking outside in case there is a small pile of corpses that is quietly removed weekly by the sanitation dept.

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  73. Name Anxiety*

    I worked for a government agency in a building that had some public sections, some confidential areas and other office space areas and they had to announce every person that left because their access was rescinded and the email listed where and how they were allowed to be in the building. HOWEVER, one time someone left, I guess, on particularly bad terms because the email indicated that they were not to be admitted to the public areas or visit colleagues and anyone who saw them on the property was to contact the exec team immediately!

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  74. Canada is too nice*

    We are a medium sized global company and used to have an internal biweekly update of hires, leaves, returns, and departures. After a round of lay offs someone complained that knowing their name would be on that list would “add insult to injury”. Now we get nothing. On the one hand I appreciate wanting to treat employees well when they leave. It just seems like such an unwise business decision for all the reasons listed in the post. Is it bonkers to prioritize a former employees feelings over business continuity?

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  75. Art3mis*

    My last job was like this. People would just be gone and unless you happened to be someone who took over their clients and thus met with them in a transition meeting, you had no idea they left. A manager left, not mine, but someone who was very helpful and knowledgeable, and I didn’t know for over a month. I heard about it through word of mouth too, there was never anything official said.

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  77. Just Here For The Llama Grooming*

    I’m now retired from a large professional services firm (think offices in multiple states). Voluntary departures were all over the map, depending on how long the person had been around, how nice their bosses were, whether they moved to a competitor or not, etc., but involuntary departures were almost never openly acknowledged outside of the specific office they came from, whether professional or staff, even though it was common for people to interact across offices. (Of course IT always knew when and why because the procedure for “shut down their work, we’re throwing them out” was different from “Jane’s leaving and she’s taking the following clients.”)

    Worst of all, though, was when a staffer I worked with often became ill and after six months of no formal acknowledgement of anything from the firm, died. Emails to them bounced with “Joe Doakes is no longer with the firm.” I had kept up through the grapevine so knew things were bad, but for my employer to obfuscate a death felt really lousy. I get that HR can’t give out details about medical conditions, but good grief, but even “we regret to inform you that Joe passed away after an illness, obit here” would have been better.

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  78. cactus lady*

    Early in my career I worked at a job that told us when SOME people were leaving but not others. I think it was based on how much management liked someone. It was super annoying because we did a lot of collaborative project work and sometimes someone you were working with would just be gone and you wouldn’t know it until they hadn’t replied to your emails or chats for a few days.

    A few of us left around the same time, and the person who left the day before me sent an all staff email letting everyone know and thanking them, and sharing their contact info so people could stay in touch if they wanted to. I thought that was nice, so I did the same. I later heard that management HATED that we did that! Like, they were fuming. Apparently they wanted to be in control of who the staff was notified about leaving and not. LOL

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  79. Buni*

    I worked for Railtrack (used to be in charge of the UK rail network, died ugly) in its last days and it was VERY odd. We had about three huge open floors in a towerblock and once or twice a week you’d come in and bits would be dark. Desks left as if people had just nipped to the toilet, files still on shelves, ghost-town. Sometimes just one or two desks, sometimes a whole section.

    Obviously we knew the company was being disbanded but there were never any announcements (or at least not at my level), just people there one day and gone the next. It was eerie…

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  80. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

    Weirdest way to find out someone’s leaving (and it’s you!)

    At ExJob, two teammates walked in together. Coworker #1 tried to put in the code to open the staff door. Red light, fail. Took off her glove, tried again, same. Finally, she said her fingers must be frozen and asked coworker #2 to punch in the code. Green light, click, door unlocks. Coworker #1 says “that code looked different!” Coworker #2 goes “Yeah, that’s the new one, we got it yesterday.” Coworker #1 pulls out her phone, doesn’t see it, asks IT…and gets directed to HR. Yes, they changed the code for her firing BEFORE her firing.

    Also, now that I think about it, when I left (voluntarily), they changed the code on my last day…and I was on the email with the new one. This kind of thing really shouldn’t be producing this much chaos!

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  81. anonymous hacker*

    About 20 years ago I worked at a pretty big tech company and with no company-wide standards about this kind of thing. It was just up to individual managers (or the individuals themselves) and the notices might go to a small set of relevant people, so you might not hear about someone you worked with on a different team within the company.

    Back then one of my colleagues saved the daily list of users on the system and compared today’s list to yesterday’s list. She sent the results to a mailing list called the-daily-diff, to which subscribers could see the usernames of people who were added or removed. Pretty handy, but it eventually got shut down by legal.

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  82. Amy*

    It’s also frustrating when doing B2B work with businesses like this, such as trying to check on an outstanding invoice, trying to get a purchase order number, trying to provide an update on a project, etc only to find out that the correspondence attempts went into the black hole of the internet because the email didn’t bounce and no one is really monitoring the old email.

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  83. LA*

    totally the standard at every consulting company I’ve worked for no matter the reason someone is leaving and everyone hates it.

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