As an European, I thought that's only something people did for movies, I learned not long ago that …

Unless there is a contract saying otherwise (or union agreement if in a union) you could show up to work at your job tomorrow to be told you’re fired and escorted out of the building. For well paying jobs it’s pretty rare unless you do something bad. Obviously if they just did that to random people it would really hurt morale and other workers may want to leave. But it’s legal. On the other side, with similar exceptions, on any day you can walk into your job and say goodbye forever and never come back.

INAPL but I think is what by default both the employee can expect some weeks after the notification (and depending om the circumstances - have an opportunity to move to another job of similar title and/or pay in the same company) and employer can expect some weeks if nothing unexpected surface up. But both parties can terminate their relationship in the same dame on a mutual agreement.

At a minimum in the US the company has to pay you for unused vacation days and send you your outstanding pay within 3 days. Also, if you give two weeks notice they might reasonably can you but pay you for the extra two weeks if they are afraid of looking punitive (a smaller company thing — big companies typically don’t worry about being sued for that kind of thing). But not always; my kid resigned from AWS in November and they asked him to work the two weeks, even having him push to prod on the second to last day.

> As an European, I thought that's only something people did for movies, I learned not long ago that it's actually reality in the US It’s not quite like this in New Zealand, but wow would an employer be foolish to have an employee leave under a cloud and not immediately block all access. It’s borderline impossible to fire someone here, so it’s not US style lockdown, but cutting access seems basic.

It is wild how people in one of the richest and developed country have so little working rights and are ok with it. Especially wild if you consider health insurance is tied to the employment. 3-6 months notice period is standard in EU countries. Unless you are sabotaging or always drunk there are no ways they will fire you quickly.

Keeping a known-to-be-terminated employee is a huge risk for the employer. People are usually not happy when they lose their jobs which sometimes leads to irrational behaviors (like intentionally sabotaging the no-longer-employer). I've personally been involved on the employer side of such a situation with an irrational person and it's a pretty scary deal when you're in a small team where each dev has a lot of power.

It really depends on the job. I think even in Europe it's relatively rare to make someone work their notice period if they've been fired due to the risk of retaliation. They just pay them to not work instead. In certain high-risk professions (sales is a big one) you don't even work your notice period if you resign.

I've never met a "European" in real life. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Poles, yes, but never a "European". They only seem to inhabit internet forums.