If you give 12 months notice, you should prepare to be marginalized in your last year at the company.
I gave 12 months notice when working for a startup before leaving for graduate school, and I wasn't "marginalized" at all. Giving my employer plenty of notice gave us time to talk about whether I really wanted to go to grad school (I did); to find a replacement (which I helped with); and to transition projects to other people. It also helped my employer plan: if you have a small technical team and a major contributor leaves, most startups would like more than two weeks to find a good replacement.
Any startup that "marginalizes" an employee who gives extra notice would be petty and small-minded: the employee is doing you a favor. Besides, by marginalizing you, they'd just be wasting the time you have remaining at the company.
If you love your current employer and want to do them a favor, give them lots of notice. I'm not saying you're a crazy person for doing that. I'm saying it's a poor rule of thumb. You are not obligated to give huge amounts of notice to your employer.
I'm an employer. I've had people give me 2 weeks of notice at extremely inopportune times. I am good for a solid recommendation for all of them. You don't dick around with people's careers.
Consider also the flip side of this issue. If you give me 2 months notice, and I need someone for a solid 4 months to execute a project, I may have to start recruiting now to fill that slot in time. We can talk all we want about the sacred bonds of trust between startup founder and startup employee, but none of that competes with the requirement to keep feeding and providing health care for the families of everyone else who works at the company.
No one (certainly not the original article) has suggested that employees should be "obligated to give huge amounts of notice" to their employers. Dixon's point is just that the legalistic, "by the books" approach that is orthodox at a big faceless corporation isn't always the best strategy in a startup.
I'm an employer. I've had people give me 2 weeks of notice at extremely inopportune times.
Right; I certainly wouldn't expect a bad recommendation if I did that. On the other hand, if I recognized that only giving two weeks notice would be inconvenient for my employer, and if it wouldn't be problematic for me, I think giving more notice is just a decent and honest thing to do.
For this reason, if you are an employee working at a startup where the managers are honest, inclusive and fair, you should disregard everything you’ve learned about proper behavior from people outside of the startup world.
For example, let’s suppose you are a two years out of college and have a job at a startup. You like your job but decide you want to go to graduate school. The big company legalistic types will tell you to secretly send in your applications, and, if you get accepted and decide to attend, give your boss two weeks notice.
What you should instead do is talk to your boss as soon as you are seriously considering graduate school.
I gave 12 months notice when working for a startup before leaving for graduate school, and I wasn't "marginalized" at all. Giving my employer plenty of notice gave us time to talk about whether I really wanted to go to grad school (I did); to find a replacement (which I helped with); and to transition projects to other people. It also helped my employer plan: if you have a small technical team and a major contributor leaves, most startups would like more than two weeks to find a good replacement.
Any startup that "marginalizes" an employee who gives extra notice would be petty and small-minded: the employee is doing you a favor. Besides, by marginalizing you, they'd just be wasting the time you have remaining at the company.