Gardening leave means you still have a fully paid job, you just don't need to do any work. So you could for example do an MSc while getting paid a salary. Assuming you have the tiniest modicum of self discipline needed to do something productive in that time, it's the best thing ever.
Sure, but if you're trying to have another job lined up, it's a lot harder to find one before you quit. "We need someone right away, can you start in two weeks?" "Sure, I'll put in my notice tomorrow." is going to be a lot more common than "We're completely sure we need someone new starting 6 months from now, go ahead and quit your job."
It depends on where you are. In Germany it is by default a month, but your contract could specify for example 3 months notice for both parties. In places like that, everyone knows this, so a company trying to hire will account for this. Also it's been my experience that most of the times when companies are hiring for "NOW", the start times ends up slipping for months.
If you're in California, where you can leave your company and start working in the next one in a matter of hours, there'll likely be an expectation by the company hiring of a fast start.
At the same time, depending on the company, the hiring process can stretch for months before getting an actual offer.
I want to believe that most employers you'd like to work for are understanding that "life" might happen and you can't start two weeks from the moment you first met them.
Well, if you're unhappy with your job, then you quit and use the 6 months to look for something new. I guess it doesn't really help when seizing opportunities that come along (that may be better even if you're not unhappy).
If you can absorb 6 months of not getting paid, yeah. Not everyone can, and while I've seen a lot of advice saying you should demand to be paid for the duration of a non-compete, I'm pretty sure that's not typical.
Plus there's the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not you'll be able to find a job with comparable pay.
This entire subthread was specifically talking about a 6-month severance package, so talking about not getting paid for 6 months is an odd thing to bring up. Quoted from above:
> Gardening leave means you still have a fully paid job
I'm thinking that people that can't afford to get paid their current salary for 6 months while not actually working for the company are in the minority, unless I'm missing some angle to this.
