It all depends on your relationship with your manager and your trust/feel/vibe for your employer.

If you have a positive relationship and trust 3-6 months is a fairly safe window that minimizes your risks. If you are unusual you might talk about it a year or more out (I've had these discussions especially in the context of performance and development). If you are in a role where you have an individualized employment contract you might also have specific language and terms there.

If you are unsure you just wait. The challenge is firing you after discussing retirement is potentially retaliation but fighting especially at retirement time is hard. Damages are limited as your "future wages" are small. Also watch out if you are covered by binding arbitration causes - arbitrators have shameful record of siding with employers way more than the courts and even when they find for the employee providing smaller awards when they do.

Consider financial factors on timing. On the delay side like any departure also watch out for big large period (quarterly/annual) payouts - bonuses, stock vesting, 401k match, etc. If in doubt wait until your next chunk due before retirement is in the bank. What is the financial health of the company? Are there layoffs coming? Could you potentially pick up a "package" on the way out? Is there a sabbatical or other long period benefit you want to receive before you go?

On the accelerate side do you have a lot of accrued PTO/vacation to be paid out that is potentially at risk? Do you normally carry a large "float" of expenses on personal cards/$$?

Consider talking to a lawyer (and tax planner if you haven't). You may have employment agreements that cover you into retirement that may impact you especially if you plan to work on the side. Also an employment law lawyer can advise you on exactly how to bring up the topic without giving "constructive notice" (effectively the employer constitutes your inquiry as an official notice of termination of employment).

In the end - be careful and put yourself first. Many a person has had last minute retirement plans change due to unexpected shifts in financial circumstance. In a healthy organization you should be able to have this conversation well in advance - but unfortunately the window of places this type of constructive 2-way dialog is possible is shrinking. On the other hand if your skill is critical and amenable to remote and part time work you might also work out a mutually beneficial arrangement for some post-retirement income as consulting. Do you have friends or family you might refer in later (not for bonus but just for the mutual benefit of the friend and family plus company)?

In the end you will have to make a choice on risk of early notice and associated early termination against the desire to do the right thing and keep a good relationship with your former employer and co-workers.

I'm a 10+ year medic myself in a Northern rural EMS system with an average response time of 10 minutes and an average transport time of 20-25 non-emergency and 15-20 emergency. That being said we had a large coverage area and were the last ALS service on the rural fringe of a large metro area so had outlying areas as well as mutual aid calls for neighboring BLS services. So 20+ minute response times were common and my personal longest 911 (not transfer) was 52 minutes. The transport time to a definitive care facility (versus community hospital) could be an hour in good weather, 90 minutes or more in bad.

The problem with these studies is they don't do a good job of factoring transport times in the analysis and typically are conducted in high density urban areas with response times under 10 minutes. The average urban transport time is 10-15 minutes...and some urban systems approach 5-8 for ALS for a large % of their population. In rural EMS 30-45 is uncommon and sub-10 minute response times are not common.

Another problem is urban environments with Fire based non-transport ALS where theres an additional transfer of ALS care on scene to the transport crew invariably burns time. In a well coordinated system that should be minimal and the fire based EMS often provides a 3-5 minute jump on scene arrival time for EMS (typically these systems then have a somewhat lower density of transport ALS units than a pure transport only service).

Keep in mind many of the European studies are done in countries with Doctors on the rigs where they often have scene times of an hour or more...that is clearly not productive. In the US even an ALS crew on a medical should have a scene time 20 minutes unless there's scene complications. That being said for a cardiac arrest patient unless there's a very close by ER there's very little value in transporting a patient prior to resuscitation unless the scene itself has hazards and difficulties (which happens plenty).

The relevant study also focuses on cardiac arrest only and ignores the impact on ALS on various medical issues short of full arrest like breathing, allergic and diabetic emergencies as well as non-arrest cardiac emergencies. An example is several studies including one I participated in showed good ALS with pre-hospital diagnosis of a STEMI with 12-lead ECGs lead to substantially reduced onset to intervention time with the cardiac surgical team (typically angioplasty) with corresponding increase in 12 month survival rates. Another aspect is changing the protocols and cultures to bypass small community hospitals for critical patients and take them straight to hospitals with definitive care (cath lab, trauma center, etc). There's a similar argument that once a patient is in good ALS care the value add of a non-definitive care facility rarely outweighs the 1-2 hour cost of the typical admit, eval, treat, transfer cycle.

One last problem is that the 12 month survival rate for pre-hospital arrest is not great in general and has only slowly improved so focusing on small differences versus the total picture does a disservice to the value provided by the system and individual providers.

If my wife/child/mother suffers a pre-hospital cardiac arrest I am quite sure I would much rather be in a place where the timely arrival of an ALS crew is part of the response.

I've worked for a variety of companies large and small and sometimes had to take a step sideways or backwards.

Rule #1 - The only real job security you have is your skills, network and ability to find work.

Example 1: I just switched jobs 3 months ago. I worked for a stable mid-market company in a 2nd tier job West Coast market with solid profitability, above average comp for the market for the top performers, good work/life balance, and a fairly flat revenue/market cap. Everybody there acted like they were lifers - the organization got 1/2 as much done as it could have, but everybody thought it was safe and stable because they made money hand over fist on their subscription based product and did just well enough to stay in the best of breed band in their market. But the reality is every stable, profitable company has someone willing to take it and squeeze it for more. That was nine months ago, 8 months ago they announced they were being taken private, 6 months ago the deal closed, and now it's official the company HQ is moving to a mid-America 3rd tier market and it's pretty clear that the timeline for the rest of the location is end of the year at best. And since the comp is above average in an above average market with new owners that have a financial model squarely centered on keeping labor costs (well) under 50th percentile they figure nobody will take the move and the paycut so pretty much no non-executives are being even offered a relocation. Everybody who was any good and had been there less than five years have already left - the rest are left wandering the beach aimlessly waiting for the tsunami to come to shore.

So...sometimes you have to move and take a "cut" in some ways. Just remember:

Rule #2 - Nothing not in writing maters. And even that is iffy.

Got bit by that once - and if they are are small or sleazy enough even if it's in writing it doesn't matter. No point in suing when 0 chance of recovering damages and they know it.

Example 2: Took a job to "build an embedded team" (in a Java shop) with a huge pay cut. Offer letter promised stock, six and twelve month salary adjustments, and at least 3 new hires within the first six months. Company was cool, team was great, office was great. We were downtown on the river, had a pub 40 feet down the hall. But there was no money. The next "round" never closed, the stock pool was exhausted at the time the letter was written, worked a year as a team of one and left. Would have bailed sooner except the job/team/office was very cool...loved coming to work every day...but was starving figuratively and somewhat literally.

So...weigh your options but long term it pays to shift and reinvent yourself once and a while. Myself and most of my peers recognize peoples ability to reinvent themselves on a resume...as long as it's not every year :-).

Reasons to make major changes in comp and/or size:

1. Move up in title. Many (most) people who make a senior management title or exec role do it in part by taking a shift down in size or salary to move up in title and then scale up from there.

2. Validate a title or role. Maybe you want to be a manager/director/architect. Maybe every company you have had a major role at is out of business or so small nobody has heard of them. Maybe you've lead a few teams here and there but didn't have that key word in the job title. You might go into a less interesting role to validate your resume at that level and title by taking the role at a larger or more recognizable company even if work is less interesting.

3. Make more money. Maybe you've done #1 and/or #2 and now you're finally being offered that director salary and role at a big company that throws money around. You're going into your peak earning years, your 401k has been ravaged by the past decade, go for it.

4. Have fun. Maybe you've done #3, or you were lucky with your investments or you picked the right startup. You've got retirement secured, your bored, go have fun.

5. Don't rule out contracting or consulting if you're looking to broaden your horizons in a somewhat safer/simpler and maybe better paying ways.

For startups and stock (grants or options) key financial questions are things like what is the overhang, what is the pool size, what is the runway with the current money. It's all about how many pennies are left over from a reasonable deal for _you_ based on your shares. If they are early stage (seed, A/B round) there _will_ be dilution. So there should be something in the comp plan to address this (some portion of preferred shares, commitments to re-price or gap makeup, etc). If they are later stage and you're a worker bee it's harder to expect or justify that and economic realities as the company grows can make that impractical. Then it becomes your own math on will they reach exit without another round and/or what is the dilution (and on late rounds dilution is totally about the balance sheet...at least revenue if not profit...). If not the options are toilet paper.

Don't take verbal promises for everything. Don't let non-liquid stock compensate for inadequate compensation. Reputable employers should be able to make something middle of the bell curve for comp - the stock is supposed to be for risk and effort, not cash. That's different if the stock is liquid (ie: company is public with stable share prices or there are warrants or other conversion options).

Make the choices based on your stomach for risk and desire for change - but even if the latter wins out nothing says you have to ride the first horse that comes by. Look around a little...you may be surprised. In most places if you haven't been on the market in several years due to the economy the market and opportunities (and comp) are probably better than you think.

I'm a pilot, paramedic and software engineer. My flying is personal but I try to take a "professional" approach. I agree that there are a lot of not so great pilots out there but the most basic pilot has had a bunch more training than 99.99% of the drivers out there. A typical "commercial" pilot with a commercial certification and an instrument rating (and typically multi-engine in both) has about 3-5 times the training typically required for a CDL.

Pilots and the flying industry are one of the most regulated endeavors in modern society. A good chunk of those regulations are "written in blood" from past accidents. Besides a few thousand pages of official FAA regulations there are thousdand more in ACs, TSOs and even industry standards like SAE, Milstd, ASTM, RTCC, etc. One big part of the problem is there are no standards for UAVs or UAV operators.

Flying is still heavily dependent on "see and avoid". The reality is we probably still avoid as many or more crashes from "big sky theory" than "see and avoid". The people who want to fly UAVs mostly want to fly them where the risk is highest - down low and over population areas. Also the UAV accident rate isn't as sparse as it sounds. There are well over 100,000 hours factoring in overseas usage. Even if you subtract out combat or unknown losses the accident rate of the UAV business is abysmal. Remember this is the industry that gave us unencrypted classified combat video. Check out http://www.homeland1.com/homeland-security-products/unmanned-aerial-vehicles-uav/articles/847069-accident-reports-show-us-drone-aircraft-plagued-with-problems/.

The argument that there is no pilot so the risk is minimal is disturbing. A predator is almost 30' long and a 48' wingspan - 1200# empty and over a ton fully loaded. This is comparable to most 4 seat trainers. Several of the private drones are smaller but have even less QA and little to no redundancy.

The first and only NSTB report on a drone crash is at http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20060509X00531&ntsbno=CHI06MA121&akey=1. It cites the typical chain of errors as well as a series of poor design decisions. It also notes the wreckage path indicated a flat approach and a wreckage path of almost 100' with jet fuel scattered around the crash site (there was no ignition). The operations console being used had suffered approximately 16 lockups in the 4 months prior to the crash and suck lockups were viewed as normal and acceptable. The normal "lost link" procedure normally keeps the aircraft flying a predetermined route over unpopulated areas until control was restablished but improper recovery on the crash failure caused the engine to be turned off.

The lost link route procedure was called out in the NTSB report: "Another contractor, Organizational Strategies, Inc. (OSI), provided the coordinates for the lost-link waypoints to CBP. OSI reported that it developed the waypoints using an Internet satellite website. CBP reported that it also used the same Internet satellite website to verify the location of the waypoints. According to this website, some of the website's imagery is 1 to 3 years old. Neither OSI nor CBP used additional methods to confirm that the waypoints were not located over populated areas." No indication of the resolution of the satellite imagry used - and no requirement for direct verification.

In fairness the CBP is actually one of the more rigourous operators of UAVs. Their pilots are required to be certificated pilots with at least 200 hours of actualy flying time and 200 hours of UAS flying time. They also use specific TFRs to provide seperation and maintain contact and obtain clearances from ATC. Not all FAA "Certificates of Authority" require this level of coordination or training. Many smaller operators operate close enough to the ground or restricted terrain or existing restricted airspace viewed to not interfere with existing flight activity.

The simple reality is the UAV industry is about where manned flight was in the 30s. They have moved faster than expected and the accident rates are high. The absolute accident counts per year will continue to increase with the skyrocketing usage and yes political pressure may well loosen the reins as they currently apply. Sadly real regulation will probably only come when it is written in the blood of future crash victims. I think the highest risks (both privacy and safety) come from the LEO community which will operate at very low altitudes over densely populated areas. If UAVs are allowed into controlled airspace it will be at the risk and peril of the flying public - or at the loss of vast amounts of airspace to TFRs and similar restrictions.

The airspace situation will eventually resolve in the next 10 years as ADS-B rolls out and we end our long overdue reliance on the imperfect dotrine of see and avoid. But this won't help the poor schmuks on the ground when one of these things crashes. Like anything else - somebody eventually will get killed, and the inevitable see-saw of cost-benefits and technology improvements will continue their see saw in the type and amount of safety we are willing to buy.
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Mark