I think someone above nailed it. 'Stolen Data' probably includes emails, contacts, coding, etc.

I always have my email (and therefor my contacts) backup up at home, especially now that I can just connect my Outlook at home to my Exchange here at work.

The only contacts\emails I would use would be the ones for my personal contacts and vendors\contractors I wanted to stay in touch with, etc.

I do also periodically back up all my own coding and ship it home. Since I am often coding from home, it makes business sense while I am at @CurrentJob, and yes, I'd likely carry most of it with me to a new job to use as a reference, if nothing else.

Obviously, I would have to comb through it and recode it to match the new company's needs, and I would certainly make sure no actual data from the previous job got carried over.

If I worked for a company that was reselling my code, that would be a big 'No No', but since the company is just using it for the Reports server, etc, I don't feel as if I am taking anything from them.

(Plus, of course, by having backup copies, I can still answer questions for them down the road, or help whoever replaces me do troubleshooting)

I don't get companies that kick an I.T. type out as soon as they turn in their notice. As plenty of other have said, we know it will happen, and will just take whatever steps we need to take ahead of time. All it does is hurt the company by forcing sudden, unplanned loss of resources for whoever is still around.

At my current job, two weeks wouldn't even be enough notice, really. Likely, I will give them more along the lines of 2 months notice, to give them time to replace me and let me validate\train the new person.