It took me almost a decade of bouncing from a few different jobs, and failing miserably at trying to run my own company, before I found my current job.

My job isn't perfect, but no job is. I'm board and eager to move to another opportunity, but that opportunity will be chosen very carefully. I've already made the mistake of moving too fast, and I'm perfectly happy to sit in my current job for another 2-3 years if I need to.

Why? I interviewed at another company about a year ago; and for reasons that were hard to explain, it just didn't seem to be as good as my current job. A few months after they offered me a position, they were acquired and the team now has quite a bit of stress. Changing jobs wouldn't have improved much.

There's a lot to be said about your situation, but I've found that oftentimes the only way to actually figure out if a job is for you is to try it out. I have had jobs in the past which looked really good from the outside, and I even got people recommending the employer and the team, and then when I started, it became painfully obvious that the place was nowhere near as good as expected. The opposite is actually less common in my experience - if if feels wrong and if people are telling you the company is not great, it probably isn't.

There's a reason why people like working at large and reputable companies. For anyone reading your CV in the years to come, a few years spent at such a company would look impressive. You do get the benefits you mentioned, like stability and salary, so that's a net positive in your current situation. Spending a bit of time there, maybe 1-2 years would definitely not set you back too far anyway, in terms of tech, experience, etc. so it might not be as bas as you imagine it.

Then, on the opposite side, if you really hate it now, maybe you won't start liking it down the line and it could be better if you throw in the towel sooner rather than later. I've had jobs where I was unpleasantly surprised at the start, then went through periods of liking my job and then hating it and then back to liking it, etc. All in all, when I look back, I tend to remember the better things, but I can also fully remember how awful it felt at times. If the primary reason for getting into the job was that you'd work on hard problems with top talent, and there's no way to get that in the near future, then why stay there at all? The current job market would probably allow you to find something very quickly.

It's really about how you feel about the job, I think. It won't probably hurt to start looking around for better opportunities, without rushing it. It does not sound like an emergency. Plus, this way you'd give it some chance at least. It's tough to be at a job which you don't like and it's all about figuring your priorities and sticking to them.

I've had 3 "dream jobs." I only regret joining one of them and it basically followed the pattern you describe, and I think I just narrowly avoided entering into this cycle in my most recent job search. In the last year, I had multiple opportunities to continue the cycle and switch jobs to another local maxima, but I think I broke the cycle, but mostly by refusing to keep playing the game.

I had weekly conversations with my friend who ended up hearing about all of my job complaints and this friend was able to see how my feelings about work changed over time. At times this friend was ready to hit me over the head because of how repetitive my complaints were.

Every time I interviewed and got a job offer, I would convince myself that I wanted to switch companies because company Y was offering me more money and responsibilities than company X and I thought company Y would give me growth opportunities beyond what I would have at company X. I would rationalize the decision in a lot of ways and would be thorough in comparing the pros and cons of switching to company Y.

And then I would talk to my friend. And my friend would say "okay, so company Y is offering you more money than company X. What do you want to do?" And I would say something like "I'm not 100% sure if I will be happy at company Y, but they're offering me more money and the company / team / product is cool. If I'm not happy in 1-2 years I can use that money to start my own company and be in a better position."

It didn't seem like I wanted to work at company Y that badly if my answer to "what do you want to do" isn't "work at company Y!" I justified my decision to change jobs by finding the things I didn't like at company X and contrasted them with the things I liked at company Y.

Leaving company X needs to be a separate decision from joining company Y in order to make the best decision. In the past I always considered them as the same decision. Even when I was interviewing at lots of companies which should have given me more choice, it always came down to making decisions about company Y based on company X instead of being about what I wanted to do for the long-term.

I talked to a bunch of other friends and family about switching to company Y and everyone else except this one friend went along with whatever I said. Some people lightly questioned what I said but only to see that I had an answer for their questions, but the human mind can rationalize basically anything and I had already fooled myself into thinking I wanted to switch jobs when I was just unhappy with company X.

I fooled everyone except my one friend, because my friend realized that my decision-making process was fundamentally flawed. That gave my friend the confidence to push-back on what I said. Having a contrary perspective gave me the space to reconsider my decisions.

I quit my job at company X and am currently trying to start my own company since that's what I wanted to do all along.

My conclusion was that I needed to be more in tune with the/a business that I'm ultimately trying to serve, and therefore to be closer too it. Because until then it all seems like pointless bit shifting.

I have looked at other jobs, and I'm thinking about picking up the search again, especially given the volume of mail I get from recruiters. Basically though I have given up on finding a job that matches what I want out of life. I feel a bit ungrateful because there is so much opportunity out there. People with our skills are in high demand. But after the last few years I have decided that the only reliable way to find a company that values what I value is to create it myself.

Sometimes, an undeniably amazing opportunity falls into the lap of someone who is overall quite happy at their present job, and they quit that job. But that's a fairly rare case.

I underestimated the negative effect of taking a job that had a tech stack I wasn't passionate about, would have on me personally and professionally. I did learn a lot of valuable lessons from the job I took and by no means was it a write off. I ended up staying there a few years but can’t help wonder how things would be different if I had taken the other job.

You have the right attitude in not wanting to get an unrelated corporate job just for the sake of having a job. So my advice would be to keep looking and if you need work desperately then settling for a temporary job outside of tech(or in) while you continue your search is better than getting tied into the corporate job you don’t want to be doing. It will be much harder to get out of that job and onto the one you really want.

edit: formatting

>> “I started this new job, but it isn’t what I expected and figured it was better to change sooner rather than later?”

I would say it's OK. What matters is passion. If you quit the new job because you're chasing for something you love, that's fine to me.

Especially Europeans have problems thinking like this. I always advise engineers to keep on looking for better offers / jobs the moment they take a new job. Instead many hibernate in a job for 3-5 years without thinking of their careers and hence miss opportunities.

Disclaimer: To help engineers finding jobs / working on their careers and support IT-firms to find people, I recently started a small headhunting agency.

So mail me, if you look for a tech-job in Zurich. Salaries here after [!] taxes start at 7000 CHF / month. Find my e-mail address in my hn-handle or check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...

You could also use it as a stepping stone; be adaptable in the short term to build experience and salary, then you're in a stronger position further down the line when negotiating for the job you actually want.

I regret not leaving. Nothing has changed at my current job, but I think there is something to be said for the possibility of finding yourself at a local instead of a global maximum. I would hinge a lot of this on your age, but especially if you are on the younger side, I think we undersell the value of leveling yourself up professionally so that perhaps at the NEXT opportunity you will have even more choices. I would factor into the companies that maybe you are not so keen on working on, if whether or not getting exposure to that work, the salary, title, etc. would cause you to in a short while be better position to explore and even wider and potentially more exciting set of opportunities. I think it is to not think about that effect.

Then: are you happy where you are? Will you be happy continuing in the same setting and in the same role doing the same tasks? (I would at my current position, as I still have too many ideas left to try.) Or is it a good time for a change in your environment and maybe see and learn something new and fresh? (I was in such a position before, and I didn't realize at the time that this was the case, so my changing jobs was just a lucky choice.)

One more thing. Do you earn enough for you not to care about finances? It won't be long before you forget about how much you bring home, but if you choose the job that's not satisfying, you'll feel it every day.