Again, I couldn't agree more with that. Most of my jobs have been with companies where it could go either way. Red Gate turned into an exception and became successful, and I stayed there for a long time. Subsequently I've come to the conclusion that, professionally, this was a mistake. For the first few years I definitely developed a lot of new skills there, and had opportunities that otherwise I wouldn't have had, but the value tails off after that.
When it came to the point where I absolutely, positively wanted to leave and nothing was going to change my mind (this is far too late - to anyone reading, do not do this), I felt rusty and behind the curve. It became an 18 month process whilst I skilled up in the areas I needed (again, Red Gate provided the opportunities to do that, so props). That was tough going. Red Gate's a decent company but, you know, when I'm done I'm done, so keeping up the motivation was hard.
This is all a very roundabout way of saying you're absolutely right about keeping your skills up. If you do that (and you're not an asshole) you'll have absolutely no problem securing employment. You might need to relocate, but you'll always find work.
Thanks for your answer. I partially agree. I was born and raised in a small town, where jobs were few, but there was this BigTech office. I started there as an intern, became a full time employee and stayed for around 2 years. I left it to work at a cooler project with better pay, but it was a 3h drive from/to my place - moving wasn't an option because I was taking care of my parents. I left after 1y due to the commuting time, and joined a startup as one of the first hires - stayed 2y there but investors pulled the plug, the business wasn't growing fast enough. So out of a job I decided to move to a bigger city and got a good job, was promoted to lead a small team after 1y and really liked it. After 2y there a colleague also new to the city offered me a position at another BigCo paying 2x and leading a bigger team, so I accepted. Turns out the company had a horrible culture and I got burnout, depression and anxiety attacks, and I still have nightmares of execs yelling shit at me. Finally, I left so here I am, 6th company, it's going well and I got a raise after my first year.
That's just to say I may have made junior mistakes and then some bad life decisions but it doesn't mean I or people with similar stories don't have soft or managerial skills. Technical skills that are only obtained after multiple years chewing the same product are another thing, though.
Thanks for the response Ben. That's a really good point actually. In my initial responses I left off a couple of companies because I have known people who have worked there and then moved on. Not always because they didn't like the place, but more because they felt their goals had changed and were now different from their employers...
It's probably true but the ME in question chose to go a different route probably because they deep down did not like the job. No doubt they could have retooled their skillset and kept reapplying at various places or move elsewhere if they were inclined.
- I had interviewed with Flickr and got the role, but didn't realize I'd have to move out west and so said no. I now understood I was marketable
- I quit the job with the plan to take a month+ to decide on my next move
- I shopped around a bit and had 2 roles lined up, and took the one that sounded the most fun to work at and most sustainable (the one I turned down had a 45+hour a week MINIMUM)
THEN
that company got acquired and I was once again without a job. A few of us thought about starting a company, and I seriously focused on leveling up my Ruby on Rails skills. Within 6 weeks I had a role at a new incubator which was one of the most fun jobs i ever had.
THEN
That incubator got shut down, and a few of us thought about spinning out one of the companies or raising money. In the end, 2 of us decided to start our own development shop. That was 10 years ago and it's been hard work but awesomely rewarding.
I would NEVER have achieved all of that if I didn't take the leap to leave the abusive job. I highly value the time I took between jobs to test things out and make the right decision at each turn.
I didn't have to take the time off to do it, but if it's financially viable for you to take a few weeks and see the playing field in front of you, my personal experience is that it pays off well in the medium to long term.
Hindsight is a magical thing. Speaking from personal experience you need to stick with trying to find the job that you are passionate about. I took a job that wasn't ideal over another job offer. The decision came down to the fact that it was in a location (and other personal factors) that all fell in my "comfort zone". The job that I didn't take would have been a much better cultural fit and more in line with my long term goals. I just didn’t have the foresight to see this at that point.
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.
You won't be able to change much, in my opinion. So you have to choose whether you stay and do it their way, or go.
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 joined a startup a decade ago which was great and taught me a lot in the early years. I stayed all that time though because of options. Made a bit from them, took some time off for personal study/projects, and eventually moved to a bigger company to start learning something outside the small technological bubble I'd been working in until then. I don't know if I made wrong decisions but I feel a bit bad about it because I love having highly skilled colleagues, learning new technology and how things are done by teams that do them well, and I think I could have got to a significantly more technically advanced position than I am now by not staying so long at the first place.
After working hard for one company for 7 years and only getting 3% raises and feeling the effects of salary compression and inversion. Also I realized the lack of optionality when your skills aren’t a fit for the market.
The first job I detailed above after I left, was a great decision. I chose technology over money - I also met my now wife.
After that company laid everyone off [1], and I did a short stint as a contractor with one of our former customers, I got a job at a horrible company and all of the signs were there in hindsight. But I had never worked at a bad company before then. I had only worked for 3 companies in the past 16 years. I didn’t put that company on my resume and I explained the three month gap ase deciding to take some time off to get situated after getting married.
After that, I jumped shipped from a company as soon as I saw a market opportunity. People worry too much about job hopping. If you interview for a job and they are concerned about job hopping, they won’t give you a job. If they do hire you in spite of your work history you leave. What harm is interviewing? The next job either hires you or you stay where you are until the job hopping stench wears off.
[1] They were very up front with us and the investors promised us that they would keep paying our salaries until they either found a buyer or officially gave us notice. We wouldn’t have to worry about not getting paid while we working. All of us stuck around because why not? We knew based on the tech stack we were using, that we could get another job before our final check cleared.
You're preaching to the choir a bit, but I'm just showing some empathy. I've been in places that started to move into directions that I didn't agree with, and caused me to start the process of moving. It takes time, and while you're lining things up, you have to do work to get paid.
You can judge someone that accepted a job at bigAdTech, but there are other jobs that start out as an acceptable place but as things continue on with potentially new leadership or some other change causes things to become untenable. Not everything is simple, but you can armchair quarterback and make judgement one the limit information you have.
I've stayed ~ 10 years at a couple companies. I won't say things were always smooth sailing the whole time. But that was the point where things had really changed, I was in some combination of doing the same thing in my sleep or there really wasn't a role for me any longer, etc. (And, yes, in one case I had really liked the work--which ultimately set me up for the next job well--but the small company couldn't afford market rates.)
And Rands mentions this in the article. There's a weighted list of criteria you keep in the back of your head (am I fairly compensated? Is the company stable?) and you constantly reevaluate them.
Rands lists the major ones, but there can be dozens of others. I personally call them "red flags" and once I see enough, it's resume time. I've tuned my own threshold pretty well and walked away from some perfectly good jobs and companies, only to see them implode in my rear-view mirror a year or two later.
My current employer, who has treated me well to date, just went back on a promise not to move the factory to Mexico. At the announcement they promised not to relocate Engineering. I updated my resume over the holiday break.
Thank you all for the replies, they really helped me analyze both sides to finding something new.
I've decided to stick it out and make the most of it while I look for something more suitable for my skill level. At worst, this position has shown me what I'd like to avoid in the future.
When your work isn't challenging anymore, it means that you are stagnating professionally - You are not growing. You can choose the easy path and stay in the same company or you can move on to another (better) one.
I've been through like 8 software companies. As soon as I felt comfortable in a particular company; that was the time to hand in my resignation; unless it was a startup which showed potential then I would stay longer.
Typically, when you join a new company, you should try to be the dumbest person in the room. If you're not, then this is not the company for you.
Usually being exposed to different problem domains and tooling should be challenging enough for the first 3 months.
I just wrote the following, but it doesn't really take into account your immigration status. That's tricky.
I don't agree with the prevailing sentiment. Obviously you left for a reason, and that reason still exists. It would look ridiculous to go back.
I'm sure you'll get a few interviews out of this thread, and if you're good, a new job. There's always risk changing jobs.
For an entrepreneurial crowd, it seems everyone here is forgetting that it's risky to pursue something you want. I left a well paying job were I was liked and performed well to go to a start up who is still paying me by the hour. They even changed the start date a couple times after I already gave notice -- it was flaky behavior, and I told some people at my old job about it before I left. They looked at me like I was crazy, but I wanted the new challenge. I wanted to develop a product from the ground up, and if the new job hadn't panned out, I would have found a way to be OK.
I agree, and I've done that. In the last 5 years I have been at 4 different jobs. Life-work balance, technical competence, and competitive compensation, choose two. That about sums up my experience in that timeframe. I've only been in my current position for 8 months, so on the one hand I feel like I shouldn't bail this quickly. On the other hand, man have things changed from the impression I had when I started.
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.
Yes of course there are different experiences and paths, I certainly wasn't implying that there was only one way.
The company you worked at sounds like it had a really good structure and really put in the work and time to help employees grow, and unfortunately that's not the case everywhere.
But I would say from my experience across many jobs, and from speaking with all my peers, consensus is that doing diagonal moves in your first 10-15 years on the job will land you in a better place than staying put that whole time, both from an experience and skills perspective, and from a role/seniority/salary perspective.
Well ... did you want leave your company? If that's the case then going back seems like the wrong idea. If you're good, you can find a new job in this market in no time.
I basically wrote a post of my career life story, but I'll spare you that. Let's just say that each of these places higher ups hid the true danger the company was in until the last second as much as possible. There was always a reasonable explanation for why we failed to achieve success with a product and always something new and exciting to look forward to, until there suddenly wasn't. Like for my current company, they're just "cutting the fat" of the massive workforce they inherited and now we're past that and look at all the exciting things we are working on that will innovate and drive change and blah blah.
Yeah, things might get better here. It does look like their 5 year plan is going more or less in the right direction. But am I willing to wait 5 years with stagnate or no growth (in addition to the three years of no growth I've already endured) with a company that's proven multiple times it's unwilling to loosen its purse strings for just about any reason? I don't think it's worth it, and many other employees didn't either.
I'm mainly only still here because I keep having things happen in my personal life that makes it inconvenient to change jobs at that point (For example I recently bought a house. Mortgage lenders tell you not to quit your job until the closing date for that). And the one benefit of losing the office is we get to work 100% remotely, so I'll do that for a bit while figuring out what I want to do next.
If you feel like you are no longer learning or growing then you should probably look at moving, especially if pay and benefits are below average. At least start a slow search to see if there is someplace worth moving to. And since you aren’t miserable and are actively employed, you can move on your terms.
I wouldn’t worry about perception, especially in software. Moving after 6 months multiple times would be bad, but moving a few times in your first four or five years isn’t a big deal. I think the opposite actually applies in software, staying at someplace too long can be seen as a red flag if it’s not a top notch company using cutting edge tech.
The real risk though is leaving a good company culture with good management and a good team. Places with both are probably fewer and farther between then you would imagine. You may find better pay working on cutting edge tech with awful management and egotistically, unhelpful teammates, especially at some hyper growth companies.
The answer depends on what you want and it sounds like more interesting work is important. If there is no way to get your ‘simplistic’ work done and do interesting stuff on your own or helping another team, then moving is probably worth it. I do wonder though if the place is so great and your coworkers so talented, why is the work so simplistic? Is it a lifestyle company or are you missing something without the experience to know?
In any event, think about what you want, take your time and do research if you choose to move, and best of luck in your career.
When it came to the point where I absolutely, positively wanted to leave and nothing was going to change my mind (this is far too late - to anyone reading, do not do this), I felt rusty and behind the curve. It became an 18 month process whilst I skilled up in the areas I needed (again, Red Gate provided the opportunities to do that, so props). That was tough going. Red Gate's a decent company but, you know, when I'm done I'm done, so keeping up the motivation was hard.
This is all a very roundabout way of saying you're absolutely right about keeping your skills up. If you do that (and you're not an asshole) you'll have absolutely no problem securing employment. You might need to relocate, but you'll always find work.
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