to quit a good job that pays well just to randomly walk around and try to figure out what you want to do doesn't seem wise to me. It seems much wiser to wait till you have an idea that you want to pursue and then quit.
If you follow that course, you'll never quit. Because nothing stops you figuring out what you really want to do with your life like being continually busy, chasing someone else's dream.
Time flies when you're busy.
Back when I was young and inexperienced I took some bad career advice and pushed myself through a degree in a medical profession, and then postgraduate training. With 20/20 hindsight I was utterly unsuited to the profession, temperamentally. But I was too busy to see that I was making myself unhappy (and doing a second-rate job in the process). It took 18 months of post-qualification work to get around to the idea that I ought to bail, write off the previous six years, and go back to square one, and another year to put the plan into effect. Why? Because I was busy. In the end I wasted seven years on a mistake that was clear by the end of my first year at university.
You only have one life. Use it wisely. If you find you're doing something that doesn't agree with you, think very hard before you push on indefinitely: nobody's going to give you those years back.
The article isn’t talking about someone quiting just any old job, but about the situation in which they believe they already have one of the best possible jobs in the industry.
In such a case, I imagine it’s easy to keep putting it off, precisely because you can’t think of a better scenario for yourself.
> First off, DON'T quit your job without having another already lined up. "A Bird in Hand is worth two in the Bush" and all that.
I would very much recommend against that. If you are burnt out, learning a new place of work and new collegues, new goals, etc. aren't going to give you opportunity for restitution.
Quit, with the only plan to not have a plan for 3 months. Then after 3 months, you can begin thinking about making a plan.
It's very hard to go against this advice. So hard that many people stay in jobs that make them utterly miserable and cause them to miss better opportunities. I've watch my ex-colleagues take pay-cuts and benefit-cuts because they can't go against this advice.
I always quit as soon as I want to and on reflection I'm always glad that I did.
If you're in a job that's not right, and you're a flexible and skilled worker, it's self-evident that there's something better.
If you can't imagine anything you could fill your time with for 2 months out of work, your current job might just be giving you a paper-thin facade of employability, and you should be worried.
OK fair enough. But ... have you tried various options first within your current job? Have you asked for an extended holiday? Could you change your commute so you cycle in at least part way? A four day week? Have you looked at your schedule and tried to add more exercise? Are you sleeping 8 hours? Have you asked for a sabbatical? (ARM for example will give you a paid three month sabbatical every four years.) I say this because you said at one point you loved the work. You might just need to shake things up a bit.
If you really decided to move on then lots of good advice here already...
“First off, DON'T quit your job without having another already lined up.”
IMO, there’s really no right or wrong answer here. It depends on so many things. Most of all the economical situation, and the risk appetite of the person in question. Some people would never quit a job before they have a new one lined up. That’s fine. It’s not some universal law of nature though that you should never do that. It’s just a preference. Which is all right. People have different preferences.
I think this type of advice is silly and in the end dangerous to those it seeks to help.
Life is complex and blanket dogma such as "never quit no matter what, screw the haters!" is detrimental. There ARE situations when you SHOULD quit. Recognizing those situations may be hard, but it's still worthwhile to consider quitting.
I don't care what fantasy of glory you're trying to chase, but for the love of god please be pragmatic about it and consider the entirety of the situation before making a decision that can impact your life in a big way, for better or for worse.
“Why do people always advise others to find a new job before quitting the current one?”
Dunno. I did exactly that last year. I don’t regret it. My kids weren’t worse off in any way. Within ~6 weeks I had signed up for another job with better salary.
I quit my career for 4.5 years while I did other things that I wanted to do like teaching, writing, and traveling. It was definitely worthwhile and I'm grateful I was able to do it, but the same things that I disliked about my experience in the IT industry end up showing up in other jobs and things I did. I came back to IT with a different perspective and I got a lot better at making my job what I want it to be.
If you're going to quit, I think it's better to have clear goals and ideas of what you are going to do next and why you want do to those things. The act of quitting will give you immediate satisfaction, but long-term finding that thing that gets you up every single morning is more rewarding.
Sorry, but a lot of this advice makes no sense or is pretty bad.
26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge.
Seems illogical. Presumably the reason that people are happier after leaving their job is because, on average, they wait until they are ready. That doesn't mean anyone with the inclination to quit should do so.
27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.
This is a meme that seems pretty unhealthy to me. Discipline and motivation are not interchangeable things. They exist in a balance. If you regularly do things that you don't feel any motivation to do, you're on track to have a midlife crisis where you realize that you wasted your entire life trying to impress others without listening to yourself. Ideally, good discipline will nurture motivation, and motivation will help to maintain discipline.
If you find that your motivation to do something disappears, maybe you should question why you're doing it rather than just telling yourself that motivation is fleeting.
I actually quit jobs without next being lined up. And in retrospect these were the best decisions. Sometimes it's better to cut loses/bad fit and concentrate on the future than dragging it on and draining yourself.
I created this (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2374271).
Well, I did quit my full-time job. I wish I could say it was 'the best single thing I've ever done' or 'why haven't I done it earlier' but I'm not going to say it. Just to offer the other side of the perspective. And because it wouldn't be honest and I don't give nearly enough fuck to be dishonest. Yeah, seriously, what do I have to lose?
It was a bad idea. I moved back with my parents, my freelancing thing barely works, I'm constantly broke, on the verge of poverty, I'm deeply depressed and contemplating suicide. I have to constantly hear my father shout what an idiot I am for quitting a high-paying job. My friends make fun of me for making a retarded life decision. I can't really do anything else, since apparently finding a new job, is kind of hard and I have to go through the whole step where I admit my failure and start over and I don't even know what I want anymore.
I thought I would become free, but I've actually become less free as a result of it.
Essentially, shit is very hard and I barely have any idea on how to get out of this mess. What doesn't make it any easier is that I'm 20, I have no college diploma, no high school diploma, no idea what the fuck is going on.
I'm an idiot, essentially. This post serves mainly as a warning for those who could be in the same position, contemplating quitting. It's not as much fun as you think. It's not like Office Space. I'm not saying you shouldn't quit, but you should really put more thought into it.
And fuck, I even had enough savings for four months after quitting. I thought a lot of things through, includes finances etc. I even managed to live by myself for the entire four months until I finally gave in and couldn't pay the rent.
It just didn't work out and it feels very painful.
> Never work in a job you're not prepared to quit.
Most humans working today can't quit their job without another job already lined up. Some people (like those in the later stages of their PhD) can't quit at all. They would end up losing potentially years of progress.
> I saw it first hand when the head of my school, a woman, started berating me for trying to get into a more 'prestigious' program than the one I was in at the time. The whole meeting was so weird I started asking around for career prospects of high energy physics - two months later I dropped out and moved to be a quant and saved myself a wasted 20s.
This situation has absolutely nothing to do with what you were responding to. Changing career tracks in your early 20s isn't a big deal if you have fungible skills that are in high demand. Not everyone is in their early 20s or has high-demand skills, and that doesn't mean it's suddenly their fault that they're being abused.
Your single anecdote where you were a brave hero who wasn't "living in a fairy tale" doesn't give you some special insight or authority to tell other people they're stupid for trying to push through the early stages of a bad situation. No one knows whether or not it'll get worse or how long it will last. They do know there will be potentially severe financial and career consequences for leaving.
Quitting a job before having an MVP and a rudimentary validation of your idea is a very bad idea. Sit on your paycheck until your project takes off.
That's unless you are quitting for different reasons, e.g. to take a break, traveling and, perhaps, possibly, try and see if you can also work on a side project at the same time. But the likelihood of this working well is near zero.
If you follow that course, you'll never quit. Because nothing stops you figuring out what you really want to do with your life like being continually busy, chasing someone else's dream.
Time flies when you're busy.
Back when I was young and inexperienced I took some bad career advice and pushed myself through a degree in a medical profession, and then postgraduate training. With 20/20 hindsight I was utterly unsuited to the profession, temperamentally. But I was too busy to see that I was making myself unhappy (and doing a second-rate job in the process). It took 18 months of post-qualification work to get around to the idea that I ought to bail, write off the previous six years, and go back to square one, and another year to put the plan into effect. Why? Because I was busy. In the end I wasted seven years on a mistake that was clear by the end of my first year at university.
You only have one life. Use it wisely. If you find you're doing something that doesn't agree with you, think very hard before you push on indefinitely: nobody's going to give you those years back.
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