My boss was sympathetic, as he was dealing with a lot of the same challenges with other department heads and the CEO. When I finally announced my resignation, he told me he didn't blame me, and that he had told the CEO he was leaving within the next couple of months himself!

I've since gone on to be a manager at another, much smaller company/start-up. The hours are longer sometimes, and I feel like I'm running in a lot of different directions. But the pressure has reduced quite a bit, and I'm liking the culture a lot more. I think I'll stay at this level for a while before I try and move up again. Sometimes it's good to take a step back and re-assess instead of blindly charging ahead and getting yourself in even deeper. For now I'm just focusing on upping my value and taking care of my people. And just putting in the work without worrying about if it's "perfect" or not. That's all I can do.

In my new job, I decided to care about the outcome a little less so that I can play my part better. Sure, we could fix all the stuff that I think is wrong here at the new place, but then we would not get the stuff done that will make more progress with our customers and product. Honestly, just caring a little less does wonders.

I sure wish I could quit and start my own business, though, because surely I could do better! At least my ego tells me that I could do better…

The company was pretty dysfunctional and I took it upon myself to pretty much do everything, so much so that I was working 12 hour days (This is work time, minus breaks, measured with an app) so my day would start at ~ 06:30 and finish ~ 21:00.

I have never been quite so miserable in my life and I was making so many mistakes that it was unreal. I also picked up a very bad habit of doing things quickly and 90% there as that was better than not doing them at all and to do them properly would take too long. It's been close to a year now and I still find myself falling in the turn things around quickly and sacrifice quality trap, even when there is no rush at all for it. I hope I get rid of this bad habit soon

Six months later: review time. My boss tells me that he was monumentally impressed with the dedication, perseverance, and capability I demonstrated throughout the year, especially on the aforementioned product. And, as a result, he was very proud to give me...a 3% raise. I was deeply offended, and that was the beginning of the end for me there. I quit a few months later. I hear that layoffs have been rampant since I departed, which makes me feel a little better.

Anyway, long story short: fuck those guys. Polish your resume and tell them you're doing it.

My colleagues loved me, I got great performance reviews, but I didn't feel like I was learning or growing. I was severely burnt out after working on a couple projects that exploded due to organizational problems. I went through 3 managers in a year because of reorgs and departures. Ultimately I left that job because I tortured myself - what was I doing, what value did I add? How would I get a job after this when my skills were out of date?

Meanwhile the company's stock has tripled since I left. Even if I had sold every time my stock vested I would be a millionaire by now. I grew up poor, and the security of having that money in the bank would be life-changing. Instead I'm at a new startup where I'm not any happier, but I also don't get a million dollars.

I talked in an exit interview. I got exactly what I wanted but eventually regretted it.

I was tasked with building a data warehouse to replace our existing reporting process: a multi-day run access database.

I was young, excitable, and very talented. I was a sponge. It was easier to do things by myself than explain how a star schema worked to others, although I tried.

As the project proved successful and the team grew, I desperately wanted more responsibility and leadership. I had built the whole thing from the inception. But my boss and bosses manager, the VP of Engineering, didn't trust me. They lied, constantly moved the goal post, asked for ridiculous hours, expected me to work most weekends, and kept promising you'll be leading this team soon just hang in there.

Things degenerated to the point where the VP of Engineering was actively trying to fire me, but the COO and CEO wouldn't let him. The project was too high value and I built most of it. I know this because he taunted me with it. On two different occasions they tried to hire a replacement. "New guy is your peer. He's not your boss." Later I learned the new guy was told the opposite.

Still throughout the turmoil I had made friends with a many of my coworkers. I became especially close with the IT Director. At one time he out ranked the VP of Engineering and was his mentor. They still talked, but werent close like they used to be. The IT Director also became a kind of mentor to me. He was the first to prod me to leave.

And despite the toxic work environment our data warehouse had become a cornerstone of the companies business. We expanded from fixing a single long running report to being the database of record for all analytics in the company.

Still my title and salary remained the same as when I started the project.

Fed up, I finally got my resume together and found a new job. I had several documented incidents of their misbehavior. Eg anonymously, falsely accusing me of harassment. Or threatening to withhold pay for hours already worked unless some goal was met.

I laid it all out in my exit interview. Especially focusing on the things that could have had legal standing. The VP of HR soaked it all in, nodded and asked probing questions.

A few months went by. I met up with my old coworkers for lunch. They began to tell me how everything changed after I left. The CxOs became hyper focused on the team. HR started sitting in on meetings and executives would randomly show up to stand ups. But most revealing is they shared that the decision had been made by the COO to replace the VP of Engineering. Another VP had been hired and was quietly attending all meetings. The existing VP of Engineering had no idea he was training his replacement.

I was still in touch with the IT Director. I knew he still talked with the VP of Engineering on occasion. I shared with him, "You know that new guy? I have it on good authority that the COO hired him to replace the VP of Engineering." "How do you know" he asked? "I had lunch with most of my old coworkers and they said so."

I was being manipulate and hoping to cause drama. I wanted to cause the VP of Engineering as much grief as possible. No simple "you're fired" for him. This would be messy.

And I got exactly what I wanted. It caused chaos. The COOs plan for a quiet transition had been ruined. Multiple shouting matches ensued. The drama was so bad that the new guy replacement quit.

But what I hadn't considered was the fall out. Multiple of my coworkers really liked the new guy and were hoping he would fix things. After the new guy quit the VP of Engineering decided that switching to PHP from RoR for the front end would fix things. He fired many of my old coworkers.

They were furious with me. They didn't know how but they knew I was to blame. I burned multiple good references, professional acquaintances, and friends.

But most costly was my friendship with the IT Director. It ended our friendship.

I eventually tried to apologize. A few of them accepted my apology but for most the damage had been done.

It REALLY wasn't worth it.

What I really needed was an older more mature adult to guide me. I needed to learn healthy boundaries, how to communicate better, how to LISTEN, and think before I act.

Be secure in yourself. You are enough. You don't need anyone to tell you that.

I went on a medication with a side effect of anger. I was told that at the beginning, I was told that there were other drugs I could use instead. I dismissed the concern, I'd be fine.

I got cocky. I got complacent. I convinced myself that the company needed me and would never dare replace me. I started to get a really bad attitude - openly sneered at projects that I didn't think could succeeded. I was probably right but I didn't help anyone by my griping.

I lost the job. Technically I was 'laid off' but it was that or simply get fired. I lost friends with my unpleasant attitude. I made statements that made me cringe with embarrassment now.

I'm doing fine currently, and am on a new medication. I'm making less though that I would have at my old job, and if I'd stayed there I'd be a lot less worried about my future. They did hang on to experienced engineers and for some people it was their last job before retiring.

I could blame the medicine entirely, but the truth is I'm still an arrogant asshole and I still fall into the trap of believing I'm irreplaceable and can get away with whatever I want.

I wish I'd changed medications. I wish that I'd listen to people who tried to help, who told me that there were teams that didn't want to work with me. I'd be in a lot better place.

This is the first time I've read something which makes complete sense to me and helps get rid of the "ifs and buts" from my head (I still am looking for work). My ideas would never have been implemented, the organization was too resistant to change. The curve makes sense- it was fun for a while, but after "getting it all", the daily monotony would have killed me. At the same time other employees came in, did their work, and went home. They felt the whole system was very rigid, but they were ok with tolerating it. After quitting I've often found myself wondering if its something in my head that prevented me from "sticking it out". This post makes some good sense and I hope more employers read it.

I raised concerns about my stagnation and brought up issues with the team and also confronted about the new team members getting personally trained on the product by me without showing me a roadmap for myself to get to the next level. He was acting smart i felt, and then eventually decided to move on.

Once i quit, i was offered ridiculous sums of money to withdraw my resignation however, i didn't accept the counter offer and left the place. Post my resignation, a lot of people resigned from that team, and subsequently that manager was fired (i came to know after i had left the org).

I know that there were quite a few problems above me. Lack of leadership carries far and wide and there was a disconnect between what the products did and what the management thought it did. Lack of money (think lack of compensation, lack of tools, lack of time for anything but immediate returns) did not help either. I do keep questioning whether I was doing all the wrong things or if I was put in a situation designed for me to fail, or perhaps both.

After I left I understand the company hired three different people to replace me: a manager, a dev lead, and a support engineer. I suppose that's some kind of a sign that I was trying to do too many things at once. Most of the engineering team also left after I did. The least I could do is give them the great recommendations they all deserved so all of them moved onto exciting new pastures. However, I cannot help but feel like I failed at this task that I felt sure I could tackle and I don't understand why.

Please excuse the rant. These types of topics always trigger those same feelings in me.

Edit: now I work as a developer on 2-3 person teams. I have no reports. I get to be productive again! I can write code that doesn't have to suck to compensate for poorly chosen deadlines. This is good for the soul. I do miss leading a team though; not managing but really leading. One of my proudest moments was when I was allowed to follow a system of estimates and sprints I put together and for 8 weeks my team delivered on schedule and exactly what was promised. That was one of my more joyful moments.

On the one hand I did need a job and I'm at that age where it's not always easy to find one. On the other, ah, maybe I regret it a little, but not too much.

I mean, I'm usually pretty calm myself and I have worked previously with difficult people, so while it was truly a horrible place, it didn't affect me too much[1]. And then again, I did achieve some things. It was a really old project with old code and people with little and outdated knowledge, and I managed to clean up large parts, teach some things to the two or three receptive developers there, and write detailed but practical documentation for all the things I did. So all in all, at some level I do feel like I accomplished something.

But then again... There were other, much larger problems with the team, the project, management, etc, which were just insane. I ended up quitting when, after meeting with management once more, they simply answered that they didn't care and they wouldn't change a single thing at all.

----

[1] I do confess there were days when I thought about quitting, and just this once, on my second-to-last day, I did get angry at someone.

10 months into the job, CTO #3 had been forced out, DoE #2 had just turned in her resignation and we were completely unable to attract experienced engineers of any quality. COO assumed direct control of the engineers while marketing and sales kept themselves busy as "product people." I was looking for a new job and getting ready to jump ship when marketing and sales, giddy as children, came up with the idea of pivoting into EdTech. I was offered the chance to lead a small team in building out these new products and because I was a young engineer with ambitions wildly out of proportion with my experience and skills, I accepted. What resulted was the most stressful 10 months of my life. The hours (14-18 M-F and 10-12 on weekends) were doable but I was constantly second-guessed and undermined. My engineering teammates were all incredibly supportive and I would turn to the more senior guys for advice on navigating the technical landmines but it was a war everyday with everyone else. We had market research from parents, students, teachers and school administrators that would be ignored by the product guys in favor of "instinct." We had UI/UX designs that we paid for that were ignored in favor of "I like this better though." I can't even count the number of times I had "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse" quoted at me. I had marketing guys bully their way onto our sprint boards so they could move their half-baked, pet features onto the top of the pile. I had sales guys promising clients features that weren't even possible given our budget and deadlines.

I finally broke and set up some rules, some bullshit and some good, so we could make some progress. For starters, my team took over our main conference room and kept it locked. I told them to ignore any form of communication about the project from anyone that wasn't based out of the conference room. I would cancel or skip all internal meetings with sales and marketing and would only attend meetings one-on-one with the COO. I made sure that no one went on a sales call for the product we were building unless one of the team was on the call with them. I would monitor our sprint boards to see what features were being pushed up on the sly. And then I would delete them. In the end we managed to push out a fairly polished product (really nice beta) with about a quarter of all the promised features. Our clients did end up buying it but no one really loved it and no one really hated it. I quit 4 months later when I was asked if I was interested in leading the team to build out more features.

The entire experience was terrible during but I kept going because I thought it would look nice on my CV (it does). I took six months off to "crawl back to reality" as you put it and realized halfway through that there was no reality to crawl back to because I had lived reality in all it's HD, 4K shitty goodness. Sometimes when people are assholes you can be a bigger asshole back and win and sometimes you can't. That's all there is to it.

From 2015 to 2020, it was great. I (and most other employees) was working hard, and was consistently rewarded for my efforts.

In 2021, the company benefited from a huge boost due to the pandemic. Hiring went through the roof and the company became very performance focused. Unfortunately "performance" now meant "meeting your OKRs" and nothing else.

The company culture went through the drain. Most of the new hires were from FAANG and knew very well how to play the game. Whereas before, if you asked someone for help, they would help you, now the answer became "file a run ticket". After all, why would you spend time helping anyone? That's time not spent on your own OKRs, and that's literally the only thing that matters.

Nevertheless, I kept working hard. I was involved in multiple company initiatives, mentored new hires, still helped people when they asked for help, etc. After a year, when performance review time came, I got a "meets expectations".

I was livid, and asked my manager how that could be possible. He basically told me that he had no visibility into all the non-team initiatives I was involved in, and that it was my own fault for not making myself more visible and drafting my OKRs in a way that would have allowed him to justify why I deserved more than "meets expectations".

I refused to play the game and told my manager I was sure I could get "meets expectations" by doing a lot less. I basically slammed the door on all the side initiatives I was involved in and stopped doing anything besides "core work". I went from working 50+ hours a week to working 25-30 hours. I did not enjoy it -- I was actively miserable, and started taking steps to move on.

It took me nearly a year to leave the company (I was on a visa that did not allow me to switch jobs so had to obtain an H-1B, which took time). Another perf review came by, and lo and behold, I got "meets expectations" again.

I am so much happier in my new job, but I'm still salty about the previous company. What used to be a great company culture became a toxic, political, gamed environment.

(Oh, and of course they had a huge layoff round a few months ago. But hey, at least leadership "took responsibility" for overhiring.)

This may be true for some, but here is what I've seen and experienced personally + family members and friends I've talked with:

1. You are a full-time employee who is either very skilled or not as skilled but getting paid in the top 5-10% as a senior or principal software engineer. For a while you get to work on whatever you want to as long as it makes the company better, so you write open source projects, etc. Then, something happens. Either your company gets outside investment, or is bought-out/merges/buys another company, or they fall on hard times, or there is competition, or someone in management reads some new book or goes to some conference, or you just get different management, and now you all of a sudden either have been driven to cut corners which leads to a mess, or morale sucks or people buy into management's crappy philosophy which which leads to no innovation and suddenly it feels like no one else is using the crappy libraries and frameworks you had been using, or things for some other reason just suck.

In this case, you're still making a lot of money. Happy now? Sure you could have found a new job, but wait hold on a second- you are in the top 5-10% so jobs that pay that well may not come as easily. Looks like you're fucked.

2. You work your ass off as an independent, grow the company, and are doing well working for large company X in NYC. You had an awesome time putting your family through hell in the beginning for peanuts, but somehow you managed to make it past all that.

And now, what do you have? You're making a lot and have several guys/gals depending on you and you are still working your ass off and now you feel like if you quit, you take all of them down with you. Maybe even you're still on your own, but if you quit to take a break, your family will suffer because they won't have what they did.

What I suggest: do what you believe in as long as you can survive and meet the needs of your family. Push hard or don't, but be happy if you can. This will make the world a better place. You may end up making too much and getting into the same predicament, but if you're lucky, you'll at least not be focused on more money than you need. And if you do get more money than you need- share it. Much good in the world has come from those with money sharing what they have.

Leaving a "good" job is not easy, even when you have another "good" job lined up.

Luckily my wife gave me an out in the form of becoming the stay at home dad for some time while she became the breadwinner. It's a tighter budget, but doable. It also aligns with our desire to avoid having to resort to daycare for our very young children.

I did not really want to leave just as I was moving onto the work I really wanted but the nagging feeling was still there: do I really want to hitch my cart to this drunk pony?

My solution was to do the things I was specifically directed, but to get those out of the way as fast as possible, as opposed to the usual milking it out and "looking busy" until the next task came by (this was common between large projects). With the rest of my time I dug deep into the things I believed were the most critical to the company, were related directly to my position, and were also problems I could solve. Without getting into too much detail, I sought to improve some of the processes that were either outdated, outright wrong or maddeningly cumbersome/tedious.

I did this for about six months in a few different areas I was involved: systems modeling, database management, and radiant heat transfer were the three that I focused. I wrote some simple proposals, some mock-ups of what I was building and presented it to my superiors.

The response was utterly unsurprising given the the track record of the company: "we have always done things this way", "it has always worked fine so far", " we need that cumbersome software because someday, it might prevent an expensive mistake", "I make the decisions and am responsible so you just need to accept these practices and move on" etc. I pointedly asked my boss (the chief engineer) if he had any questions, anything, about one of my proposals (maybe 25 pages long) and the answer was a flat "no".

That was the last straw. If my best work was going to be so curtly dismissed, I would rather change diapers all day.

Granted, I was being one of those "if I was in charge this is how I would do it" types, but I was A: putting it in detailed written form, and B: confining my proposals only to what applied directly to my job. It wasn't water cooler bitching, and it wasn't about telling anyone else how they should do their job.

Don't cope with an unsatisfying job any longer than you have to. My advice: decide for yourself what you can do for your company, and then do it (enlist your fellow drones of you can). If your boss/employer (go as high as you feel comfortable) does not at the very least recognize your work ethic, tell them to shove it.

TL;DR It feels great to leave a sinking ship after you tried, and were told not, to fix the hole.

I imagine some employees have left my company, too, because they were unhappy with the way I ran things. However, I have never resorted to lies and making promises I never meant to keep.

But I did get a lot out of the few years I worked there, even though a lot of it sucked. It was my first proper job and they’d basically let me work on anything I wanted to, even though I was incredibly green and was just figuring it all out as I went. I definitely fit a lot more experience and learning into those years than you’d reasonably expect a person to. I think a lot of my success today came from turning their incompetence into opportunities.

As I worked for the cable company, I also had a side project app I was working on. Soon my app started making money, in 6 months it made its first $1000. Then sales started doubling every week, in the next 2 months my app was making more than double my fulltime job's salary at the cable company.

I hated my fulltime job but i didn't want to quit a stable job. Unable to make the decision to quit, I called in sick one day, and then stayed home for 2 weeks, I was secretly hoping to be fired. I showed up at work 2 weeks later and no one seemed to notice I was gone. Some people thought I was just working a different shift. My supervisor didn't really notice. So I finally decided it was time to quit. Told my supervisor I was quitting because I started a new business I wanted to focus on instead. She was very cool about it, told me they like me and would hire me again if I every wanted to come back and that was it.