Let’s be honest. You’re sick of your current job. You’re telling yourself everything will be fine, it’s just a little chaotic for only a few weeks, I am a loyal and patient employee and yeah, everything will be fine again.
The only thing you wanted to do was writing cool software in a calm environment, and now you have to answer the phone, deal with customers and explain to your boss that you can’t fix five bugs and show him two new features at once. And sitting at home after a long day at work you’re absolutely not satisfied with the code you have written today if you have written any at all.
What now? Well, here’s a hint: Quit your job and apply for another.
The most important rule for changing a job by far is: Know what you want. Why do you want to change it? What do you expect from another job? Do you want more money? Do you have tasks that just suck? What about your colleagues? You have to find these things out and really figure out what you want.
For example, I was a programmer for my whole life. Started out by learning Quick Basic by the age of ten, studied Computer Science and finally made games professionally after I got my degree.
Perfect.
But then I wanted to see something new. So I applied for a job for data warehousing and after three months I knew: Man, this sucks!
I missed programming so much that I even asked my boss back then if it was possible to switch to the Java programmers. He replied with “programming is not for you”. Yeah, sure…
So I applied for another job and everything was fine again. I knew what I wanted.
But why aren’t you feeling happy?
You want more money
If it really is just about the money, you should try different things first.
In this working world, you have to prove yourself before you get a raise. Sad, I know.. But did you? Are you really helping your company to get bigger and earn more money and do you ask for new tasks instead of just sitting in front of your desk and hoping to be invisible?
More money comes with more work. It’s that simple. And it’s not always worth it!
Keep that in mind.
If money is your number one reason to change something about your current situation, maybe you have to change the way you’re working. However, if you’ve worked your ass off for quite some time and talked to your boss about that and you still won’t get a raise, it’s probably time to look for another employer.
Just one side-note on that: Look for the average wages in your current position. It’s easy to google your position, age, and location. Maybe you already earn a lot?
Your colleagues suck. (Or they even bully you)
There are two reasons in this section.
If you think your team is just stupid, you can’t learn anything from them, they won’t listen to you and everything is getting harder because you simply can’t work with your colleagues, there might be a way to talk about that with your supervisor first. Maybe there are chances of joining another team. If, however, your supervisor does not cooperate, quit.
If you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re getting bullied, quit your job as soon as you can. No money in the world is worth staying in a room with a**holes for the whole day. Really.
You lack fulfilling tasks
The most reasonable cause to quit a job is that you hate the things you have to do.
As I wrote in the introduction you may be stuck in a position where you don’t have the opportunities to do the things you love any more. Since you’re reading this article on dev.to, you may want to be a great programmer and always learn new technologies and get better and better at your craft.
Instead, everything you do will take you further away from your dreams and soon you'll be afraid to apply for new jobs because you think you don't know how to develop software these days. It’s a vicious cycle.
You may try to talk to your supervisor about that and maybe there are ways to get more interesting projects with different or modern technologies. But it’s about the culture of your company. If they use old stuff and are afraid of modern technologies, chances of success are low. It’s time to look for a new job.
While you’re doing that, ask yourself what kind of technology you would like to use. Maybe it’s just another development process you are looking for? Currently, you have to deal with the waterfall model and all you want to do is being in a SCRUM team? The software development world already is agile, that’s for sure.
Perhaps you were initially hired as a backend developer and now you’re writing HTML, CSS and lots of jQuery for all those innocent browsers out there (yes, I’m looking at you, Internet Explorer..). Then you should look for a position where they want you to write web services and the database communication.
To sum up, don’t just apply for any job you can find if you have a little more patience (this does not apply to the bullying!). Try to find the right position. Also, don't underestimate the time you have to commute. Sitting 30 minutes longer in your car or a train for a little bit more money won’t make you happy, either.
I hope these little tips help you to clear your mind. Please let me know if they did and what else you think are reasons to quit a programming job. I’d love to read about you in the comments.
This post was originally published on programmergoals.com
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Top comments (17)
No check marks here for me. :)
Congrats! :)
My reason for quitting my job is there is no productive work.. Same set of processes goes on for every task. I've already wasted a year here, and I've quit. 25th October is my last day working here. 😊
Hi Aalind, Thank you for sharing this with us. It is terrible not to be able to develop personally because you cannot be productive. And if you're waiting for too long it can be hard to have the guts to apply for another position. So, kudos to you, Sir!
To sum it all up, quit your job if:
Absolutely. Great list! :)
NO3 so true!
while there was alot of "you are not alone" moments while reading this article, NO3 was the best one.
I basically quit my job after working for a company for 3.6 years, my salary was low and even after working my a** out, and talking to my supervisor, I got a load of promises regarding promotion and pay hike, finally decided to to do something about it and got an offer.
Once I put my papers down I just became a rockstar, everybody wanted to talk to me, I was like where were you guys when I had approached you initially.
I agree with all the reasons to quit a job that have been discussed but I'd like to add that you should be doing all the soul-searching and trying to figure out what you want to do next BEFORE you are at that point of quitting. It is much more fun and reassuring to quit a job knowing that you will soon be starting that new job, and will continue to have a paycheck and health benefits.
Of course! Sorry if I said it wrong. You should always try to have a new position before you quit your current one. Only regarding the bullying it might be different. But even then, maybe you can take some days off and use them to focus on finding a new job.
If possible, always look for a new job while you still have another one.
Sounds like you hate capitalism, not your job ;)
Not really. ;)
I like money and I like earning it. I just think that it's a lot easier to achieve your financial goals if you do a job you like and that fulfills you most of the time.
Sounds cheesy, I know.. but it's true! ;)
Money isn't inherently capitalist. That's just a product of markets. There are several market-based economic systems :)
What would you say is a reasonable amount of time to give a position to both allow for "corrections" and allow yourself to adapt? What are your thoughts on having a resume with lots of short stints?
How short are those stints? A few weeks? Months? In my opinion you can always have valid reasons to quit. You can really have an unlucky streak and find one bad employer or team after another. As long as you can justify your job changes with complete conviction, it's perfectly okay.
However, if you find yourself losing interest in a particular project after a few months, you may want to consider switching from employee to freelancer. That way nobody will question your short stints, since it can be normal to work on several short projects.
Again, it's all about the "why".
Nice explanation. Thanks!