I'm curious, do you have experience quitting a job? What was it that made you realize it was the right choice, and what might be something you're better off pushing through with?
I have no interest in quitting my current job, for the record. ðŸ˜
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Top comments (42)
Being manipulated instead of being led: When your boss is manipulating you to get the job done, instead leading you, you're in the wrong place. Odd thing is that everyone want to hire smartest developers out there, but at the same time some of them try to manipulate these same smart developers like they are chimps. From my experience this includes withholding information about the project and long term goals, giving false deadlines to speed things up, meddling with personal relationships (turning developers against each other) and in general not being honest with you and your colleagues. One of the weirdest things I experienced is when they try to affect actual implementation (without any programming knowledge) with specs manipulation.
Steve Jobs once said:
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
You shouldn't hire smart people to manipulate them. It's waste of time for everyone.
Blame culture: When bad things happen if your boss asks "Who's fault is this?" instead of "Who can fix this?", you should consider quitting. It's needless to say it's impossible to do anything creative or inspiring in these places.
Brown nose syndrome: If it makes it easier to get promoted or it makes your everyday at work easier by kissing your bosses ass, you're again in the wrong place. You will never reach your full potential there, and probably become very frustrated.
Inconclusive reward system (or not having one): For example promotions and bonuses are very different across teams, even though there are no obvious reasons for that. Either you're not being recognized, or not being valued enough. Also if your bonuses consist of praises and thank you it's time to move on.
Incompetent people evaluate your work: If your code is being evaluated in weird ways it's time to move on. My experience include: counting how many bugs each developer made and then reducing their salaries by some calculation based on number of bugs, using SCRUM backlog as time and attendance system.
When management starts overriding technical decisions made by the technical staff. It inevitably leads to bad software and shows a total disrespect for people who make software.
1) if you are miserable going to work every day 2) the environment is a bad fit for you personally 3) toxic environments
I have a ton of experience with this! Past signs that I should quit my job:
"talented people come and go, average/below-average people are the ones with longevity" - I've had that particular alarm go off a couple of times
Yes, it's good to pay attention to what type of behavior actually gets rewarded (hint: it's often NOT what's stated in the official corporate values statement).
Yes, I used to have Dilbert comics printed by my desk. After I left I realise I was telling myself subliminally that I was working in an ongoing joke!
Best career decision ever.
Yeeeesssss dilbert cartoon environment == gtho!!!
My signs include:
growth plateauing
teams have stopped celebrating each their own wins and the wins of other teams (morale is tanking)
management suggestions of building skills in a particular area you have no interest in growing in
lack of respect for time. Meetings are routinely missed or canceled. Extra hours are expected while personal time is scoffed at.
By the time these indicators ring true, my frustration levels are on high alert. What is important when considering these things for me is to base my decisions on what I am moving towards and not what I'm moving away from. It's easy to get into an "I need to GTFO"-mode but I take my time so I am not rushing into a similar situation at my next gig.
That seems like a great indicator! Definitely keeping this in mind as a leader.
Pay attention on how frequently you get into LinkedIn. A good sign is when that rate goes up.
Losing the option of thinking and making decisions could be another sign.
Working in projects you either don't enjoy or you don't consider they add value to your career.
I also know I don't want to quit my current job, but I think you should quit when you begin to dread going into work. If it starts to feel like your job is more of a chore and a burden, then leave. If you start to notice that your mental and physical health are being negatively impacted as a direct result of on-the-job stress then leave. There are far to many companies out there that know how to treat their employees to just sit and endure toxic environments.
When you've recognized you're in a toxic culture and you will be leaving. What's the game plan at that point? How do you set yourself up to make the current situation work best for your future?
I tend to err on the side of burning as few bridges as possible, but it really depends on the situation and why it's toxic. In my particular case, I didn't quit my job, but moved to a different team within the same company. I think that was only possible because I continued to do good work and tuned out the trigger to the toxic situation (a person and their comments on gender and masculinity).
I once quit because I didn't like where I would have gone (less and less technical stuffs) if I had continued doing it, even though the team was, in general, great. 2 years after I am really glad I made this choice as I really enjoy, more and more, learning about computer science fundamentals (thanks to the great articles published on dev.to!) to be able to understand how works (data-intensive AKA big data :p) frameworks under the hood.
Also, have you ever encountered the annoying "don't tell to anybody" policy when you talk to your manager about it? Especially in France, where we have almost all the time a 3-months notice for engineers.
You have to give a 3-month's notice to quit in France?
It depends on your company policy, the most of the time is 3 months for engineers, sometimes is 1 month.
That must be tough trying to keep productivity up if you know for sure you are going to leave for such a long duration.
The main idea is to respect your colleagues by getting sure that everything you know is written down in a documentation and train your substitute.
ah, I'm impressed and am at awe at that gesture.
I think 3-months notice is pretty common in Europe. The same goes for Germany. In Poland, where I leave we have 1-month notice unlesss we have more than 3 years experience. It's probably due to training of people who are going to move into your place or for the employer to find someone to take your place...
Some place at least here in Brazil ask 1 year without even work with same tec
Various reasons I've quit previous jobs/teams are
Not being challenged enough
Company morals became more and more corrupt, environment became cliquey and un-welcoming.
Once a safety concern forced me to quickly find another team
No manager support to grow and expand and reach my career goals
Continually being lied to about being able to take time off/ WFH when I needed to / BENEFITS / PAYDAY. Once my paycheck was a week late. My loan payments were not happy.
I think that's all the big things. My first job I was on 4 teams in under 2 years, and my second job I only lasted a year. Not a good track record thus far. lol.
Number 1) is hitting me hard at the moment. But I've only been there for 6 months! I'm not sure what to do about this situation at the moment, my CV would look bad.
First thing would be to talk to your manager and see if there’s anything you can do or another team that would be a better fit.