How Do You Decide It Is Time to Move On?

It is not always easy to know when it is the right time to move on from your current role. For me it was honestly really hard.

The decision to start interviewing again happened kind of organically for me. I had a FAANG recruiter reach out to me out of the blue and I decided it wouldn't hurt to just interview in order to gain the experience. It wasn't until I was denied after the technical interview that I got bit by the curiosity bug. I started wondering what it may be like working for another company, on a different product, in a different industry. This is when I really started to contemplate whether it was time for me to move on.

I can honestly say that the decision to leave the company I worked for and dive into another job search was not an easy one for me for many reasons.

1. I genuinely liked my coworkers.
2. I had a rough initial job search when looking for my first role (feel free to checkout my many other posts about that job search).
3. Interviewing just makes me incredibly anxious and I honestly think it always will no matter the years of experience I have under my belt.

Despite all of these reasons, I decided it was time to start interviewing again because I sat down and asked myself the hard questions. Is there possibility for promotion at my current role? How likely, if so? Am I feeling fulfilled? Am I feeling challenged still? Do the company's values still align with my own? Is my manager helping me progress professionally? etc.

I ultimately listened to myself and my instincts and did what was best for me.

How do y'all decide it is time to move on from your current role and start interviewing again?

Comments

[Phil Ashby]

For me, my various changes of role came about through different reasons, chronologically:

• I was sold as part of a going concern into a startup venture from a large org (I got a choice to walk away, but chose adventure!)
• I needed waaay more job security than the startup offered, especially after the Internet bubble burst in early 2000..
• The consultancy I joined was being slowly run down, and the original large org tempted me back with a really interesting challenge that I had to be full-time employed to take on (security clearance).
• The large org politics finally got to me, a colleague had already moved on and put me forward as the first architect in the growing mid-sized org (~350 people) they had joined with fun plans.
• The mid-sized org successfully grew to 1000+ people globally (yay me!), then the management changed over a couple of years (new people) to adopt a much more large-org-like ethos (seniors from large orgs coming in), which wasn't going to suit me long term, and I was getting a little tired of the grind. Looking at my financial position I realised I could retire in about 12 months, to put more time/effort into personal things, family, travel (hah!), community. Succession planning and following that through worked well!

[Omri Gabay]

Probably a highly relevant read for anyone interested in this post:

dev.to/annarankin/on-staying-4gfo

[Jakob Attkinson]

A coupe of years ago, I was working for a small company that out of a sudden made a bunch of questionable decisions (that seemed out of nowhere, mostly against what the technical team advised). When asked "why", the answer was "you need to trust we know what we are doing".

Such an answer was met with my resignation letter. I never looked back.