10 ms·

Quitting a New Job

191 points by fullung 6y ago

nickff 6y ago
I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. If someone's just started, they're generally a net-negative, so the individual is both drawing pay and sucking resources. This is almost 'quitting in-place'. If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in terms of pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the same of employees.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  > "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. How so? > If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in terms of pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the same of employees. I'm not sure what an ethical action from an employee would look like under this framework; quit and live without an income during any job search?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >How so? Yeah, I am confused by that one as well. If you are delivering value in the same capacity as you did before you started the job search (aka you ain't slacking and doing the bare minimum, with the rest overflowing onto the rest of engineers on your team), then how is it harmful or even noticeable to anyone at all?
- janosett 6y ago
  This is the risk with at-will employment in CA. The employer could very well decide after two days of you working there that they wanted to let you go -- there's no part of the contract keeping either side from ending things early. I don't think it's unethical to leave after a short amount of time given the employer has no equivalent expectation.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Would you have a different expectation if the employment agreement specified severance compensation for the employee, or if the law required severance?
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      If the law required severance the law is also pretty likely to make requirements of the employee as well so things will still be equal - when I say pretty likely I mean in every case I have ever seen.
    - janosett 6y ago
      Yes, I would openly encourage different types of work contracts in California / the US. I'd commit, for example, to 1-2 year auto-renewing contracts. Probably would need a few conditions: * If I am terminated without breach of contract I still will receive full compensation (at least for some months). * Contract may not be broken related to any unexpected health issues. * No arbitration requirement if one side accuses breach of contract. Of course this would benefit me more than the employer :-)
  - mathattack 6y ago
    It’s not unethical though it may take some explaining later on.
  - stanrivers 6y ago
    I agree with this. However, I will say unless there is something major wrong with you or major at the company, you are now going to be fired very quickly. The company also doesn’t want that reputation. I work in finance and certain hedge funds have a reputation for cutting people quickly they don’t like. It attracts people that are ok with that and most stay away. That all said - you got to look out for you and your family and friends, so you got to do it sometimes. Just wanted to say that, most of the times, the feeling of a commitment to each other goes both ways during the honeymoon period between company and person.
    - 6y ago
- whatever1 6y ago
  Don’t throw the ethics word in the sole business that the employees have some leverage. Employers will let you go without a second thought about your family / health situation and you will be told that this is just business.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Very true. My ex- was nervous about accepting a vet tech position for about a year before she started vet school. She was nervous because they "required"/"only wanted" someone who "was going to be there long term". I asked her: "They want you to make commitments to them that you will be there for a long term. Are they willing to make the same commitment to you? Or are you out the door the moment you are unneeded?" "Business is tough. But here at BlahCo, like we told you, we're a family. So like we required from you, we're keeping you on and paying you!" - hah, no. At least not the very very vast majority of the time, more like "Come in, close the door, have a seat".
- stale2002 6y ago
  > we should expect the same of employees. No we shouldn't. The reason being that this puts employees at a significant disadvantage compared to the multitude of companies doing much worse things. Obviously, there is always a line that one should not crossed. EX: don't do anything that is blatantly illegal. But taken advantage of at-will employment status, which is fully within someone's legal right to do so? Go for it. If the company is upset about it, then they should have offered better employment terms.
- yosefjaved1 6y ago
  I'm confused by the statement on ethics. What ethic is being broken by the employee, who is searching for a new job from a new company, while still under employment with his current company?
- analog31 6y ago
  I think the general theory is that the employee has the net disadvantage. If they lose their job, it's 100% of their livelihood, whereas for the employer, losing one employee out of a dozen or more is rarely an existential threat. Also, the employer has more power over the work environment.
- TylerE 6y ago
  How come almost no company that wants that kind of loyalty is willing to pay for it? Like, say, 6 months of guaranteed pay if you are let go for any reason non-criminal.
- maximente 6y ago
  capital can feel free to take a good faith first step by doing things such as sharing salaries, equity control, how much $ you would actually get were the company to be sold for $1B tomorrow, etc., or offering contractual employment (not at-will). until then, no thank you - if you are hoping to win people over by using warm-sounding moving targets like "ethics", well, hopefully we've seen enough of that to know better by now.
- logicchop 6y ago
  It is harmful to the team you're with, but there's no alternative right now. It is substantially easier to find a new position when you are currently employed, even if your stint has been brief. This is common knowledge, and as such self-reinforcing: if you quit, then apply somewhere else, the new place will assume you were forced out, since nobody on their own volition leaves a job before finding another one. So there's no way around it right now, so here's my advice: unless you are about to have a breakdown, never quit until you find something else.
- kemiller2002 6y ago
  When I was a manager, I had a rule that all my directs had to always be looking for new opportunities. If they find something better, I wanted them to leave. It made sure of 2 things for us: 1. We knew that anyone could leave at any moment, and we always planned accordingly. 2. We knew we had to keep people happy. If someone didn't like something, we had to change if possible or that person might leave. Conversations about having interviews and being contacted by recruiters became open, honest, and casual. There was no fear about someone might find out if you were looking, and people shared what they found out about talking to potential employers.
  - derekja 6y ago
    Had a manager at Microsoft that made me do that. Thought it was really weird at the time, and certainly wasn't anything like a company policy, but here we are 20 years later. It's a story I tell my reports all the time and it just works so much better to be able to rely on everyone being around because they have decided they want to be.
- mikestew 6y ago
  If we expect startups and companies to act ethically... Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago. So where does that leave me in light of the second half of your sentence? I know where it leaves me: it leaves me in the place where employers pushed for "at-will" employment in the state legislature, and just like an employer might want me to train my replacement, I'm going to "not quit until something better is lined up". I'll still do the work that I was hired to do, but I'm not quitting until it suits my needs, just like an employer won't keep me around even one minute longer than suits their needs. Ethics don't come into play, these are the rules that have been foisted upon us while no one asked us our opinion on the subject. To argue ethics in this case makes me suspect manipulation at worst, naivety at best.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  >I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. And how about their bills? People have to pay for shelter and other things. There's ethics and there are material needs. Not everyone is a made man / woman.
pavel_lishin 6y ago
> As I noted in a previous post, switching teams is a lot easier than switching jobs. I didn’t do this before I left Stripe because there weren’t any other teams that I was super enthusiastic about at the time. But, in retrospect, I probably should have given this a try before quitting. A few years ago, I was looking for a new job after being laid off. I had two competing companies to choose from, and chose the one that sounded like it would be more exciting. After about five months, though, I was miserable and called the other company to see if they'd still take me; they did, and I've been happily working here since. But after I announced my departure, a few engineers from other teams came up and told me they wished I'd let them know before quitting, since they would have been glad to have me on their team instead. They knew the reasons I was feeling frustrated, and felt confident that those issues were either not a problem on their team, or were at least being worked on. I still kind of wonder how true that was, and what would have happened if I'd made the switch internally, instead. Anyway, that was kind of a long and boring story - two whole paragraphs! - but I think this was probably the one of the more valuable parts of OP's post. An internal team change is often a lot less stressful and less risky than going to a different company.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Does this solve the other problem, that job hopping is the best way to get a raise?
  - 0x445442 6y ago
    Not only that, but I'm getting the feeling a developer's best option these days for maximizing pay increases is to spend their free time on Leetcode. Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective.
    - whitepaint 6y ago
      > Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective. Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead. I don't think whining will help them.
spectramax 6y ago
This statement is just sad "After a few weekends of furiously-paced Leetcoding".
- busterarm 6y ago
  Sad that this is what we all have to compete against.
- whitepaint 6y ago
  Reply that I posted to another comment: Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead. I don't think whining will help them.
  - swyx 6y ago
    because leetcode problems tune for a narrow set of jobs. many software jobs bear no relation to leetcode problems in practice. so the sadness is either that employers might be continuing interview processes that bear no relation to the real job (not always true, but also at least partially true), or that OP feels like he needs to grind leetcode to get a job, when he may have other practical skills and experience that would serve him better in the job search.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. Because they think that the employer should recognize their greatness by just looking at their resume and having a simple conversation with them, instead of assessing them on some skill that they have to brush up on. After being on the interviewer side myself recently, I think those people just don't realize how hiring actually works. I've seen some people with impressive resumes and who could bullshit their way around a conversation greatly, to the point where they make you believe they are one of those magic 10x-ers. And when you get to algorithmic problems, they struggle to figure out when or how to use a hashmap and cannot even do some super basic bruteforce parsing of binary trees or even know what they are used for. Of course there are some edge cases where a great developer would fail a leetcode-style interview, but those exceptions are very rare and only seem to affirm the rule. I know that leetcode style interviewing is far from perfect, but I struggle to think of anything that would work better. A take-home coding project sounds like a great option, until you realize that each one of them takes about a week of working on it a couple of hours a day, which is an unacceptable time sink for any adult with responsibilities and who interviews at more than one place at a time.
gnicholas 6y ago
I once quit a job after 6 weeks. From the day I started (when I saw my boss for about 30 seconds, was not given a computer or any information about how to get started/set up), it was clear things were not going well. The team I was joining had mostly disbanded (a mix of fired, left for greener pastures, or transferred to another region). As a result, there was no institutional knowledge, just as my team was put in charge of handling an immense new project. I could see that in the best case, I would be there long enough to get up to speed on my position, just in time to leave. That wouldn't do a service to the company, so I gave my notice after 6 weeks. To my boss' credit, he offered that I could stick around for a while until I found my next gig. Looking back, I guess this served his interests also — it would have been hard for him to recruit for this position if a newly-arrived team member left so quickly, following on the heels of several other departures.
- mikelevins 6y ago
  I quit one after two weeks once. It was a small-to-medium consulting company that talked a great game in their interviews and then turned out to be a complete clown show. After two weeks I was panicking over things like customer Hipchat meetings in which participants were using other channels to mock the customers (not shared with the customers, of course) with porn clips. I noped out of there after two weeks. They gave me puppydog eyes and made all sorts of promises but...nope. Just, nope.
  - pbrb 6y ago
    Was the consulting company named after a type of gem stone? I had an eerily similar experience, that I also left after two weeks. The weirdest part of it all was the manager who was part of it all. She used to send a group chat saying she was going to take a nap, close her office door, turn the lights off, and lay down on the floor to sleep for a few hours. What really did it for me was when we all went out for someone's "birthday" (it wasn't their birthday, the team had put cards in at a few restaurants with different dates for their birthdays to get free stuff, whatever, the restaurants don't care, but it was just weird) and most of the team berated a guy who was trying not to drink so he didn't order a beer. You could tell the guy was uncomfortable, and they just kept goading him for the entire 2hr lunch. After a week and a half I called back a company I had turned down for this one and asked if they would still take me. Started there the next Monday. That was 10yrs and 2 jobs ago, and easily the best decision I had made for my career.
tayo42 6y ago
I haven't had success switching teams at all. I had a few that wanted to still interview me. I had a vp say he won't let me switch. The only time I ever switched teams, I had that decision made for me, worked out fortunately. Having another internal team still want to do a technical interview was ridiculous to hear though.
- st1x7 6y ago
  A lot of this comes down to company culture and size. In some companies it's completely expected and even encouraged to switch teams. In others you're treated basically like an external hire.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  This is almost as bad as those folks who have to interview for their own jobs...usually during lay offs, or in the midst of big organizational changes. Maybe on paper some of these ideas seem ok, but it really is either silly or humiliating or both. EDIT: To clarify, I'm referring here to folks who are already employed at some firm, and that same firm is asking them to interview (again) for their existing job, or a new job that is almost identical to the legacy job...all within the same firm.
- jacurtis 6y ago
  I have a friend at Microsoft that decided to switch teams. He absolutely regretted it. This isn't to say Microsoft is bad (he had plenty of good things to say about it) but he said that switching teams gets really messy. The people on the previous team feel betrayed, the people on the new team feel like you are an opportunist, and unless you are running away from a specific department manager there is likely going to be very little change between the teams. He also complained that he feels like he started a new job, is starting on the bottom of the new team, but without the benefits of new job title or salary. He regretted switching to the new team, when he expressed his disastisfaction to the new team manager the team manager felt like he simply wasn't a good fit and transferred him to a third team. Now he is the guy who has been on 3 teams in 6 months and he feels all the same problems as before, but with the label of being a "team switcher" whenever something doesn't go right. Over Christmas he told me he plans to start applying for new jobs outside of the company at the start of the year. As a manager, I have personally moved employees from other teams to my team twice and neither time did it work out well. There is often a reason that the previous team wasn't working out. Many people see switching teams as an easy and secure way to get a new job. But it is a lateral move and not a job switch. I haven't seen it work out well in either of the two times I have allowed it. Both employees lasted less than 6 months after switching teams.
mathattack 6y ago
Trying out the commute is huge. Losing two to three hours a day is a big drain. Worth it if you have an ideal job but not otherwise.
richardwhiuk 6y ago
> the upper rungs of Stripe’s engineering individual contributor (IC) ladder put a lot of emphasis on cross-team coordination and other, managerial-like activities that I didn’t enjoy and felt I wasn’t very good at. That's just the reality of senior IC engineering positions. At some point, there's a limit to the amount that you can contribute by sheerly by your own work - to have a bigger impact, you'll need to need influence/improve/impact others
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  You can also quit working for other people and pursue your own projects or seek out contract work. Yes yes, easier said than done, but so is advancing along a company’s career path.
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    a) Contracting definitely requires huge amounts of communication - you need to constantly ramp up on new areas, and handover to people once you are done. b) A contractor who can only provide a single headcount is extremely limiting, and will get treated like a capped IC.
- asciident 6y ago
  This is true. It takes a while for some people to really accept this, as it breaks the lone coder myth. There are some people who consider communication and influence to be politics, and think they can do their job solely by programming.
  - nraynaud 6y ago
    you can also lead by example instead being verbal and deliberate in your communication.
  - syndacks 6y ago
    The people downvoting you are likely those you reference. Which is painfully ironic as this comment is should at the top of the thread: work is fundamentally a social endeavour, and if you expect to be promoted, you need to demonstrate the ability to think/talk/socialize/synthesize challenging problems that almost always require cooperation if not collaboration with others.
dvt 6y ago
I've done this before. Got an offer while I was still interviewing with a few other companies. Accepted the offer then a few weeks later another, significantly better, offer came through. I have absolutely no qualms about it, and I don't put the tiny stint on my resume. My work and expertise speaks for itself. It's sad that job hunting has become rife with Machiavellian machinations in the past three decades, but this is the world we live in. Acting otherwise is self-sabotaging. Long gone are the days where we'd become "company men" loyal to CEOs and corporate pillars. We'd get to retire in our late 50s with pretty wives, a few kids, and decent savings. Job hopping is the most reliable way to get a raise. If you don't job hop, you might be on the chopping block come the next layoff wave. This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. It is what it is.
- jfk13 6y ago
  > This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid. It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely overpaid. Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of magnitude more value" may be questionable. Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates. "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think." The organization they're employed at. Which is obvious because we're talking about jobs here; that's what salaries are, in part, based on.
    - madsbuch 6y ago
      In that case, finance people with said bonuses indeed make that kind of value. Though I am not quite sure the average finance person makes more than the average software engineer.
francisofascii 6y ago
I definitely can relate to this. I also went to work for a software/hardware company which had tight, open office desks, hardware everywhere, no remote options, longer hours, stressful deadlines, etc. I knew I made the wrong decision during my orientation. I choose option 3, which was was stick it out for two years. Ironically by the time 2 years was up, I was in a much happier state. I had just become used to the situation. I learned a ton from the experience and all the smart people working there, but I would never want to go back.
Animats 6y ago
At Stripe and each of my jobs before that, I had had a short commute to a beautiful office, and got to experience the instant gratification associated with developing purely software-based products. Now, I was stuck taking a crowded train to a dark office littered with hardware parts, working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing and road safety. This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed different. He may also have felt out of place with people who know computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. If all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in a robotics company.
- microtherion 6y ago
  Apart from "webcrap", this seems an entirely apt comment to me. If you join a hardware company, you should expect to get some grease on you.
- goodpoint 6y ago
  This person in the article is whining because hardware is difficult and software is easy in comparison. And calls it as "littered with hardware parts" And HN responds by upvoting the article and downvoting @Animats!
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  Pretty rude. I know a few folks at stripe and I actually interviewed the author for another robitics company (which he passed on =)) and i can assure you he doesn’t “just know webcrap”
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    It's likely this person is good technically, and there might be a place for them in large corps where software engineers are just cogs, but their attitude and their resume suggests some issues: their resume is listed with year long stints in every major company, and their attitude suggests that apparently nothing can keep them happy. And also not interested in solving the most important problems (as evidenced by the knock on what sounds like a reasonable promotion deal), just the ones they might (or might not, even they don't know apparently) be interested in. Sounds elitist as hell and doesn't reflect someone who's genuinely seeking growth in their career. Which is fine, compared to twitch streamers making millions for doing squats this is still a great career, but if anyone's looking at all for constructive criticism then they should introspect how priviliged all this stuff sounds like and whether it's healthy for their own development to live in such a bubble for too long.
corytheboyd 6y ago
On the point of returning to a company you previously left for good reasons... don’t. I made this mistake, and things of course boiled to a breaking point for me after another year. Chances are nothing has changed, listen to that gut feeling. This probably isn’t everyone’s experience I don’t know, but it’s my experience for what it’s worth to anyone reading this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
01100011 6y ago
I realized a few days into my current job that it was a bad fit for me. Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation package if I left, so I decided to stick it out. Last year I interviewed with a company and was ready to take the job but I had drinks with the manager and decided it was too much of a brogrammer shop for me. Looking back, if I had taken the job, I would have worked with friends, the brogrammer aspect wasn't as bad as I thought, and I'd be planning my retirement after 3 years of work. Sometimes you just never know. It does pay to do your due diligence though. Same thing with buying a house. Big changes, like jobs or living arrangements, demand adequate investigation.
- paxys 6y ago
  > Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation package if I left, so I decided to stick it out. For the future, this kind of stuff is very easy to negotiate with the new company, and should definitely not be the thing holding you back. E.g. "you would have paid relocation for me but I'm in the same city so help me pay back my current company for it instead".
  - jupiter90000 6y ago
    Not necessarily, but worth a try. Had to turn down an offer from a prospective employer due to a company unwilling to help with this, ended up burning alot of my and their time for no good reason and it was made clear early in the process this was needed.
- shuckles 6y ago
  I have never heard of anyone paying back signing or relocation bonuses if they didn’t want to. It’s usually not worth it for the company to pursue.
pearjuice 6y ago
Though I like the sentiment of the post, it's funny and maybe remarkable how software engineers are in such a privileged bubble most probably don't even realize. Quitting jobs after a year at arguably the most innovative fintech company because you didn't feel satisfied, taking a vacation, casually mentioning you can "hack" interviews by focusing on leetcode problems for some weekends, working somewhere for 2 days, taking another vacation and then switching to a new job. Probably hopping through a few salary negotiations and gaining tens of thousands of dollars. Be sure to take a moment to realize.
- jmkd 6y ago
  I didn't enjoy the sentiment of the post as it came across as far too entitled. - Disappointed that Stripe wouldn't just give him a job and the same pay back. - Referring to the new job as a downgrade when in fact it was simply a bad fit. - Job hopping every 18 months as if that is perfectly acceptable and sustainable for the employers.
  - pearjuice 6y ago
    I don't agree with all his actions but I appreciate the transparency. The writing gives exposure, documentation of his CV and is arguably showcasing a skill. Job hopping isn't sustainable and shouldn't become a permanent pattern, but it's not unacceptable. Early career it's the fastest way to gain salary, experience different kitchens/industries and arguably just how the job economy is; you will not be rewarded for job loyalty so why optimize for it.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  Nonsense. There are plenty of white-collar and even some blue-color jobs where it’s the same or even more extreme. Personal anecdote - when i was working low level construction jobs during pre-2008 boom two of my foremen quit without notice to grab a job somewhere else. A lot of companies don’t really optimize for tenured employees anyway so you get what you pay for in a sellers market
microtherion 6y ago
I was set to criticize OP for never having tried out the commute, until I remembered that I once took a job without having worked or lived a single day within 9 time zones of the place of employment. It's somewhat par for the course for foreign hires, and indeed, some of them discover they (or, even more frequently, their partner) don't enjoy the location. I did ask them to show me what a typical office would look like, though.
Dig1t 6y ago
I also did this, worked at a startup for 3 months and left for FAANG. Everyone was surprised, and my manager wasn’t super happy, but on the whole my coworkers understood and tbh it was the best decision of my life. Definitely do not regret it in any way.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  They'd be quick to lay you off when times get tough. I'm sure you wouldn't be super happy if that occurred.
deeteecee 6y ago
A pretty informative post. I like the mindset and towards the end, yup, the only big mistake that was made was not trying to switch to other teams at Stripe first. But certainly nothing wrong with switching jobs like that. Live and learn.
gregkerzhner 6y ago
"When I started my second job search, I was worried that the short tenure in the job I was trying to leave would be a turn-off to perspective employers. In reality, however, it wasn’t a big deal- people asked about it, but seemed satisfied with my 20 second summary and then moved on to other things." Alternatively, you can simply leave your new position off your resume and not talk about it in the interviews at all. There is nothing wrong with saying "My last gig was a software engineer at Stripe. I left there to focus on looking for a better fitting opportunity". There is no need to have your resume be a complete record of your employment. In fact, such resumes are often less desirable because they are long and don't highlight any specific strengths. Instead, make your resume highlight your most relevant and best accomplishments. I've only been a professional for 10 years, but I am already condensing my resume, removing descriptions from my first few jobs. I imagine that as time goes on, I will even group jobs together like "2010 - 2015 - Software engineer at Companies A, B, C" to keep my resume a nice, neat one pager, and focus on the more important things I have done recently. Like the OP, I've also quit two jobs shortly after I stared them during my career and those are definitely not on the list - its simply not relevant.
- dilly_li 6y ago
  Well, most companies run background checks which would reveal all the short and long jobs. At that point, you would still need to explain it somehow.
  - gregkerzhner 6y ago
    A few things here: 1. Background check companies usually only contact the positions you list to verify your dates of employment and title. They probably won't contact a job you don't let them know about. 2. If it helps you sleep at night, you can still fill out the background check form accurately, but leave stuff off your resume / not talk about it in the interview. Again, there is no rule that you need to talk about every job you have ever had in chronological order on your resume or in the interviews. As long as there is nothing untrue, or some sort of strange conflicts of interest, you are totally welcome to omit things that aren't relevant. 3. In the rare, extremely unlikely chance that you have to explain yourself, it seems perfectly acceptable to say "I've only been at this job for a few weeks. I am not sure I am going to stay longer, so I didn't think it was relevant". If you are interviewing for the CIA, then definitely list every job. If it's a normal tech job, people simply don't care. Fill your precious chance to impress your interviewer with things that are actually impressive.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Having worked in hardware for most of my career, I can tell you that hardware labs are generally dark and messy. Commutes are hell. If you are working on hardware, especially secret hardware, it's unlikely that you'll be allowed to work from home. Note in the Apple Press Events, they always have this zoom thing, where they burrow into the earth to show you the hardware labs. Sort of like The IT Crowd...
iamleppert 6y ago
Seems to me like he felt out of place at a robotics company where the bar is quite a bit higher than your typical webapp company. Different strokes, different folks.
- goldforever 6y ago
  Exactly this!
lordnacho 6y ago
Nothing wrong with quitting early. I'm a bit surprised at the reasoning, after all he knew how long the commute was, and what the product was. But it's fine, we don't all know how we'll feel, like any relationship that goes from maybe to signed up. As an employer, I tend to think we dodged a bullet. I've had one or two early quits over the years, and it's fine, we mostly avoided investing too much in them. People come, they sniff around for a week, they leave. Or they come, we find out we don't like them, and they go. Both have happened. I've also been on the employee side of that. I joined, and then found the place to be a mess. So I left immediately when something else presented itself a few weeks later. The thing about jobs, as opposed to school, is that the only way a job ends is that someone calls time on it. School ends because you're done. You graduated, passed the viva, whatever. A job you have to decide to end if you don't like it. You can't just slog it out through that course that you don't like, because there's no end. I wouldn't worry at all about the CV impact. Chances are you can explain what happened if you decide to have it on your CV. Alternatively, I don't think anyone would hold it against you if you omitted or obscured a few weeks of your life. I certainly wouldn't.
twodave 6y ago
Oh man. I left a remote job in like, late 2017 because of some problems I had with their ethics. I took a job that paid less and required me to drive (not too far, and I was missing seeing people's faces a bit anyway). It was a bigger company that had acquired probably 7-8 businesses--my team's job was to integrate them all together to help the business operate more fluidly. It took me about 2 days to realize that a) the project was doomed, b) all the people working here (except Dave, the guy who told me to "abandon all hope" as I sat down on the first day) were just faking it and c) literally every person with decision-making capacity was incompetent. The SMEs were all siloed into a different (you might even say competing) team. They were actually trying to encode all the business rules into something akin to MuleSoft. They were inaccessible to us. The architect on the project couldn't write code to save his life. He was in love with some inane microservices architecture for which the example project wouldn't even compile. It was basically a mock of a microservice architecture, but built on top of SOAP. It was a bunch of crazy nonsense. He got fired shortly after I left. The development manager was a nice enough guy, probably too nice. I'm not sure what he did other than set up interviews for me and a couple of the other senior developers to conduct. I left after 3 months, for a job that was still a pay-cut from my first job, and was twice as far to commute to. But at least it wasn't a total crapshow. I still keep up with Dave though. So I guess it wasn't a total waste :)
trentnix 6y ago
This post was just a couple of months too late. I recently started a new, lucrative team lead job in a problem space I was interested in that promised to be structured, ambitious, and full of opportunity. I even requested a follow-up post-offer to make sure it was a good fit. But after only two weeks, I realized it was a command-and-control death march. No product ownership. Design your database up front. Complete waterfall but with developers and team leads responsible for each phase. A drive-by micromanaging executive with a team far too large to micromanage. Implementation teams of (only) junior developers had spent months prior to my arrival talking/meeting/designing - with virtually nothing to show for it. Every day was a calendar full of meetings to prepare for other meetings. Other teams and their managers were reporting fraudulent statuses creating the illusion of progress when no actual progress actually existed. Asking questions or offering any pushback was met with passive-aggressive anger. Any effort to create a little bit of structure amidst the chaos was, almost immediately, thrown away. So I decided it was best if I resigned. They even kept me around for a couple of weeks after I resigned which was nice, and that two weeks confirmed I made the right decision. A number of other team members and peers reached out and expressed agreement or envy - they wanted to leave as well. But despite those assurances that I'd made the right choice, it was a tough pill to swallow. I've never worked anywhere less than 18 months. I love building good software and I hate job hunting. I'm debating whether to put this experience on my resume or not because it's such an outlier in my professional experience and was such a short stent. Here's hoping the next opportunity is a better match. If you're an employer in DFW (or willing to take on a remote) looking for a Team Lead or hands-on Development Manager that can code, I'd love to chat.
otagekki 6y ago
As a CS graduate I had this a few years ago. After 4 months, I felt numb and that would last every week from Monday to Friday. I wanted to be somewhere else so bad. But instead of option 2 ("Start exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up"), I chose option 3 ("Stick it out for at least a year") for these reasons: - With only €800 saved up (had just invested €5,000 in a fishing business that had failed) at the moment I realized it wasn't a good fit I couldn't afford even a month of bills. - It would look bad on the resume, and might have to justify it to next prospective employers. Also due to unfortunate circumstances, my life was administratively a mess: there was a massive 6-month delay in the delivery of new residence permits. And by the time my papers got processed, social security information was no longer up-to-date (only valid for 3 months), causing an additional nerve-wracking 5-month delay. As a consequence I couldn't quit or even get fired as, in addition to the mess above, I would have to update employment information (and get possibly another 5-month delay). After my annual review with my boss and a PIP, my salary got cut 10% (had no choice) The happy ending? When I finally managed to get my residence permit and successfully updated my social security information 18 months after I joined the company. I looked for and found a new job, handed in my resignation and joined the other company.
narag 6y ago
I quit a job before even starting. They called me and told me that they had decided to pay me a good chunk less than we had agreed upon. I was in the last days of my two weeks notice for my current job. I had no option. Except that... five minutes later, my current boss made a counter-offer. And ten minutes later it was me who called those charming people to apologize for the inconvenience. After what they had done, it was a surprise how bad they took it. Very serious threats to my future employability and well being. I really suffered during the whole call, trying not to laugh and keep it professional. It was also a hardware company. I worked for another hardware company later. Not sure if there are other kind of hardware companies there in the Valley. But for me, there's a clear rule: never work for another hardware company.
- fastball 6y ago
  Given their behavior, sounds like you dodged a bullet anyway, but this is also a good time to point out if you're job hunting while already employed, you should never give in your notice at current co until you have a signed employment contract from the new one.
  - narag 6y ago
    I had a contract signed. No idea what happens where you live, but in Spain, a signed job contract is not worth the paper it's written on. They could just fire me the first day (there's always a "test period" during which they can do it no questions asked). We operate with some good faith assumptions. Actually it's the only time that such a thing happened to me.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  Margins for hardware tend to be thinner than software which typically means less salary, not as nice offices, and more bean counters. I imagine there are exceptions to this rule (Nvidia).
  - narag 6y ago
    I didn't care about offices, they were nice in the other place that I worked years later. It's the lack of software engineering culture. They followed the "flag oriented programming" paradigm. The company tanked a few months after I left anyway, so no bad feelings. Edit: I meant the other hardware company. The we-dont-honor-contracts one I guess it's still there making the world a nicer place.
bachmeier 6y ago
Completely different type of work, but I once quit a new job at a factory after two days. First day, I arrive early to fill out the paperwork and watch the HR job safety video. Video finishes and I wait for the HR person to return. After a few minutes, I go look for her, but can't find her so I go back to the video room. Eventually someone else (upset) comes in and tells me that I'm supposed to be working rather than sitting there. I tell him I'm waiting for the HR lady to come back. "She went home for the day." Okay, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Guy gets even more upset, takes me to the back room, points at one of the other workers, tells me to do what he's doing, and then I never see him again. The only time anyone talks to me is (a) to tell me every couple hours I'm doing something wrong, (b) tell me it's break time, and (c) to shout at me for coming back from break two minutes early. (c) was my supervisor, and that was the only contact I had with him. When the second day was just like the first, I decided I didn't need that job.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- reffaelwallen 6y ago
  holy, what industry?
  - bachmeier 6y ago
    I don't know. They never gave me any training, never told me what the product was or who they were selling it to. It might not seem possible to not know the industry, but I responded to a job ad, so all I knew was the address and the name of the company. I posted a longer version on my website: https://lancebachmeier.com/trivia/bad-job.html https://lancebachmeier.com/trivia/bad-job.html
yourabstraction 6y ago
I'm about a month into a new FAANG job, and I hate it so far. I can't decide if it's better to quit sooner as to not waste the companies time (and avoid suffering more), or if I should give it some more time. My team's work seems super boring, I'm not interested in the tech we use, the setup process has been a shit-show, and I'm feeling zero motivation. I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past, but I decided I'd try to do things differently by cramming leetcode and chasing that fat FAANG pay check. Now I'm kicking myself, this is what happens when you follow money over passion. The silly thing is I'm fine financially, yet I lusted after a job with technology I'm not interested in working on just for the lure of the almighty dollar.
- war1025 6y ago
  > I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past I saw an anecdote a few years ago about a hiring manager basically saying, "If you worked happily for a small startup, you will most likely be unable to put up with the bureaucracy of a large enterprise from now on" I've often wondered how much truth there was to that statement.
  - capiki 6y ago
    Probably a lot. Unless you're getting paid enough to put up with it:) That being said, I think a lot people that aren't singularly money-focused overestimate how much money will outweigh other factors in their job.
    - yourabstraction 6y ago
      I was super motivated by the money when I was doing leetcode prep, and then when negotiating and playing offers against each other. And that makes sense, the work I was doing had a direct correlation to the total compensation I ended up signing for. But now that those fat pay checks are coming in, they provide zero motivation, it's just a slightly bigger number in my bank account.
      - 6y ago
novask 6y ago
I'll put my experiences down as a cautionary tale. I've had 3 relatively short stints in tech jobs, but none where I left responsibilities on the table, like leaving in the middle of a project, or promising some work only to bail. Notice was always given, and I made the best effort to transition by completing all work before the end date. My reasons for leaving each are a bit more serious than a lifestyle downgrade, but none-the-less, that doesn't matter to future employers. There are lots of sectors to jump between that utilize programming and IT knowledge (DevOps, Cloud roles, security roles), so even when you go to try them out, it's being considered a job hop by recruiters/hiring managers. If it doesn't work out, you're now potentially job hopping twice when you try to go back to something you know you can do due to world events. Not only is this the major take-away from the article, it also applies to switching industries, and in my experience for switching industries, it applies even if you have a recent certification in the new industry which gets requested by a lot of companies: >It’s ok to quit after a few weeks (just don’t make it a pattern) Unfortunately, companies won't see the notice you gave or the transition work you did. Those companies likely can't verify that, so they really only have your employment dates to look at. If they don't like it, they just won't put you forward regardless of how much they like your skills. For some people, there will be companies where they don't fit in with because of personality traits. If you get particularly unlucky, you'll run into 2 or 3 of those companies in quick succession, with the latter positions being even worse than the first, and so you'll have to stick it out and endure more. This unluckiness doesn't do you any favors, though. But it's really up to you if those personality traits need to be fixed or not. The only thing that seems to count is your tenure, so don't fuck it up. You might not even get to the leetcode step if you do.
- burnthrow 6y ago
  > The only thing that seems to count is your tenure, so don't fuck it up. You might not even get to the leetcode step if you do. This is flat wrong. Are you only applying to Fortune 500s or something?
  - novask 6y ago
    How do you prove to the next company that you won't leave? You really can't. You can easily prove you've been working on leetcode problems. If they don't want to hire people with short stays, you can't really fix that. If they don't want to hire people who haven't practiced leetcode, you can fix that. So to an employer, does it really matter if you are good at leetcode if they feel you won't stay around long? So the tenure takes precedence. Some companies won't care, but finding those is just about as easy as finding a company that's a good fit before you've worked there.
wolco2 6y ago
It wasn't fair to others for you to stick it out because your heart wasn't in it so you wasted everyone's time training you for a few months only to quit when you are finally half productive. The real reason you left is the commute and office decor. Moving from a 15 walk to an hour trainride is a big change. Moving to an environment where people care more about product than impressing people is a huge culture shift. In the end covid would have forced everyone wfh anyhow. "I figured it wasn’t really fair to my colleagues at Nuro to stick in a job that my heart wasn’t in." So, in the end, I decided that option 2 was the best fit for me. I continued at Nuro and did my best to get up-to-speed and to contribute to my team’s work, but at the same time jumped right back into the job market"
deleted 6y ago
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imranq 6y ago
Honestly the best perk in a job is a short commute. I would take a huge paycut for a shorter commute. Anything over a twenty minute drive is a no go for me. A five minute bike ride is ideal.
ambar123 6y ago
How to make experience letter... I have been fired without experience letter...??
mac01021 6y ago
Tangentially, how many jobs do you normally need to apply for at once to have multiple offers on the table at once? I once applied to 7-10 jobs in the same week. Of the 4-5 that decided to interview me, the interview processes didn't even interleave at all.

191 points by fullung 6y ago

I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. If someone's just started, they're generally a net-negative, so the individual is both drawing pay and sucking resources. This is almost 'quitting in-place'. If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in terms of pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the same of employees.

pavel_lishin 6y ago
> "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. How so? > If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in terms of pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the same of employees. I'm not sure what an ethical action from an employee would look like under this framework; quit and live without an income during any job search?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- filoleg 6y ago
  >How so? Yeah, I am confused by that one as well. If you are delivering value in the same capacity as you did before you started the job search (aka you ain't slacking and doing the bare minimum, with the rest overflowing onto the rest of engineers on your team), then how is it harmful or even noticeable to anyone at all?
janosett 6y ago
This is the risk with at-will employment in CA. The employer could very well decide after two days of you working there that they wanted to let you go -- there's no part of the contract keeping either side from ending things early. I don't think it's unethical to leave after a short amount of time given the employer has no equivalent expectation.
- nickff 6y ago
  Would you have a different expectation if the employment agreement specified severance compensation for the employee, or if the law required severance?
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    If the law required severance the law is also pretty likely to make requirements of the employee as well so things will still be equal - when I say pretty likely I mean in every case I have ever seen.
  - janosett 6y ago
    Yes, I would openly encourage different types of work contracts in California / the US. I'd commit, for example, to 1-2 year auto-renewing contracts. Probably would need a few conditions: * If I am terminated without breach of contract I still will receive full compensation (at least for some months). * Contract may not be broken related to any unexpected health issues. * No arbitration requirement if one side accuses breach of contract. Of course this would benefit me more than the employer :-)
- mathattack 6y ago
  It’s not unethical though it may take some explaining later on.
- stanrivers 6y ago
  I agree with this. However, I will say unless there is something major wrong with you or major at the company, you are now going to be fired very quickly. The company also doesn’t want that reputation. I work in finance and certain hedge funds have a reputation for cutting people quickly they don’t like. It attracts people that are ok with that and most stay away. That all said - you got to look out for you and your family and friends, so you got to do it sometimes. Just wanted to say that, most of the times, the feeling of a commitment to each other goes both ways during the honeymoon period between company and person.
  - 6y ago
whatever1 6y ago
Don’t throw the ethics word in the sole business that the employees have some leverage. Employers will let you go without a second thought about your family / health situation and you will be told that this is just business.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Very true. My ex- was nervous about accepting a vet tech position for about a year before she started vet school. She was nervous because they "required"/"only wanted" someone who "was going to be there long term". I asked her: "They want you to make commitments to them that you will be there for a long term. Are they willing to make the same commitment to you? Or are you out the door the moment you are unneeded?" "Business is tough. But here at BlahCo, like we told you, we're a family. So like we required from you, we're keeping you on and paying you!" - hah, no. At least not the very very vast majority of the time, more like "Come in, close the door, have a seat".
stale2002 6y ago
> we should expect the same of employees. No we shouldn't. The reason being that this puts employees at a significant disadvantage compared to the multitude of companies doing much worse things. Obviously, there is always a line that one should not crossed. EX: don't do anything that is blatantly illegal. But taken advantage of at-will employment status, which is fully within someone's legal right to do so? Go for it. If the company is upset about it, then they should have offered better employment terms.
yosefjaved1 6y ago
I'm confused by the statement on ethics. What ethic is being broken by the employee, who is searching for a new job from a new company, while still under employment with his current company?
analog31 6y ago
I think the general theory is that the employee has the net disadvantage. If they lose their job, it's 100% of their livelihood, whereas for the employer, losing one employee out of a dozen or more is rarely an existential threat. Also, the employer has more power over the work environment.
TylerE 6y ago
How come almost no company that wants that kind of loyalty is willing to pay for it? Like, say, 6 months of guaranteed pay if you are let go for any reason non-criminal.
maximente 6y ago
capital can feel free to take a good faith first step by doing things such as sharing salaries, equity control, how much $ you would actually get were the company to be sold for $1B tomorrow, etc., or offering contractual employment (not at-will). until then, no thank you - if you are hoping to win people over by using warm-sounding moving targets like "ethics", well, hopefully we've seen enough of that to know better by now.
logicchop 6y ago
It is harmful to the team you're with, but there's no alternative right now. It is substantially easier to find a new position when you are currently employed, even if your stint has been brief. This is common knowledge, and as such self-reinforcing: if you quit, then apply somewhere else, the new place will assume you were forced out, since nobody on their own volition leaves a job before finding another one. So there's no way around it right now, so here's my advice: unless you are about to have a breakdown, never quit until you find something else.
kemiller2002 6y ago
When I was a manager, I had a rule that all my directs had to always be looking for new opportunities. If they find something better, I wanted them to leave. It made sure of 2 things for us: 1. We knew that anyone could leave at any moment, and we always planned accordingly. 2. We knew we had to keep people happy. If someone didn't like something, we had to change if possible or that person might leave. Conversations about having interviews and being contacted by recruiters became open, honest, and casual. There was no fear about someone might find out if you were looking, and people shared what they found out about talking to potential employers.
- derekja 6y ago
  Had a manager at Microsoft that made me do that. Thought it was really weird at the time, and certainly wasn't anything like a company policy, but here we are 20 years later. It's a story I tell my reports all the time and it just works so much better to be able to rely on everyone being around because they have decided they want to be.
mikestew 6y ago
If we expect startups and companies to act ethically... Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago. So where does that leave me in light of the second half of your sentence? I know where it leaves me: it leaves me in the place where employers pushed for "at-will" employment in the state legislature, and just like an employer might want me to train my replacement, I'm going to "not quit until something better is lined up". I'll still do the work that I was hired to do, but I'm not quitting until it suits my needs, just like an employer won't keep me around even one minute longer than suits their needs. Ethics don't come into play, these are the rules that have been foisted upon us while no one asked us our opinion on the subject. To argue ethics in this case makes me suspect manipulation at worst, naivety at best.
mancerayder 6y ago
>I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with. And how about their bills? People have to pay for shelter and other things. There's ethics and there are material needs. Not everyone is a made man / woman.

pavel_lishin 6y ago

> As I noted in a previous post, switching teams is a lot easier than switching jobs. I didn’t do this before I left Stripe because there weren’t any other teams that I was super enthusiastic about at the time. But, in retrospect, I probably should have given this a try before quitting. A few years ago, I was looking for a new job after being laid off. I had two competing companies to choose from, and chose the one that sounded like it would be more exciting. After about five months, though, I was miserable and called the other company to see if they'd still take me; they did, and I've been happily working here since. But after I announced my departure, a few engineers from other teams came up and told me they wished I'd let them know before quitting, since they would have been glad to have me on their team instead. They knew the reasons I was feeling frustrated, and felt confident that those issues were either not a problem on their team, or were at least being worked on. I still kind of wonder how true that was, and what would have happened if I'd made the switch internally, instead. Anyway, that was kind of a long and boring story - two whole paragraphs! - but I think this was probably the one of the more valuable parts of OP's post. An internal team change is often a lot less stressful and less risky than going to a different company.

MattGaiser 6y ago
Does this solve the other problem, that job hopping is the best way to get a raise?
- 0x445442 6y ago
  Not only that, but I'm getting the feeling a developer's best option these days for maximizing pay increases is to spend their free time on Leetcode. Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective.
  - whitepaint 6y ago
    > Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective. Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead. I don't think whining will help them.

spectramax 6y ago

This statement is just sad "After a few weekends of furiously-paced Leetcoding".

busterarm 6y ago
Sad that this is what we all have to compete against.
whitepaint 6y ago
Reply that I posted to another comment: Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead. I don't think whining will help them.
- swyx 6y ago
  because leetcode problems tune for a narrow set of jobs. many software jobs bear no relation to leetcode problems in practice. so the sadness is either that employers might be continuing interview processes that bear no relation to the real job (not always true, but also at least partially true), or that OP feels like he needs to grind leetcode to get a job, when he may have other practical skills and experience that would serve him better in the job search.
- filoleg 6y ago
  >I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. Because they think that the employer should recognize their greatness by just looking at their resume and having a simple conversation with them, instead of assessing them on some skill that they have to brush up on. After being on the interviewer side myself recently, I think those people just don't realize how hiring actually works. I've seen some people with impressive resumes and who could bullshit their way around a conversation greatly, to the point where they make you believe they are one of those magic 10x-ers. And when you get to algorithmic problems, they struggle to figure out when or how to use a hashmap and cannot even do some super basic bruteforce parsing of binary trees or even know what they are used for. Of course there are some edge cases where a great developer would fail a leetcode-style interview, but those exceptions are very rare and only seem to affirm the rule. I know that leetcode style interviewing is far from perfect, but I struggle to think of anything that would work better. A take-home coding project sounds like a great option, until you realize that each one of them takes about a week of working on it a couple of hours a day, which is an unacceptable time sink for any adult with responsibilities and who interviews at more than one place at a time.

gnicholas 6y ago

I once quit a job after 6 weeks. From the day I started (when I saw my boss for about 30 seconds, was not given a computer or any information about how to get started/set up), it was clear things were not going well. The team I was joining had mostly disbanded (a mix of fired, left for greener pastures, or transferred to another region). As a result, there was no institutional knowledge, just as my team was put in charge of handling an immense new project. I could see that in the best case, I would be there long enough to get up to speed on my position, just in time to leave. That wouldn't do a service to the company, so I gave my notice after 6 weeks. To my boss' credit, he offered that I could stick around for a while until I found my next gig. Looking back, I guess this served his interests also — it would have been hard for him to recruit for this position if a newly-arrived team member left so quickly, following on the heels of several other departures.

mikelevins 6y ago
I quit one after two weeks once. It was a small-to-medium consulting company that talked a great game in their interviews and then turned out to be a complete clown show. After two weeks I was panicking over things like customer Hipchat meetings in which participants were using other channels to mock the customers (not shared with the customers, of course) with porn clips. I noped out of there after two weeks. They gave me puppydog eyes and made all sorts of promises but...nope. Just, nope.
- pbrb 6y ago
  Was the consulting company named after a type of gem stone? I had an eerily similar experience, that I also left after two weeks. The weirdest part of it all was the manager who was part of it all. She used to send a group chat saying she was going to take a nap, close her office door, turn the lights off, and lay down on the floor to sleep for a few hours. What really did it for me was when we all went out for someone's "birthday" (it wasn't their birthday, the team had put cards in at a few restaurants with different dates for their birthdays to get free stuff, whatever, the restaurants don't care, but it was just weird) and most of the team berated a guy who was trying not to drink so he didn't order a beer. You could tell the guy was uncomfortable, and they just kept goading him for the entire 2hr lunch. After a week and a half I called back a company I had turned down for this one and asked if they would still take me. Started there the next Monday. That was 10yrs and 2 jobs ago, and easily the best decision I had made for my career.

tayo42 6y ago

I haven't had success switching teams at all. I had a few that wanted to still interview me. I had a vp say he won't let me switch. The only time I ever switched teams, I had that decision made for me, worked out fortunately. Having another internal team still want to do a technical interview was ridiculous to hear though.

st1x7 6y ago
A lot of this comes down to company culture and size. In some companies it's completely expected and even encouraged to switch teams. In others you're treated basically like an external hire.
mxuribe 6y ago
This is almost as bad as those folks who have to interview for their own jobs...usually during lay offs, or in the midst of big organizational changes. Maybe on paper some of these ideas seem ok, but it really is either silly or humiliating or both. EDIT: To clarify, I'm referring here to folks who are already employed at some firm, and that same firm is asking them to interview (again) for their existing job, or a new job that is almost identical to the legacy job...all within the same firm.
jacurtis 6y ago
I have a friend at Microsoft that decided to switch teams. He absolutely regretted it. This isn't to say Microsoft is bad (he had plenty of good things to say about it) but he said that switching teams gets really messy. The people on the previous team feel betrayed, the people on the new team feel like you are an opportunist, and unless you are running away from a specific department manager there is likely going to be very little change between the teams. He also complained that he feels like he started a new job, is starting on the bottom of the new team, but without the benefits of new job title or salary. He regretted switching to the new team, when he expressed his disastisfaction to the new team manager the team manager felt like he simply wasn't a good fit and transferred him to a third team. Now he is the guy who has been on 3 teams in 6 months and he feels all the same problems as before, but with the label of being a "team switcher" whenever something doesn't go right. Over Christmas he told me he plans to start applying for new jobs outside of the company at the start of the year. As a manager, I have personally moved employees from other teams to my team twice and neither time did it work out well. There is often a reason that the previous team wasn't working out. Many people see switching teams as an easy and secure way to get a new job. But it is a lateral move and not a job switch. I haven't seen it work out well in either of the two times I have allowed it. Both employees lasted less than 6 months after switching teams.

mathattack 6y ago

Trying out the commute is huge. Losing two to three hours a day is a big drain. Worth it if you have an ideal job but not otherwise.

richardwhiuk 6y ago

> the upper rungs of Stripe’s engineering individual contributor (IC) ladder put a lot of emphasis on cross-team coordination and other, managerial-like activities that I didn’t enjoy and felt I wasn’t very good at. That's just the reality of senior IC engineering positions. At some point, there's a limit to the amount that you can contribute by sheerly by your own work - to have a bigger impact, you'll need to need influence/improve/impact others

corytheboyd 6y ago
You can also quit working for other people and pursue your own projects or seek out contract work. Yes yes, easier said than done, but so is advancing along a company’s career path.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  a) Contracting definitely requires huge amounts of communication - you need to constantly ramp up on new areas, and handover to people once you are done. b) A contractor who can only provide a single headcount is extremely limiting, and will get treated like a capped IC.
asciident 6y ago
This is true. It takes a while for some people to really accept this, as it breaks the lone coder myth. There are some people who consider communication and influence to be politics, and think they can do their job solely by programming.
- nraynaud 6y ago
  you can also lead by example instead being verbal and deliberate in your communication.
- syndacks 6y ago
  The people downvoting you are likely those you reference. Which is painfully ironic as this comment is should at the top of the thread: work is fundamentally a social endeavour, and if you expect to be promoted, you need to demonstrate the ability to think/talk/socialize/synthesize challenging problems that almost always require cooperation if not collaboration with others.

dvt 6y ago

I've done this before. Got an offer while I was still interviewing with a few other companies. Accepted the offer then a few weeks later another, significantly better, offer came through. I have absolutely no qualms about it, and I don't put the tiny stint on my resume. My work and expertise speaks for itself. It's sad that job hunting has become rife with Machiavellian machinations in the past three decades, but this is the world we live in. Acting otherwise is self-sabotaging. Long gone are the days where we'd become "company men" loyal to CEOs and corporate pillars. We'd get to retire in our late 50s with pretty wives, a few kids, and decent savings. Job hopping is the most reliable way to get a raise. If you don't job hop, you might be on the chopping block come the next layoff wave. This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. It is what it is.

jfk13 6y ago
> This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid. It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely overpaid. Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of magnitude more value" may be questionable. Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates. "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think." The organization they're employed at. Which is obvious because we're talking about jobs here; that's what salaries are, in part, based on.
  - madsbuch 6y ago
    In that case, finance people with said bonuses indeed make that kind of value. Though I am not quite sure the average finance person makes more than the average software engineer.

francisofascii 6y ago

I definitely can relate to this. I also went to work for a software/hardware company which had tight, open office desks, hardware everywhere, no remote options, longer hours, stressful deadlines, etc. I knew I made the wrong decision during my orientation. I choose option 3, which was was stick it out for two years. Ironically by the time 2 years was up, I was in a much happier state. I had just become used to the situation. I learned a ton from the experience and all the smart people working there, but I would never want to go back.

Animats 6y ago

At Stripe and each of my jobs before that, I had had a short commute to a beautiful office, and got to experience the instant gratification associated with developing purely software-based products. Now, I was stuck taking a crowded train to a dark office littered with hardware parts, working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing and road safety. This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed different. He may also have felt out of place with people who know computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. If all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in a robotics company.

microtherion 6y ago
Apart from "webcrap", this seems an entirely apt comment to me. If you join a hardware company, you should expect to get some grease on you.
goodpoint 6y ago
This person in the article is whining because hardware is difficult and software is easy in comparison. And calls it as "littered with hardware parts" And HN responds by upvoting the article and downvoting @Animats!
dilyevsky 6y ago
Pretty rude. I know a few folks at stripe and I actually interviewed the author for another robitics company (which he passed on =)) and i can assure you he doesn’t “just know webcrap”
- ramraj07 6y ago
  It's likely this person is good technically, and there might be a place for them in large corps where software engineers are just cogs, but their attitude and their resume suggests some issues: their resume is listed with year long stints in every major company, and their attitude suggests that apparently nothing can keep them happy. And also not interested in solving the most important problems (as evidenced by the knock on what sounds like a reasonable promotion deal), just the ones they might (or might not, even they don't know apparently) be interested in. Sounds elitist as hell and doesn't reflect someone who's genuinely seeking growth in their career. Which is fine, compared to twitch streamers making millions for doing squats this is still a great career, but if anyone's looking at all for constructive criticism then they should introspect how priviliged all this stuff sounds like and whether it's healthy for their own development to live in such a bubble for too long.

corytheboyd 6y ago

On the point of returning to a company you previously left for good reasons... don’t. I made this mistake, and things of course boiled to a breaking point for me after another year. Chances are nothing has changed, listen to that gut feeling. This probably isn’t everyone’s experience I don’t know, but it’s my experience for what it’s worth to anyone reading this.

deleted 6y ago
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01100011 6y ago

I realized a few days into my current job that it was a bad fit for me. Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation package if I left, so I decided to stick it out. Last year I interviewed with a company and was ready to take the job but I had drinks with the manager and decided it was too much of a brogrammer shop for me. Looking back, if I had taken the job, I would have worked with friends, the brogrammer aspect wasn't as bad as I thought, and I'd be planning my retirement after 3 years of work. Sometimes you just never know. It does pay to do your due diligence though. Same thing with buying a house. Big changes, like jobs or living arrangements, demand adequate investigation.

paxys 6y ago
> Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation package if I left, so I decided to stick it out. For the future, this kind of stuff is very easy to negotiate with the new company, and should definitely not be the thing holding you back. E.g. "you would have paid relocation for me but I'm in the same city so help me pay back my current company for it instead".
- jupiter90000 6y ago
  Not necessarily, but worth a try. Had to turn down an offer from a prospective employer due to a company unwilling to help with this, ended up burning alot of my and their time for no good reason and it was made clear early in the process this was needed.
shuckles 6y ago
I have never heard of anyone paying back signing or relocation bonuses if they didn’t want to. It’s usually not worth it for the company to pursue.

pearjuice 6y ago

Though I like the sentiment of the post, it's funny and maybe remarkable how software engineers are in such a privileged bubble most probably don't even realize. Quitting jobs after a year at arguably the most innovative fintech company because you didn't feel satisfied, taking a vacation, casually mentioning you can "hack" interviews by focusing on leetcode problems for some weekends, working somewhere for 2 days, taking another vacation and then switching to a new job. Probably hopping through a few salary negotiations and gaining tens of thousands of dollars. Be sure to take a moment to realize.

jmkd 6y ago
I didn't enjoy the sentiment of the post as it came across as far too entitled. - Disappointed that Stripe wouldn't just give him a job and the same pay back. - Referring to the new job as a downgrade when in fact it was simply a bad fit. - Job hopping every 18 months as if that is perfectly acceptable and sustainable for the employers.
- pearjuice 6y ago
  I don't agree with all his actions but I appreciate the transparency. The writing gives exposure, documentation of his CV and is arguably showcasing a skill. Job hopping isn't sustainable and shouldn't become a permanent pattern, but it's not unacceptable. Early career it's the fastest way to gain salary, experience different kitchens/industries and arguably just how the job economy is; you will not be rewarded for job loyalty so why optimize for it.
dilyevsky 6y ago
Nonsense. There are plenty of white-collar and even some blue-color jobs where it’s the same or even more extreme. Personal anecdote - when i was working low level construction jobs during pre-2008 boom two of my foremen quit without notice to grab a job somewhere else. A lot of companies don’t really optimize for tenured employees anyway so you get what you pay for in a sellers market

microtherion 6y ago

I was set to criticize OP for never having tried out the commute, until I remembered that I once took a job without having worked or lived a single day within 9 time zones of the place of employment. It's somewhat par for the course for foreign hires, and indeed, some of them discover they (or, even more frequently, their partner) don't enjoy the location. I did ask them to show me what a typical office would look like, though.

Dig1t 6y ago

I also did this, worked at a startup for 3 months and left for FAANG. Everyone was surprised, and my manager wasn’t super happy, but on the whole my coworkers understood and tbh it was the best decision of my life. Definitely do not regret it in any way.

sys_64738 6y ago
They'd be quick to lay you off when times get tough. I'm sure you wouldn't be super happy if that occurred.

deeteecee 6y ago

A pretty informative post. I like the mindset and towards the end, yup, the only big mistake that was made was not trying to switch to other teams at Stripe first. But certainly nothing wrong with switching jobs like that. Live and learn.

gregkerzhner 6y ago

"When I started my second job search, I was worried that the short tenure in the job I was trying to leave would be a turn-off to perspective employers. In reality, however, it wasn’t a big deal- people asked about it, but seemed satisfied with my 20 second summary and then moved on to other things." Alternatively, you can simply leave your new position off your resume and not talk about it in the interviews at all. There is nothing wrong with saying "My last gig was a software engineer at Stripe. I left there to focus on looking for a better fitting opportunity". There is no need to have your resume be a complete record of your employment. In fact, such resumes are often less desirable because they are long and don't highlight any specific strengths. Instead, make your resume highlight your most relevant and best accomplishments. I've only been a professional for 10 years, but I am already condensing my resume, removing descriptions from my first few jobs. I imagine that as time goes on, I will even group jobs together like "2010 - 2015 - Software engineer at Companies A, B, C" to keep my resume a nice, neat one pager, and focus on the more important things I have done recently. Like the OP, I've also quit two jobs shortly after I stared them during my career and those are definitely not on the list - its simply not relevant.

dilly_li 6y ago
Well, most companies run background checks which would reveal all the short and long jobs. At that point, you would still need to explain it somehow.
- gregkerzhner 6y ago
  A few things here: 1. Background check companies usually only contact the positions you list to verify your dates of employment and title. They probably won't contact a job you don't let them know about. 2. If it helps you sleep at night, you can still fill out the background check form accurately, but leave stuff off your resume / not talk about it in the interview. Again, there is no rule that you need to talk about every job you have ever had in chronological order on your resume or in the interviews. As long as there is nothing untrue, or some sort of strange conflicts of interest, you are totally welcome to omit things that aren't relevant. 3. In the rare, extremely unlikely chance that you have to explain yourself, it seems perfectly acceptable to say "I've only been at this job for a few weeks. I am not sure I am going to stay longer, so I didn't think it was relevant". If you are interviewing for the CIA, then definitely list every job. If it's a normal tech job, people simply don't care. Fill your precious chance to impress your interviewer with things that are actually impressive.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Having worked in hardware for most of my career, I can tell you that hardware labs are generally dark and messy. Commutes are hell. If you are working on hardware, especially secret hardware, it's unlikely that you'll be allowed to work from home. Note in the Apple Press Events, they always have this zoom thing, where they burrow into the earth to show you the hardware labs. Sort of like The IT Crowd...

iamleppert 6y ago

Seems to me like he felt out of place at a robotics company where the bar is quite a bit higher than your typical webapp company. Different strokes, different folks.

goldforever 6y ago
Exactly this!

lordnacho 6y ago

Nothing wrong with quitting early. I'm a bit surprised at the reasoning, after all he knew how long the commute was, and what the product was. But it's fine, we don't all know how we'll feel, like any relationship that goes from maybe to signed up. As an employer, I tend to think we dodged a bullet. I've had one or two early quits over the years, and it's fine, we mostly avoided investing too much in them. People come, they sniff around for a week, they leave. Or they come, we find out we don't like them, and they go. Both have happened. I've also been on the employee side of that. I joined, and then found the place to be a mess. So I left immediately when something else presented itself a few weeks later. The thing about jobs, as opposed to school, is that the only way a job ends is that someone calls time on it. School ends because you're done. You graduated, passed the viva, whatever. A job you have to decide to end if you don't like it. You can't just slog it out through that course that you don't like, because there's no end. I wouldn't worry at all about the CV impact. Chances are you can explain what happened if you decide to have it on your CV. Alternatively, I don't think anyone would hold it against you if you omitted or obscured a few weeks of your life. I certainly wouldn't.

twodave 6y ago

Oh man. I left a remote job in like, late 2017 because of some problems I had with their ethics. I took a job that paid less and required me to drive (not too far, and I was missing seeing people's faces a bit anyway). It was a bigger company that had acquired probably 7-8 businesses--my team's job was to integrate them all together to help the business operate more fluidly. It took me about 2 days to realize that a) the project was doomed, b) all the people working here (except Dave, the guy who told me to "abandon all hope" as I sat down on the first day) were just faking it and c) literally every person with decision-making capacity was incompetent. The SMEs were all siloed into a different (you might even say competing) team. They were actually trying to encode all the business rules into something akin to MuleSoft. They were inaccessible to us. The architect on the project couldn't write code to save his life. He was in love with some inane microservices architecture for which the example project wouldn't even compile. It was basically a mock of a microservice architecture, but built on top of SOAP. It was a bunch of crazy nonsense. He got fired shortly after I left. The development manager was a nice enough guy, probably too nice. I'm not sure what he did other than set up interviews for me and a couple of the other senior developers to conduct. I left after 3 months, for a job that was still a pay-cut from my first job, and was twice as far to commute to. But at least it wasn't a total crapshow. I still keep up with Dave though. So I guess it wasn't a total waste :)

trentnix 6y ago

This post was just a couple of months too late. I recently started a new, lucrative team lead job in a problem space I was interested in that promised to be structured, ambitious, and full of opportunity. I even requested a follow-up post-offer to make sure it was a good fit. But after only two weeks, I realized it was a command-and-control death march. No product ownership. Design your database up front. Complete waterfall but with developers and team leads responsible for each phase. A drive-by micromanaging executive with a team far too large to micromanage. Implementation teams of (only) junior developers had spent months prior to my arrival talking/meeting/designing - with virtually nothing to show for it. Every day was a calendar full of meetings to prepare for other meetings. Other teams and their managers were reporting fraudulent statuses creating the illusion of progress when no actual progress actually existed. Asking questions or offering any pushback was met with passive-aggressive anger. Any effort to create a little bit of structure amidst the chaos was, almost immediately, thrown away. So I decided it was best if I resigned. They even kept me around for a couple of weeks after I resigned which was nice, and that two weeks confirmed I made the right decision. A number of other team members and peers reached out and expressed agreement or envy - they wanted to leave as well. But despite those assurances that I'd made the right choice, it was a tough pill to swallow. I've never worked anywhere less than 18 months. I love building good software and I hate job hunting. I'm debating whether to put this experience on my resume or not because it's such an outlier in my professional experience and was such a short stent. Here's hoping the next opportunity is a better match. If you're an employer in DFW (or willing to take on a remote) looking for a Team Lead or hands-on Development Manager that can code, I'd love to chat.

otagekki 6y ago

As a CS graduate I had this a few years ago. After 4 months, I felt numb and that would last every week from Monday to Friday. I wanted to be somewhere else so bad. But instead of option 2 ("Start exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up"), I chose option 3 ("Stick it out for at least a year") for these reasons: - With only €800 saved up (had just invested €5,000 in a fishing business that had failed) at the moment I realized it wasn't a good fit I couldn't afford even a month of bills. - It would look bad on the resume, and might have to justify it to next prospective employers. Also due to unfortunate circumstances, my life was administratively a mess: there was a massive 6-month delay in the delivery of new residence permits. And by the time my papers got processed, social security information was no longer up-to-date (only valid for 3 months), causing an additional nerve-wracking 5-month delay. As a consequence I couldn't quit or even get fired as, in addition to the mess above, I would have to update employment information (and get possibly another 5-month delay). After my annual review with my boss and a PIP, my salary got cut 10% (had no choice) The happy ending? When I finally managed to get my residence permit and successfully updated my social security information 18 months after I joined the company. I looked for and found a new job, handed in my resignation and joined the other company.

narag 6y ago

I quit a job before even starting. They called me and told me that they had decided to pay me a good chunk less than we had agreed upon. I was in the last days of my two weeks notice for my current job. I had no option. Except that... five minutes later, my current boss made a counter-offer. And ten minutes later it was me who called those charming people to apologize for the inconvenience. After what they had done, it was a surprise how bad they took it. Very serious threats to my future employability and well being. I really suffered during the whole call, trying not to laugh and keep it professional. It was also a hardware company. I worked for another hardware company later. Not sure if there are other kind of hardware companies there in the Valley. But for me, there's a clear rule: never work for another hardware company.

fastball 6y ago
Given their behavior, sounds like you dodged a bullet anyway, but this is also a good time to point out if you're job hunting while already employed, you should never give in your notice at current co until you have a signed employment contract from the new one.
- narag 6y ago
  I had a contract signed. No idea what happens where you live, but in Spain, a signed job contract is not worth the paper it's written on. They could just fire me the first day (there's always a "test period" during which they can do it no questions asked). We operate with some good faith assumptions. Actually it's the only time that such a thing happened to me.
__turbobrew__ 6y ago
Margins for hardware tend to be thinner than software which typically means less salary, not as nice offices, and more bean counters. I imagine there are exceptions to this rule (Nvidia).
- narag 6y ago
  I didn't care about offices, they were nice in the other place that I worked years later. It's the lack of software engineering culture. They followed the "flag oriented programming" paradigm. The company tanked a few months after I left anyway, so no bad feelings. Edit: I meant the other hardware company. The we-dont-honor-contracts one I guess it's still there making the world a nicer place.

bachmeier 6y ago

Completely different type of work, but I once quit a new job at a factory after two days. First day, I arrive early to fill out the paperwork and watch the HR job safety video. Video finishes and I wait for the HR person to return. After a few minutes, I go look for her, but can't find her so I go back to the video room. Eventually someone else (upset) comes in and tells me that I'm supposed to be working rather than sitting there. I tell him I'm waiting for the HR lady to come back. "She went home for the day." Okay, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Guy gets even more upset, takes me to the back room, points at one of the other workers, tells me to do what he's doing, and then I never see him again. The only time anyone talks to me is (a) to tell me every couple hours I'm doing something wrong, (b) tell me it's break time, and (c) to shout at me for coming back from break two minutes early. (c) was my supervisor, and that was the only contact I had with him. When the second day was just like the first, I decided I didn't need that job.

deleted 6y ago
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reffaelwallen 6y ago
holy, what industry?
- bachmeier 6y ago
  I don't know. They never gave me any training, never told me what the product was or who they were selling it to. It might not seem possible to not know the industry, but I responded to a job ad, so all I knew was the address and the name of the company. I posted a longer version on my website: https://lancebachmeier.com/trivia/bad-job.html https://lancebachmeier.com/trivia/bad-job.html

yourabstraction 6y ago

I'm about a month into a new FAANG job, and I hate it so far. I can't decide if it's better to quit sooner as to not waste the companies time (and avoid suffering more), or if I should give it some more time. My team's work seems super boring, I'm not interested in the tech we use, the setup process has been a shit-show, and I'm feeling zero motivation. I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past, but I decided I'd try to do things differently by cramming leetcode and chasing that fat FAANG pay check. Now I'm kicking myself, this is what happens when you follow money over passion. The silly thing is I'm fine financially, yet I lusted after a job with technology I'm not interested in working on just for the lure of the almighty dollar.

war1025 6y ago
> I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past I saw an anecdote a few years ago about a hiring manager basically saying, "If you worked happily for a small startup, you will most likely be unable to put up with the bureaucracy of a large enterprise from now on" I've often wondered how much truth there was to that statement.
- capiki 6y ago
  Probably a lot. Unless you're getting paid enough to put up with it:) That being said, I think a lot people that aren't singularly money-focused overestimate how much money will outweigh other factors in their job.
  - yourabstraction 6y ago
    I was super motivated by the money when I was doing leetcode prep, and then when negotiating and playing offers against each other. And that makes sense, the work I was doing had a direct correlation to the total compensation I ended up signing for. But now that those fat pay checks are coming in, they provide zero motivation, it's just a slightly bigger number in my bank account.
    - 6y ago

novask 6y ago

I'll put my experiences down as a cautionary tale. I've had 3 relatively short stints in tech jobs, but none where I left responsibilities on the table, like leaving in the middle of a project, or promising some work only to bail. Notice was always given, and I made the best effort to transition by completing all work before the end date. My reasons for leaving each are a bit more serious than a lifestyle downgrade, but none-the-less, that doesn't matter to future employers. There are lots of sectors to jump between that utilize programming and IT knowledge (DevOps, Cloud roles, security roles), so even when you go to try them out, it's being considered a job hop by recruiters/hiring managers. If it doesn't work out, you're now potentially job hopping twice when you try to go back to something you know you can do due to world events. Not only is this the major take-away from the article, it also applies to switching industries, and in my experience for switching industries, it applies even if you have a recent certification in the new industry which gets requested by a lot of companies: >It’s ok to quit after a few weeks (just don’t make it a pattern) Unfortunately, companies won't see the notice you gave or the transition work you did. Those companies likely can't verify that, so they really only have your employment dates to look at. If they don't like it, they just won't put you forward regardless of how much they like your skills. For some people, there will be companies where they don't fit in with because of personality traits. If you get particularly unlucky, you'll run into 2 or 3 of those companies in quick succession, with the latter positions being even worse than the first, and so you'll have to stick it out and endure more. This unluckiness doesn't do you any favors, though. But it's really up to you if those personality traits need to be fixed or not. The only thing that seems to count is your tenure, so don't fuck it up. You might not even get to the leetcode step if you do.

burnthrow 6y ago
> The only thing that seems to count is your tenure, so don't fuck it up. You might not even get to the leetcode step if you do. This is flat wrong. Are you only applying to Fortune 500s or something?
- novask 6y ago
  How do you prove to the next company that you won't leave? You really can't. You can easily prove you've been working on leetcode problems. If they don't want to hire people with short stays, you can't really fix that. If they don't want to hire people who haven't practiced leetcode, you can fix that. So to an employer, does it really matter if you are good at leetcode if they feel you won't stay around long? So the tenure takes precedence. Some companies won't care, but finding those is just about as easy as finding a company that's a good fit before you've worked there.

wolco2 6y ago

It wasn't fair to others for you to stick it out because your heart wasn't in it so you wasted everyone's time training you for a few months only to quit when you are finally half productive. The real reason you left is the commute and office decor. Moving from a 15 walk to an hour trainride is a big change. Moving to an environment where people care more about product than impressing people is a huge culture shift. In the end covid would have forced everyone wfh anyhow. "I figured it wasn’t really fair to my colleagues at Nuro to stick in a job that my heart wasn’t in." So, in the end, I decided that option 2 was the best fit for me. I continued at Nuro and did my best to get up-to-speed and to contribute to my team’s work, but at the same time jumped right back into the job market"

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imranq 6y ago

Honestly the best perk in a job is a short commute. I would take a huge paycut for a shorter commute. Anything over a twenty minute drive is a no go for me. A five minute bike ride is ideal.

ambar123 6y ago

How to make experience letter... I have been fired without experience letter...??

mac01021 6y ago

Tangentially, how many jobs do you normally need to apply for at once to have multiple offers on the table at once? I once applied to 7-10 jobs in the same week. Of the 4-5 that decided to interview me, the interview processes didn't even interleave at all.