The Risks of Staying Put

> Everywhere I went I was in a trance, forming arguments with people who only existed in Slack for me. The debates, the designs, the confrontation! Every time I closed my eyes I would start a stupid fight, until eventually a simple thing like an invite in my calendar became a tangible menace; a small needle, poking in the same sore spot as the last one.

This rings familiar for a past job. For the longest time I thought it was my fault, that I was the one causing conflict or being unreasonable to push back on the constant influx of demands and changes.

Then I finally escaped the situation into a healthier team. It was immediately obvious that the prior team had more managers, pseudo-managers, and busybodies than it had people who actually did the work. There were so many product managers, program managers, design managers, UX managers, product designers, customer experience designers, and other titles looking to make themselves appear valuable that Slack and calendars became a warzone for attention. We'd get started on a project on Monday only to have the rug pulled out from under us with a weekly reshuffle of the priorities list or monthly reorganization of the department.

I distinctly remember the sinking feeling in my stomach every time a new calendar invite would pop up, or every time I'd see the latest "@here" from one of the warring product managers trying to look more important.

I stayed at my second job for nine years from 1999-2008. By 2008, I became an expert beginner. I asked myself for years why I stayed there so long. The current me, would have left April 2003 when I closed on the house I was having built.

If I do a retrospective, it is kind of clear:

I worked with most of the same people all nine years. My coworkers became my friends and they were the only constant in my life.

My managers were shady as hell though.

I was going through a horrible marriage (2002-2006) a horrible financial mess because by 2006 I had $500K worth of mortgages making $70K a year (because you could back then).

My skillset was outdated. I was maintaining VB6 code in 2008 - 7 years after it had been discontinued (and some old school C++/MFC/COM).

As bonuses got cut and raises were meager, I only made $8K more in 2008 than I did in 2001.

My head wouldn’t have been in the game enough for another job.

I learned my lesson with my next six jobs. I do resume driven development. I only worked at companies that were using in demand technologies. I jumped ship after two meager raises or when the bullshit/pay ratio got too high.

I kept my network strong.

But on the other hand, I’m going to “stay put” at my current job at $BigTech until at least my initial 4 year initial vest (and an interim refresher) is done and see what else is out there.

I think everyone in our industry should make a habit of leaving jobs that don’t make them happy. I know this is very privileged, and I’m really sorry for anyone whom it doesn’t apply to, but if you’re fortunate enough to find yourself in a buyers market, you should make use of it. You don’t have to put up with things, and I know this gets a lot easier once you become more senior in your roles, but you don’t. Impostor syndrome is rampant in our industry, many IT professionals leave productivity jobs because of stress and burn out, and it’s often down to “pseudo-jobbers” taking up too much space in our industry. At least in my anecdotal experience. The only way to improve it though, is to leave the teams where they have more process people than people who actually add value, that, and say no to meetings.

I know it’s very easy for me to say this as someone with a lot of options and more experience. I certainly remember having too many fucks, and too many worries in my early years. But I promise you, that once you know that everyone writes shit code on a Thursday afternoon after 3 days of no sleep because your twins kept you up, then a lot of your fucks will slowly disappear. I also promise you that there is nothing more hilarious than to tell a PO, PM or whatever, a blank “no thanks, I’m good” when they try to dupe you into a useless meetings with whatever communication they learned in their too short “MBA” course. The look on their faces when you say “no” to their “that wasn’t meant to be an option” question is just too hilarious, and what are they going to do? If they pressure you, you’re just going to take a job somewhere else and then they’ll have no one to do actual work. Don’t be an asshole about it though, you can be perfectly friendly and charming while you say no.

Anyway, to get back to the topic. I also think that once you start having too few fucks (or too much stress/depression/burnout) then it’s probably time to look elsewhere. Obviously it’s very individual, but in my anecdotal experience you can move past this sort of phase, but it’s also very “easy” to find yourself having mentally quit, and then it’s not healthy for you to stay and it’s not fair to your team either.

Shit, when did I start blogging?

The author captured nearly every feeling I have about my own job, especially this part:

> Big droopy bags appeared beneath my eyes and my hair started to thin out whilst I gained 80 pounds over the past two years. I stopped talking to friends, I bailed on a bunch of people constantly. I kept getting sick—three times in a single month—and that was when I knew I’d hit the wall.

"Until next time,"

The only part of the post that matters. Let's see how things work out.

Because for millions of people, it often doesn't. And that's the horribly shitty part. For most, it's an utter gamble. Life finds ways to punch you in the face for daring to try.

Not for everyone, but for many.

On this subject, I recently read Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke, which explores research on our decision making biases around quitting, and goes over interesting case studies of people who did and did not quit various things at the right time. I found it to be really helpful for building a mental model of risk/reward/opportunity cost in career decisions, where we are often biased towards the status quo.

I've been exactly there about a year and a half ago. Except I'm not living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, on purpose.

> I fear that this is what my career will look like from here on out.

Yeah well... Looks like it's quite common overall, their fear may be justified.

Freelancing does help to not care about anything but the job for which we're paid in my experience. Less arguments about technical decisions, office politics, etc.

> Everywhere I went I was in a trance, forming arguments with people who only existed in Slack for me. The debates, the designs, the confrontation! Every time I closed my eyes I would start a stupid fight,

This was me at my last job. My managers made my job all about project status updates, optics, visibility, green buttons, t-shirt sizes, OKRs, missing things by 1 week, slack posts, number of kudos. That meant that I spent an inordinate amount of time inside my own head, playing these BS conversations, arguments, and counter-arguments over and over again.

As a result of usage of BS metrics, the work became more about inventing BS than about actually solving any technical problem. And what happens when you invent BS? You discuss endlessly, meeting after meeting, about what that BS means. Is this work X-Small or Small? Should this OKR be 70% completely because it was rolled out 1 week after the planned date?

There's no discussion about why the work matters, what customer will get affected, or if some things can be paced faster or slower for some legit reason. The only thing that mattered was BS OKRs and the months of discussions about the measurement of said BS.

It's sickening. Is this BS my life? Is this BS more important than time with my SO? Is this BS more important than me checking up on my ageing parent's health? Is this BS more important than me achieving my personal goals?

I mean, the circumstances he describes (or at least his reaction to them) is so extreme that it's hard to imagine any neutral observer concluding any different. Not sure how applicable this situation is to most of us.

Strong https://www.issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html vibes, which I highly recommend also reading if you think you might be in a toxic job or relationship.

I hope things get brighter for you from here, Robin!

> I’m sort of a bad omen for the teams I work on. They get shitcanned or the team gets downsized or I get fired for being unreasonably reasonable. And I don’t want to work like that anymore. I want my life’s work to have some kind of meaning

Any life advices on how to leave more value behind? I have no idea how to pick the hill to die on.

A lot of this drama went away when most offices switched to working from home and project planning became more realistic due to layoffs