Ask HN: Need advice on quitting a job. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Need advice on quitting a job.

1 pointjobquitter8 comments

Hi HN, I am a new minted grad absolutely miserable at my new job (at a startup) where I was hopeful to do something better than what I am currently doing (which is writing one line of code in 2 months). I keep going through cycles of guilt (for wanting to quit my job), fear (will I get a job or not?) and dread (I am incredibly burnt out by the arbitrary and stochastic nature of the job market). All my friends keep telling me to suck it up and work there and then quit only after I find a new job. I was wondering if I could get some advice to either confirm their opinions or on the other end?

Sorry for the scant amount of details on why I want to quit my job (more details will probably narrow down the situation and I would rather not get fired before quitting )

Thanks

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This may sound a bit too obvious but I'll say it anyway.

Don't quit your job without finding another one. Finding another job is tough as it is - and your bargaining position, perceived 'employability' etc are greatly diminished when you're applying without a current job.

You have an idea of what makes a great job. Go look for it. Believe that it exists - and when you really believe it exists, you will feel energized about the prospect of landing the job.

So start looking for a job right now - and whenever a prospective opening comes along, dive into it.

A lot of job seekers don't ask enough questions before taking up the job. The interviewee asking many questions is always a good sign for any sane interviewer. Make sure you know and like what you get into next.

After you've put your resume out there, sent emails to companies and are waiting to hear back, do two other things to make the immediate future better.

1 - Do what you can to make life at your job more interesting. Seek out changes and improvements to your job and for your company even if it takes convincing someone else to 'allow' you to do it.

2 - Find habits or interests outside of work. This could be activities can be added directly your resume (for example if your company works on Java, you could learn to work on node.js), or even something unrelated to your career like sky diving or visiting landmarks over the weekend (I am a programmer, and I read up on finance to take a break)

Good luck.

This may sound a bit too obvious but I'll say it anyway.

This is what everyone keeps telling me :)

You have an idea of what makes a great job. Go look for it. Believe that it exists - and when you really believe it exists, you will feel energized about the prospect of landing the job.

So the sad thing is that every day I spend at this job, I get the overwhelming feeling that this is essentially how stuff works everywhere.

Hah. I wish I had done more of this. Interviews especially at startups take an approach of dazzling young sheep with pretty bells (beer, $$$ etc) and I fell for it.

After you've put your resume out there, sent emails to companies and are waiting to hear back, do two other things to make the immediate future better.

1 - Do what you can to make life at your job more interesting. Seek out changes and improvements to your job and for your company even if it takes convincing someone else to 'allow' you to do it.

Yeah. This is the part that worries me. When I interned at my previous company, I used to be so engrossed with my work that I used to spend weekends hacking away at stuff. Now, I can't wait to get to my hobby projects (sadly frozen right now so that I can brush up on graphs, trees and other fun stuff)

Just to make the conversation a little more interesting, I will play devils advocate here. Maybe the issue here isn't the company, but you. I personally find it hard to believe that you can't find "something better" to do at a startup. There are ALWAYS things to do at startups, and just because it's not within your normal scope of work, it doesn't mean you can't work on it. If you're completing your regular work, and you want to do something more (Ie. coding), and it benefits the company, I hardly doubt founders would be against it. What it sounds like to me, is that you are lacking any initiative and are diddling your thumbs waiting for tasks to be handed to you. If that's the case, you might be better off going to a corporate setting. Another thought that comes to mind, maybe you aren't given coding tasks because you haven't proven you are capable of doing them? If this is the case, then it's an opportunity to prove em wrong. Either way, the experiences you gain at a startup are what YOU make of it. Again, what it comes down to is initiative. Take it!

If you do decide to leave, find a job before you quit. Your negotiating power is much greater with a job in hand.

P.S I know nothing about you, so just take my comments for what it's worth.

I am not sure how to respond without giving you more context (and thereby narrowing down my situation) but thank you for your comments.

Do you have any other experience (jobs from when you were in college) to be sure this is a problem unique to the job?

If you're in the Bay Area (or maybe NYC): Once you decide to quit, you should feel a lot better -- then take a couple days off to rest, find some worthwhile companies to talk to, etc. You should have interviews and a job within a week, which could be explained as "the flu".

If you're not in a hot startup job market, you either want to relocate before looking, or find a new job first. I do not think I'd quit my job in Indiana before having a new job in Indiana assuming I wouldn't leave Indiana. Sorry :(

I did an internship company and that was an incredible experience. I didn't get asked to come back for a full time position. It could be that that job was just awesome and this is how normal jobs are. However, coming from a person who has made up for not being smart by working at problems a lot, it is kind of concerning for me to see myself getting bored and ready to leave work as soon as possible.

Yes, I am in a hot startup job market enough to get a couple of linkedin recruiter cold calls every 3 days. Having said that, I am smart enough to know that a non-tech recruiter identifying keywords in your resume don't necessarily make one in high demand.

Have you voiced your concerns at work, would they be perceptive to increasing your tasks that you enjoy or not? if not, then I agree with the other commenter in that you should line up another opportunity first, unless you have enough resources to float around for a bit.

Let us just say that the turn over rate is high enough that I am perfectly clear I would be taken outside the barn and be shot the moment there is a perception that I am not the perfect little employee.

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