When am I "allowed" to quit and not be labeled a quitter? | Hacker News Reader

When am I "allowed" to quit and not be labeled a quitter?

ognjen.io

54 pointsrognjen78 comments

Whenever you want to. Let's flip that around: how much of your finite life are you obligated to commit to something you don't want to be doing anymore? On your deathbed, is it a good outcome for you to say "I hated every moment of it, but at least I didn't quit!" Not in my book.

Beat me to it and thank you!

>how much of your finite life are you obligated to commit to something you don't want to be doing anymore

According to corporations, 40 years minimum. Likely 60 with the way the economy is going.

Where I grew up, mandatory military service was required, and not just for a few months but rather years.

I've seen people who quit and people, like me, who clinched their teeth and got through the whole ordeal. I myself at the time considered whether I should quit and stop wasting my precious time. I decided against, because in that society not having completed military service would be a social stain impossible to erase.

More importantly, quitting would change the way I view and value myself. I wanted to see myself as someone who performed their fair share of service back to society, and not a parasite. With the mindset I had back then, quitting would have changed my self view, and at least temporarily lost my sense of integrity. I would be a very different person today.

Looking around my social group, I might be biased but those that chose to quit military service more often than not drifted into the sidelines in terms of career, social integration, and other aspects. Of course some are absolutely fine. I can't say if that's merely correlation or actual causality, but I'm content with my loss of years spent doing something I wasn't really enjoying.

Sounds like South Korea.

> More importantly, quitting would change the way I view and value myself. I wanted to see myself as someone who performed their fair share of service back to society, and not a parasite.

This is an insanely sad thing to read. You pay taxes, unless you're in an active war, you don't "owe" anything to the society.

I understand what you’re saying, but a country that only has people enlisted when they’re already at war, is not one that’s going to be very secure. Constant preparation is necessary for any nation that wants to have its own military, and being enlisted in the service absolutely counts as a “share of service back to society” to me. It can’t just be someone else’s problem forever.

Eh disagree. It makes a lot of sense to me. If everyone is doing a duty and you shirk it of course you are betraying everyone else.

Notwithstanding the military service being mandatory for really bad reasons, but if it's South Korea it's kinda not?

Saying the only way to 'owe' anything is through money sounds like a... weird Americanism to me (speaking as an American).

Could also be Israel, Switzerland, Greece, Brazil, or any number of other places

True. But imo it is up to the country to decide if they think military service is a social duty, so, whatever. The idea that "taxes are all there is" is... Missing cultural relativism, I guess.

Ofc, caveat, if it's rich people deciding poor people have to do service, then yeah that's messed up. But kind of a separate issue.

It's not Brazil. It's just one year there (for those who want to serve, in practice), and you can't quit before the said year is over.

> Saying the only way to 'owe' anything is through money sounds like a... weird Americanism to me (speaking as an American).

In their defense, using taxes to pay others to do the work of maintaining/defending a nation allows better specialization of labor which can have its advantages. But it needs to be balanced with actual shared effort too, especially with things like national defense.

South Korea is in an active war — you know that, right? It’s the reason they have mandatory military service.

I don't think that's South Korea - in South Korea you aren't allowed to just "quit" because you hate the army.

Sense of duty to country is very different than sense of duty to a company that can fire you for any reason at any time.

The parent comment is about doing something you don't want to do rather than doing something you don't enjoy. Important distinction. You did military service because you wanted to do it. It had real value to you. You did not continue doing something that you did not actually want to do. I would say that was a good decision for you. You didn't enjoy it but you valued it. It is easy to get these conflated.

There's a difference between wanting to do something, and not wanting to not have done something.

Someone could have reasons for wanting to do something and reasons for not wanting to do it to. In the comment being discussed, that’s the desire to quit the military (the person did not want to waste their time) and the desire not to quit (not out of eating to be in the military but because those who quit faced negative consequences).

Military is dead weight, not really as noble a service as you think it is. You are better off serving in other ways that puts your talent to good use.

PS I volunteered and served nearly for a decade as an officer.

How do people quit mandatory service? Doesn’t that usually involve going to jail?

You might go to jail, or there are any number of methods to disqualify yourself from service, for instance through mental or religious reasons (which you'd presumably fake).

> I might be biased but those that chose to quit military service more often than not drifted into the sidelines in terms of career, social integration, and other aspects.

When you phrase it like this, it seems to me that you value having a good career and social integration.

On the other hand just seems to me that one's career and social integration is exactly the sort of thing that someone who quits conscription values highly. Without more information, it seems to me that such a person as you describe may consider themself to be leading a good life (in terms of satisfaction and/or morally).

I'll throw this out: some people might be against military service enough that if they powered through it, they could get depressed and eventually kill themselves. Considering this, it doesn't seem optimal to stick to it

Wait, it was mandatory, but you were allowed to quit?

Maybe it wasn’t that mandatory.

On the other hand seeing something through is usually an attribute people admire. Being able to persevere in face of adversity is not that bad of a trait to learn.

I’d reckon if it’s your first/second time it’s better to stick with it a bit longer, if for nothing else than to learn what your own limits and endurance are.

Once you’ve had a a few adversities endured under your belt, you can quit soon as soon as you like and still be considered in good light.

Who knows, things might become better at some point and then you could get some more rewards or at least bragging rights.

And if nothing else it would end up as a good story, and what’s our lives if not collection of stories, both good and bad.

To be more concrete - I once worked for a company where the team I was on was very unpleasant and I just couldn’t take it anymore, I was very close to throwing out the towel, and said so to my manager. After some back and forth I was offered some generous amount of money to stay, and eventually moved myself to a different team within the company itself. But I stayed, and to be fair it turned out to be one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of my career.

I was labeled as an engineer to be admired and got a lot more influence in the company than I would have otherwise had. Sure nobody knows what would have happened had I quit - maybe would have found a better place, maybe not.

It’s like choosing a partner, sometimes its worth sticking around for your own sake if not for someone else, if you abandon them you’ll probably find someone else that doesn’t have the problems that you hate, but will have their own set of problems. Dealing with problems is its own skill and you cannot develop them unless you stick around. And sometimes the problem might be yourself, in which case you definitely don’t learn by quitting.

This article seems to be about quitting a startup, not about being a quitter in general. I think it's fair to say that you want a good reputation if you're trying to start a business. I don't want the BPD founder that burns time and money on a whim. That means you should be mindful of how you appear to others, and at least have a good excuse if you've founded five failed startups in three years.

Sure, you don't want to be a flake. However, if you work your butt off and it doesn't turn out as you wanted, you're not obligated to keep chasing that fairytale ending.

You are obligated if you don't wanna seem like a flake. Or if you do quit a startup after 3 months, then at least have a good excuse, and don't make it a regular thing.

The title is not perfect, the article talks about startup co-founder quitting, not an employee. For an employee, "anytime" is acceptable. For a co-founder the answer, IMO, should be different.

A founder quitting usually means the end of the startup and that means that founder quitting also affects other founders and early startup employees (for some it may create visa headaches). So, rather than a blanket "anytime" a co-founder should be clear to at least the other founders. And, if other founders feel the same way, to the first employees, too: a generic "we need to get to N users/ARR X/profitability/whatever within M months for the startup to survive" is sufficient.

Also, it depends on whether a quitting founder wants to try again. A startup failure on a resume is not a big deal for a founder, at least in the US. But being the founder who bailed on a startup that other cofounders thought could have made it is likely a big hit on the ability to raise money as a future founder. My 2c.

A reasonable perspective. There definitely needs to be proactive communication and agreement if there are multiple founders.

I recently decided to quit a startup I founded after raising about nine million dollars. Quitting meant admitting to professional investors, friends and angels that I had lost their money.

It meant admitting to myself and our team that we had fucked up and miss-executed.

It meant giving up on a dream and market opportunity that I thought--and think--is still fruitful.

So deciding to quit was very difficult. And in general I'm a pretty tenacious guy, I hate giving up.

I didn't have to quit. I could have kept going in some diminished form. But the reason I decided to quit is that I had started to do damage.

I was doing damage to my health. I was doing damage to personal and professional relationships. Damage understood not as "pain" but as "an irreparable worsening."

So my advice: quit before you start to do damage.

I'd say that advice applies to most endeavors. Push through the pain, but quit before the tendon pops.

This title made me laugh. Life is very short and very precious. Being a "quitter" is not a bad thing. Take ownership of your precious time when you are on a path that is not working for you.

I agree in general. But you can't give tablemaking one go and say you suck at carpentry.

Saying it’s okay to quit when you have less than $1M ARR also means that you’re leaving your customers hanging out to dry. $1M means 100 customers paying $10k/yr which is a significant amount of money. If your plan is to dump them like that they should at least be warned when they sign up that could happen otherwise I think that’s unethical.

Or it's ten million who already forgot they paid a dime.

Signing up to work with a small company there is always a known risk. That's why almost every b2b sales pitch I've seen includes some slide about how big the company is and its plans to continue growing, to convince you it's not a risk.

The specific milestones here are certainly up for debate, but the general approach to thinking this way is a good one in my opinion.

I read Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke last year and found it quite illuminating, both in introducing this concept of having “kill criteria” like this to help clarify why we are doing things and when it’s “okay” to quit, and also in exploring the scope of social/cultural bias we have towards sticking with losing propositions at the expense of trying new things. Social pressure to not be viewed as a “quitter” is quite a powerful force, and it distorts our thinking about what we really want to achieve.

Why should you care how someone labels you?

Often people do that to coerce others into behaviour that is not in the victim best interest.

If something doesn't feel right to you, just quit or call it an exit.

Where I work there are many companies, it is very common for employees of one company to leave for another in the vicinity. I am one of them.

And I can tell you they all know each other so how you are labeled matters. If you quit for a good reason (including pay or a job that doesn't match your expectations) no one will have a problem. But if you are perceived as an asshole to the rest of the team, it can be a problem as these team members may have contacts, even friends, in the companies you may apply to.

> But if you are perceived as an asshole to the rest of the team

That sounds toxic to be fair, if you are treated like this just because you didn't stick with the business you didn't feel right. On the other hand it's a great pre-emptor if the company you are applying to values opinion of such people. It's really better to not work at such places.

>Why should you care how someone labels you?

well, words have power and I don't want to be labeled as a creep. If it impacts my reputation I should absolutely care.

When I "quit my startup" that involved making several people redundant, letting down customers, and announcing that I'd been able to make it work.

I was also fearful of the potential that my name would be tarnished in the local tech scene as being unreliable, or unlikely to follow through with future projects. Think of Google's reputation when it comes to new products getting axed after half-assed efforts, but applied to a founder.

How others label you does matter when it comes to operating in a society IMHO, even if that could be classed as coercion.

Precisely. I suggest a healthy dose of "What other people think of me is none of my business", 2 or 3 times a day until symptoms diminish.

The world "founders" live in is so foreign to me, I barely understand the words. It's useful to read this stuff once in a while, though, as a reminder that when a mega tech company with billions in profits lays off tens of thousands of people, the ones at the top are not even on the same planet, in terms of their values and they way they think about the world, as me and everyone I know.

Yeah it's like a weird cult.

Like.. Do it as long as you want. Quit when you're done. Don't be a fool and keep doing it when you shouldn't. If someone calls you a quitter, tell them it felt right and move on.

I think there are some external factors to consider. Did you convince people to move their families and join your quest? Did you make other commitments to people? If people are dependent on you and you cut and run when things get tough, why should anyone ever trust you again?

Trust me when I say that the people who think about whether they can quit are typically worse off financially and at the brink of burnt out.

The core answer in this post is correct: decide for yourself. But here are a couple of other nuances.

What commitments have you made to others? The less than 1MM ARR one is a good example: if you think you won’t be anble to make it succeed, stop. But try to shut it down in a way that doesn’t leave your customers in the lurch.

It can be appropriate for you to quit while others don’t: I’ve left companies I’ve founded when they got too big for me; others continued. Again, nobody left in the lurch.

And on hiring, I am unenthusiastic about candidates with some college but no degree. College is hard and a degree shows that you can finish something hard.

BUT, “unenthusiastic” isn’t a blanket “no” — if there are other reasons to talk to them then I still will. Perhaps they simply couldn’t afford it and do want to go back and finish. Also no college at all says nothing either way about whether the candidate can finish things or not.

And of course after the candidate has a couple of jobs under their belt I don’t really even look at their education at all.

Quitters never win.

And winners never quit.

But those who never quit and never win are idiots.

-Despair poster

> Two years and no seed

> 4 years to 1 million ARR

This article would have made sense 4-5 years ago.

Almost no one is going to reach those goals now that VC money and dried and ZIRs are gone.

And IMO if you're a solo bootstrapper making $300k per year on a high profit software project I'd consider that a massive success.

If you're a solo bootstrapper making $300k per year, you aren't thinking of quitting ;)

Once you gave it your best, learned what you could learn and found out that it’s not working, or that you don’t care about it anymore, just quit and move on to something you’re more interested in! The world needs people who love what they are doing.

Winners know when to quit.

Usually sucessful people are quite talented at more than one thing, but the best in the world at only one or two.

In order to get to that level they have to 'quit' the goal of becoming the best in the world at all of the other things where they have talent.

Probably a smart decision given where they are. But, yes, they're therefore all quitters in a very real sense. Just nobody cares or talks about those other things.

Maybe the thing you are doing now is one of those 'other' things. Quit so you can win at something else.

Startup founders need to lead their investors to understand that the company is not going to deliver what everyone hoped it would. Whether the points in the article will work to convince them is obviously very dependent on the investors, but if the founder wants to go back to those same investors with a new company idea in the future it's essential that they get everyone on the same page.

More generally, anyone who promises delivery in the future has to manage the expectations of those who they are delivering to. If you tell your boss "I'll have it on your desk first thing in the morning" and then you don't deliver, your boss certainly will think twice the next time you say it.

Edit: I see a lot of comments here are about whether it's "worth it" to an individual to keep going with some individual effort that doesn't seem to be paying off, as if everything that a person does is in isolation and has no ramifications on others, which is absolutely not the case when you found a startup. If you're a startup founder you have responsibility not only to yourself but to customers, investors and employees and you should do your best to "do right by" everyone as best as the circumstances allow. Reasonable people will see that you've done the best you can given the circumstances.

> If you’re looking to build a unicorn, and not a lifestyle business, 4 years is enough time to get a feeling for whether you’ll succeed or not.

I hate this false dichotomy and to me it represents some kind of counter-reality thinking that would be poisonous in 99% of the businesses on earth.

If I start a business, generate revenues of $50K in the first year, $250K in the second, and by year 8 I'm at $10M annually but the growth has flattened out, is that a "lifestyle" business? No it's a shit ton of work, a huge achievement and as the founder it has probably made me quite rich, but also that doesn't look like a unicorn trajectory that some VC is looking for so that he can line his own pockets.

As a founder, unless you're very deep into a very successful career, you lean into that business for the big win it is. In this guy's view of the world it apparently doesn't even exist and yet it describes a huge chunk of "main street" businesses and in a lot of cases these businesses can be more profitable for you as the founder than whatever scheme a VC is cooking up.

imo 10M revenue falls firmly within the lifestyle business category.

It’s not a false dichotomy. If you take VC money, then you’re obligated to try and build a unicorn since that’s reason they gave you the money. To do anything else is fraud. It won’t hurt the VC materially, but it’s not morally correct to deceive someone needs even if it doesn’t harm them. Add up enough white lies, and people will stop trusting each other.

When to allow yourself to quit, or when you can quit without being labeled a quitter by people who matter to you? Either way, I don’t think the answer lies with me or my peers on the internet.

My opinion you’re in the right track in thinking about objective criteria level of effort, results) and timelines. I also agree that being honest with yourself about the effort bit is super important - building a unicorn can’t be done in half measures.

Edit: Typo.

You're probably right that the first would have been more accurate.

Socially if you quit during a team game because of non-injury issue like you get pissed off or scared you’d be called a quitter because of people’s standards.

Someone can always call you a quitter because of their standards, so you can’t really “win” trying to play that game

A subset of Quitting is starting again, shown many times by many people to be a valuable life strategy. For an example, check out what Steve Jobs said about leaving Apple to start Next.

I think the premise is flawed simply because the writer says when am I allowed to quit and not be labelled a quitter? Frankly never because if you quit you are a quitter. However, the scenario you postulate could be quitting but it could simply be recognizing that the startup will not achieve it's goals and that it should wind down and return any remaining funds to it's investors (or try to sell itself) that's not quitting it's just being realistic.

We wouldn’t fit either of your criteria.

And yet - we now have a bank license (!) and should clear 15-20M in revenue this year.

Sometimes hard things don’t make for overnight successes.

Glad you didn't quit :)

But as I mention:

> Please note these are suggestions for when you might need to re-evaluate, not indications that you’ve failed.

What is the name of your company? I'm looking for a bank to partner with.

People will always label you about anything they feel like. I labeled routinely candidates as quitters in my career and didn't invite them. Would i give my younger self therefore the advice to not quit early? Hell, no. Do it. Quit. Do whatever you like (as long as you have signed up for another job or source of income).

With the amount of outsourcing and immigration these days, judgements on employment tenure are only getting more harsh

At school the mantra is to always try your hardest and give it your best. You should go above and beyond the calling. Blah de blah. But that is pure bogus tripe. You should do only what you want to do as in the end there is only you.

No one is going to answer this question for you. Your circumstances are you unique, involve your business particulars, your personality and life situations and serendipity. Good luck!

Sometimes I wonder if I ever get to be happy. From social experiences it feels like I only pretend to be alive because of social obligations.

I imagine work to be similar.

When you stop caring so much about what others think!

This https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38990879 thread has some info about why you might want to care at least a little

Quit early quit often. In start ups one they have a down round it’s basically over for you making a good exit unless you are the ceo

OP says not to put companies that you “co-founded” that lived for less than a year on your resume

OP has a todo app in his list of projects

Rabbi Tarfon used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.

That is not how it works

How does it work?

you can quit six times

long as you get up seven

you're not a quitter

ridiculous

Reply on news.ycombinator.com