No post body was provided.
Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#2My current one - just white knuckling it until my 1st tranche of RSUs vest.
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#3My current one - just white knuckling it until my 1st tranche of RSUs vest.
Tell me more. What do you wish was different during the interview? What made you accept? What changed?
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#4“You are not a tree. if you don’t like where you are, move.”
Happened multiple times to me and I recommend pulling the plug early. My resume has 3 jobs that lasted less than a year and 4 that have 5+ years each. People sometimes ask why that is so in interviews and my answer above always gets a chuckle and a nod.
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#5“You are not a tree. if you don’t like where you are, move.” Happened multiple times to me and I recommend pulling the plug early. My resume has 3 jobs that lasted less than a year and 4 that have 5+ years each. People sometimes ask why that is so in interviews and my answer above always gets a chuckle and a nod.
Makes sense. Tell me about some of the short ones. What do wish you'd known before accepting? What was different about the 5+ yr gigs?
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#6My current one - just white knuckling it until my 1st tranche of RSUs vest.
Tell me more. What do you wish was different during the interview? What made you accept? What changed?
I didn't realize how messed up internal systems were during the interviews or what group dynamics actually were in real life. I judged too much from the hiring manager and the best of my colleagues whom I still think highly of. I thought I could make a difference and they paid really well (not FAANG).
What changed was a combination of realizing how little I could actually do, magnified by a whole new tier of VPs hired from Microsoft and Google who brought their loathsome ways with them. One never expects the Spanish Inquisition...
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me more. What do you wish was different during the interview? What made you accept? What changed?
I didn't realize how messed up internal systems were during the interviews or what group dynamics actually were in real life. I judged too much from the hiring manager and the best of my colleagues whom I still think highly of. I thought I could make a difference and they paid really well (not FAANG). What changed was a combination of realizing how little I could actually do, magnified by a whole new tier of VPs hire…
Do you think this is a problem with the hiring process or impossible to avoid things like this?
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#8At my last job things were going wrong on the first day. Many mistakes were made.
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#9Sort of. Long story, and even after all these years there are aspects of it I prefer not to tell to avoid the appearance of throwing anyone else under the bus. But here's the brief summary:
I'm a Java developer first and foremost, "by trade" so to speak. And back in 2007 I'd never written any Python professionally and had only done the more minor amount of development with PHP. So, there was this company that was primarily a Python/PHP shop, BUT they had this one project that was in Java. They were using a popular F/OSS ERP/CRM application that was Java based, and so they wanted at least one "Java guy" in-house to help support and integrate that.
So they hired me. I gave my two weeks notice at my old job and then started at the new job.
In that interim time, they cancelled the project they hired me to work on.
So on my first day of work at the new job they go "Hey, we know you're mainly a Java guy, but we cancelled that project. Do you mind working in PHP and Python?"
I mean, what was I going to say? I'd already quit my old job at this point. So I stayed, learned Python, wrote a bunch of Python code and some PHP. But it was never a good fit really, and then the 2008 financial crisis happened. They started laying people off. And I didn't get laid off. Then they did another round of layoffs. And I didn't get laid off. Things kept deteriorating though for various reasons, and finally they offered me a voluntary layoff and a nice severance package. So I took the money and ran about having been there about 14 or 15 months.
It was an interesting experience, and maybe I should have bailed earlier. But it was a fun group of people to work with, and I didn't mind learning and working in Python. And had it not been for the whole "global financial collapse" thing, maybe I'd still be there today. Or not. Who knows?
Re: Ask HN: Ever start a job and quickly realize it was a mistake? What happened?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't realize how messed up internal systems were during the interviews or what group dynamics actually were in real life. I judged too much from the hiring manager and the best of my colleagues whom I still think highly of. I thought I could make a difference and they paid really well (not FAANG). What changed was a combination of realizing how little I could actually do, magnified by a whole new tier of VPs hire…
Do you think this is a problem with the hiring process or impossible to avoid things like this?
It's impossible (IMHO) to avoid things like that. In this situation, I couldn't predict the future - hiring a new "leadership" (gack!) that transmogrified the organization I joined.