sounds like you made what most ppl seek and probably grown enough as an engineer as to invest more in yourself. like pickup new 'hobbies' or meet interesting ppl
Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#12Every next company hires you for your particular expertise that you are able to apply from day one. None of them are interested to invest in your growth. You do it on your personal time.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#13Unless you’re very lucky - typically it is not a smart choice to stay longer than 2-4 years at 1 tech company. In current situation.
People who stay longer only encourage employers to keep old salaries as is while buying new workforce for the market price.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#14“… but I’m starting to be concerned that I’m not growing as an engineer.“
What are you looking to grow into? What is growth to you?
What’s your general outlook around what you hope to get out of this?
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#15I don't think you have reason to be concerned. I concur with the comment about growing as an engineer as a hobby, but you're living the dream.
I stayed at a job too long but was in a different industry and making 59k in a high COL area and I was living in pest infested shithole. When I got laid off I pivoted to computer science. I don't regret staying because I am where I am now as a result - but I do regret not being able to leave on my own terms.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#16I actually came back to a place that I used to work at before taking a year long “break” to work on some freelance stuff (and moving to the city etc.), I regret it.
I got to work on some new things and met some new colleagues which was nice, but returning to a heavily abstracted monolith and a DB schema that doesn’t spark joy makes me want to do literally anything else. The people are nice and thankfully it isn’t a toxic work environment, but there are definitely disagreements and practices that I don’t agree with and that won’t change due to any changes just introducing more inconsistency into said platform.
Working on it tanks my velocity, which also tanks my morale, when trivial changes take hours and I’m never sure whether things will work the way I hope. I hate the type of project.
That said, it’s less about a particular workplace and more about greenfield vs brownfield projects, I bet some people thrive on maintenance projects, but I’d at least want to maintain a project started in the last 5 years or so, or at least something tastefully divided into multiple separate modules that don’t make my CPU hit 97C when compiling it and trying to run it locally. Oh and a DB that I can run locally in a container, ideally with data seeding from day one, being able to do that with projects that use PostgreSQL does spark joy and I can test possibly breaking migrations as much as I want.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#17> I’m starting to be concerned that I’m not growing as an engineer
In general, to keep your mind healthy, it is recommended to continously challenge yourself and learn.
You could do this outside of work hours. Is that an option for you?
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#18Yes, stayed in the same place for 6 years, for no discernible reason other than I thought my opportunity was going to come, it never came, there were multiple changes in leadership and in the end the group i was in was dismantled and I could have been laid off (there were large layoffs just a couple weeks after I left).
So I'd definitely recommend staying sharp, looking at the market and moving when you think there isn't space for you to grow or change. Don't let your career stagnate with the business.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#19Absolutely. I wasted 6 years writing C++ and being miserable.
Re: Ask HN: Did you regret staying at a job for too long?
#20My advice: ride it out until something truly better/objectionable comes up. Growth is probably not best found at work, anyway.
I was in a similar position and left. I don't regret it, but I also didn't have a good balance. That place turned me entirely sour, I regret not leaving or addressing the building resentment earlier.
Now I don't have the social capital I had. I have to pass all these little interpersonal tests all over again, and I have no spoons.