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Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#151

Post by throwaway75787 »

ianai wrote: post #85
the-alchemist wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare, but companies can shit on you if they ever get called during a background check. e.g., * "Hi, I'm calling about Alice. Can you confirm Alice's title and start and end dates of her position?" * Started X, left Y. They're not allowed on the premises anymore." Generally, companies avoid this because it exposes them to lawsuits, but all it takes is one HR rep who doesn't know the company policy.

A lot can be said by just tone of voice without saying anything incriminating, for that matter.

"Let me check what I am allowed to say about Alice."

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#152

Post by richrichardsson »

rkangel wrote: post #56

6 months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to judge a job and leave it. The important thing is to be able to defend it in future interviews, and do so in a reasoned way rather than an emotional one. For example instead of "the team were incredibly frustrating to work with and ignored all my suggestions", instead "the culture made it very hard to do quality engineering, which over time was demoralising". Sweepi…

> 6 months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to judge a job and leave it.

Most jobs I've ever had in the UK came with a "probation" period of 6 months, where the employer could terminate the position with a one week notice (or even shorter if I was the cause of some particularly nasty problem), and after 6 months a review would be conducted to decide if the position was going to be offered on a more permanent basis.

I think it's only fair that employees can have the same option to walk away if they find they don't really fit in the culture of the organisation.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#153

Post by jon-wood »

dgfitz wrote: post #138
gregkerzhner wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative to hacking your resume is simply leaving the short position off altogether. Your resume doesn't have to be a total transcript of your career. It should just be a highlight of most relevant experiences for your desired job. The same goes for really old jobs too btw - having a detailed explanation of your exploits in Java Swing on page 4 of your resume is likely distracting and irrelevant. Consider makin…

I would personally not want to explain the gap in employment. "Why did you not work for a year?" Either you lie (I took a personal leave of absence) or tell the truth (the company was a shitshow and I didnt stay long). I'm not big on lying, and if I tell the truth I'd expect to get "Well why did you leave it off the resume?" And from there I expect the conversation to go poorly.

It coming up at all is going to vary wildly between interviews. From my perspective your CV is what gets you into the interview process, and will come up in an initial screening call where I have a conversation with you about the last few years of work you've done. Unless you explicitly bring it up, or the work seems massively relevant to what we're doing, I'm unlikely to touch on anything more than a year or two into the past.

Once you're through that initial screening call the only influence your CV is going to have is if our interview process covers particular things you've mentioned knowing about in your CV and then you can't answer questions on them when they come up. Not knowing a thing I'm generally fine with, claiming to know it but not being able to answer simple questions on it is going to get you screened out very quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#156

Post by akudha »

Ask yourself this - if you were a mess, will the company continue to employ you? I have made the mistake of staying in boring jobs because people were nice, in shitty jobs because I hated interviewing, in good jobs because they were good. The only common denominator in all of these jobs? Not one company I worked for genuinely cared about employee happiness, growth etc. It was all theater. I still consider myself lucky, as I got to work with some nice individuals

Leaving would be my suggestion. Leave after you find another job, if you want to be safe.

"Professionalism" is something invented by the corporate world to make sure their employees behave. And it is one way traffic, at least most of the time.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#157

Post by austincheney »

nomercy400 wrote: post #105

It's not bad to look for something else after six months. Shit jobs exist. Keep looking. Hard questions for yourself: How did I get in this situation? How did I get such a mismatch between your expectations and reality? Why didn't I see this at the job interview? Answering these will help you evaluate future job offerings. Ofcourse I do not know how the interview went. Maybe you didn't ask, maybe you did and they did…

> How did I get in this situation?

As somebody who has been interviewing recently and worked as a developer for a long time I am confident it is due to poor expectation management.

First of all definitions of "senior developer" vary wildly. At some places that could mean somebody who perform architecture and writes precise roadmaps for new efforts and integrations. At some places "senior developer" really just means been doing the same junior stuff for long enough to warrant a title bump for retention. As an example many places reward repeated "hard work" with promotions when really the goal of software is automation, so that you don't have to work as hard on repeated efforts later.

That said it doesn't matter if as a senior developer they are actually are brilliant or are some expert beginner framework junkie. If they are wildly out of alignment to the new shop it is far easier to blame that new shop than perform some self-reflection.

My solution for this alignment problem is to qualify decision making capacity during the interview process. If, for example I were a senior developer applying for a full-stack position, I would drill down into things like formalizing documentation (writing things down that are not code) and original code (solving a problem directly instead something external or downloaded).

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#158

Post by throwaway123x2 »

henvic wrote: post #145

Just leave. It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself. In 2012 I've left my hometown and went to the other side of my country to work at a startup. Within 20 days I left because the situation was critical. I was already feeling like I should leave on the second week, but decided to wait just to break-even from my moving expenses. It was e-commerce startup where the team lead / project manager was…

Oh God that sounds like a special kind of nightmare. Did you see any hints re:this during the interview?

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#159

Post by redsparrow »

richrichardsson wrote: post #152
rkangel wrote: post #56

6 months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to judge a job and leave it. The important thing is to be able to defend it in future interviews, and do so in a reasoned way rather than an emotional one. For example instead of "the team were incredibly frustrating to work with and ignored all my suggestions", instead "the culture made it very hard to do quality engineering, which over time was demoralising". Sweepi…

> 6 months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to judge a job and leave it. Most jobs I've ever had in the UK came with a "probation" period of 6 months, where the employer could terminate the position with a one week notice (or even shorter if I was the cause of some particularly nasty problem), and after 6 months a review would be conducted to decide if the position was going to be offered on a more permanent…

This is similar to what I've seen in Germany. Probation is six months long and during this time either party can terminate with two weeks notice without any cause. This is a time for both the employer and employee to be evaluating each other for a good fit.
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