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

It's not unprofessional to quit an unfulfilling job. It's unprofessional to quit without notice (since you're a senior person), or to badmouth the company online, to recruiters, or to future prospective employers. If anyone asks why you quit you should say "I found a better opportunity." If you quit without another job lined up you may get asked in the future to explain the gap, so have an explanation that doesn't make you look unprofessional. Don't burn your bridges if you don't have to, in other words.

Since you're a senior developer you should ask yourself how you signed on to this job in the first place, and how you might discover the kind of dysfunction you describe before taking the next job. I've made the same kind of mistake, it's easy to overlook the signs and get excited and think you can make big changes.

In general employers focus a lot more on your current or last job than on jobs you had earlier, so how you handle this and frame your decision will make the most difference when getting your next job. When I have found myself in crappy jobs I found a new job before quitting, because it's much easier to get a job when you're already employed.

It's your career, you decide, but no I wouldn't call it unprofessional. If the company doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. I've been in a similar position before but decided to wait it out until the 6 months mark, I'd say thats a fair amount of time to figure out if its temporary or not, and to what extent you're willing to take some chaos.

Just make sure you know your reasons and can articulate them because a future employer may also be curious as to why you were "only" there for six months. I've hired people though who had similar stories, as long someone gave it a shot just to confirm it wasn't for them, I've never seen it as a problem.

It's always ok to leave a company - if they can't survive without you, you are doing them a disservice.

But it's an interesting question - I've been intrigued throughout my career (5-25 person project management)

"Which 'reality disconnects' are important and need addressing, which can be left to lie, and which ones are fatal?"

Still don't really have the answer but my guidelines would go like this

- There has to be at least one part of the project (hopefully the most important) that is functional and grounded in reality to grow from. If there isn't then scrap the project/ do a new project. ( In consultancy a question to ask a new client was - Tell me about your last project that succeeded and your last project that failed - sometimes they had no successes - that was worth knowing)

- Fight the small battles all the time - How do we know what done is? Are the tests good? Is that code understandable? Are the specs and interfaces understood? Are we shipping sh*t?. You need to keep your principles here or you can't mentor and good people won't follow/ trust you

- Some of the big battles especially the political ones can only be fought in very specific contexts (changing budgets, team structure, new cultures). Put down a marker you'd like to see improvement there, but also state that now is not the time till the fundamentals are done.

- At the end of the day imagine yourself as a new hire in your team. If the new hire thinks 'My boss isn't the right person to lead the team' then think about leaving/changing roles. If they think 'Wow this is a tough job but I can see how we get there' keep on going. If they think 'I respect my boss but no-one can fix this mess' then think about re-negotiating to what can be done(either leave or help re-base things). If the 'junior you' isn't going to stay in your team, then things aren't going to work.

Strongly recommend Rands in Repose - Bits, Features, Truth

> to badmouth the company online, to recruiters, or to future prospective employers. If anyone asks why you quit you should say "I found a better opportunity." If you quit without another job lined up you may get asked in the future to explain the gap, so have an explanation that doesn't make you look unprofessional.

It’s not as cut and dry. It is perfectly fine to say you left a company because what you were looking for and what the company was doing didn’t align. It’s especially important if you left quickly because you don’t want people to think you were let go. You don’t want to gratuitously badmouth a former employer but you don’t have to defend them either.

Unless you’re getting paid an exceptional amount that you couldn’t get elsewhere, I wouldn’t stick around.