My boss was a screamer/yeller/banger. (There's only one person in the world who's allowed to use that tone of voice on me, and I am married to that person.)
Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
91–100 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#92I was doing a full-time PhD and working. One day my advisor asked, `Are you working for me or Lockheed?' I chose the PhD.
Just curious -- what was your PhD in? I know some experimental researchers who get 4 hours of sleep only doing their PhDs, I can't even imagine being able to do both at once.
Computer science. I worked for Lockheed for fifteen years---long enough to see some programming projects succeed and others fail. I wondered why the difference. I had access to all the project records, and Lockheed was cool with it, so I took copies of all the data and found an advisor willing to let me work on it.
The problem was deep and it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected to solve it, but that's the way of research. I did eventually discover some new things in the data, and got the PhD, and my thesis formed the basis of my new company.
You're right; I didn't get enough sleep. I got into the habit of working 13 to 15 hours a day. But I wasn't making progress on my thesis fast enough for the university's requirements, so I had to choose. I was still working 13--15 hours a day, seven days a week, but exclusively on my thesis. I finished in eight years. Without Lockheed, I would have been done in four.
Ironically, my day job for Lockheed was being the PI (Principal Investigator) for an Air Force research project that was essentially a whole other PhD thesis. [We took the Google Web 1T 5-Gram Corpus and inverted it; essentially we were doing adversarial ML (generators and discriminators) before that term had been invented.] That's why it took me eight years---because I was doing the work of two different full-time PhDs at the same time.
(Only one got me a neat robe to wear at the end, though.)
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#93My boss has been gradually overdosing his LSD and MDMA, becoming more and more frantic and chaotic. Once he called me on Saturday night, apparently under influence, and demanded a new feature to be done by tomorrow morning. I said no, adviced him to get some sleep and hang up on him. He sent me a message saying that "he knows people who can make my life very hard". I took a screenshot and emailed the message to the w…
Did you think about going to the police as well regarding his threatening message?
He is a son of a well-connected former KGB colonel, so no good would come out of this.
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#94My team lead was the least competent person on the team. This was constantly frustrating. When it finally bugged me enough to look around, much better pay was available. So that pretty much did it.
Exact same reason as me. They were the personification of Dunning-Kruger. It's so damn disheartening to go to work everyday when you know what you are working on is absolutely doomed to fail, and you are powerless to stop it thanks to office politics.
You might look around a bit. Alternately, I’ve found that not caring about consequences can be surprisingly liberating. As in: if it’s really that hopeless, you may as well speak your mind and say what’s fucked up. What are they going to do, fire you?
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#95My team lead was the least competent person on the team. This was constantly frustrating. When it finally bugged me enough to look around, much better pay was available. So that pretty much did it.
I am a team lead and my team members are at least my level of competency (which means they're usually better than me). I listen carefully, trust the team and shield them from problems from above.
It sounds like you’re a good team lead.
My current manager, one of the best I’ve ever had, is much the same. Technically not superb. But at least pretty good. Also a great listener, and really keyed in to what the team is up to, struggling with, contributing, etc.
The TL I had the issue with very much behaved like an IC, almost never met with me, seemed to be dialing it in most of the time, and just generally was very hard to explain things to. An absent parent, more than a bad parent.
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#96A really bad project manager
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#97The first time it was because I wanted to take six or seven months off and then come back afterwards but not lose my health insurance during the time away. They said that they couldn't do it, so I left anyway but then didn't go back after.
The second time it was because my partner needed to be outside of the country for an extended period and I wanted to stay with her. That time I asked if I could work remotely. They said yes as a contract manager but not as an engineer, so I left because my personal life is always more important to me than someone's business.
Both exits were on good terms.
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#98Because they couldn't guarantee they wouldn't call me on my wedding day, which is on Saturday. Hence I've spent the last two months with my wife to be sorting out house out and making it awesome for the wedding reception!
Good on you! Wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't call you on your wedding day? What a bunch of clowns. & More positively forward looking: congratulations
Thank you! It was an awesome day. We're still cleaning up the house 2 days later...
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#99Too much travel. I was at ~300 days per year and it was too much.
The conditions were excellent (international first class, best hotels, fantastic restaurants, not much limits) and so was the pay.
But one day I realized that my baby was growing up without me and I quit on the spot (literally : I was in my way home from the office, turned around and resigned (very amicably)).
I moved to a job she I do not travel more at all.
Re: Ask HN: Why did you quit your last job?
#100[deleted]