Screw it, I quit

i love it. ;)

I hope I can say it too .... not now. I still have excuses.

First, I realized that there are two types of happiness relevant to a job. There is happiness through satisfaction in what you have, and happiness through greater achievement. I suspect these are actually personality traits. Some people are good at being happy with what they've got. I'm not.

Then I realized I would never have happiness through satisfaction in my current job. Even if I succeeded wildly and became a VP or CEO one day. At a very deep level, I hate the feeling of disdain from entrepreneurs. Larry and Sergey won't respect you in the morning, indeed.

Then I convinced myself that my full-time employment was not on a trajectory that would bring me full happiness ever. And life is short.

Thus, the logical conclusion. Change is necessary.

I don't have cofounders, so I'll strike out on my own for a while and see what I can build. I'll go to grad school and find cofounders.

Now, details. I talked my way into a good school long after application deadlines. This satisfies important stakeholders such as my parents.

I gave myself enough unemployed time before school to be able to hack something and test out how I work when I am my boss.

I saved a year's living expenses while employed. I moved to 50% less expensive housing and cut other expenses.

I was diplomatic at work about my departure. I didn't burn bridges. I resisted the temptation to vent about everything I thought was wrong about the company and the job. If everything fails, I have a safety net that is only slightly worse than if I didn't take the plunge. I gave my manager notice. I told him my end date was flexible so he had a chance to deal with staffing issues and I could wrap up work. It ended up being a month's notice. Not so long that I waste a lot of time checked out, but long enough that it is a happy parting.

My last day is Friday.

It was difficult because I loved the people I was working with, but disliked the actual work (and had been promised more interesting work but got tired of waiting for it. I kept in touch with my ex-coworkers and I know the more interesting work would've materialized in another few months had I stayed). I also had other job offers at the time, and knew no one who had gone down this path. None of this made it easy.

So I "eased" my way in. I switched to working part-time (again, I had the fortune to work with great people at the time - they were sorry to see me go, but very supportive of my decision). It eventually became obvious that even part-time work was too big a distraction, so I quit entirely after about a month.

Not the most spectacular story, but I haven't regretted the decision.

I had a few major events in my life that woke me up to these same concepts.

" full-time employment was not on a trajectory that would bring me full happiness ever. And life is short." - exactly.

Change is also very important to keep me going - and being pigeonholed in a small role at work always frustrated me too. Glad to see it isn't just me!