Ask HN: Early in career – is it a bad idea to change jobs after six months?

I've been through 7 or 8ish companies in 7 or 8ish years, have burnt out horribly, have at times sacrifices my mental health for that of my employer, amd have been fire or otherwise let go from 6 companies. I think the gaps in employment may be an issue, but otherwise I think it's less that my record is bad and more that finding good work is grueling in tech. So if you quit and find a new job or if you stay for longer and find a new job, it is probably going to be difficult. Also, never sacrifice yourself for your company beyond reason.

Engineering manager here.

As other commenters have said, this situation is common. That's not to say it's okay - it isn't. The question I'd ask you is, "before you bail, what can you learn from this experience?"

One of the primary duties of a manager is to act as a diffuser of potential stressors. Given your experience level, all the inputs you are receiving should be landing on your managers desk first. Those inputs should then be filtered, grouped, prioritized, contextualized (to whatever extent is necessary for you to understand what you're being asked to do) and then handed to you at a rate that enables you to complete work and learn the systems you're interacting with.

It's okay to push back on requests. It's also a good idea to develop a system for doing so.

One of the things I repeat often with my direct reports is, "everything has a place." Every request, every escalation, every task we're asked to work on - it all goes into a ticket system. Everyone on my team knows to accept the input and inform the source of the input (often another engineering manager) that their requests will go into our work queue and will be prioritized against our other objectives at the appropriate time.

You seem to be operating without those systems in place. What I'd suggest is that you develop a queuing and prioritization system for yourself. The next time someone asks you to do something, maybe try saying:

"I'll be happy to dig in. Let me get a few pieces of information from you and I'll put this in my queue. Mind if I follow up with you next week?"

A couple things could happen in response. They could escalate and use their coercive power (they outrank you) to force you to do the work immediately. This is when you can invoke your manager. You could respond with,

"Understood. I will inform my manager and we will prioritize accordingly."

Usually these situations won't escalate. If you appear to have your act together, others will recognize that. If you have a system of note cards or an issue tracker you're using to capture their requests, they may be more inclined to leave you to manage your own work queue. If you're also equipped with a prioritization rubric (it can be arbitrary, just start with org chart hierarchy of the requestor if you don't have anything else to go on), even better.

As the saying goes, "manage your time or others will do it for you." No matter how stressful this may seem now, this may be an opportunity to learn some time and work queue management skills. The earlier in your career you begin cultivating these skills, the better.

I'm happy to elaborate on any of the above.

I’d say look for a new job. Sounds like the IT department at your company is poorly run. Especially at the start of your career I think it is important to work at a well-run company so that you can learn from the best and not start to resent your career choice.

Most decent companies and interviewers will give you a chance to explain your reasons for leaving after only six months. It’s quite normal for devs, especially for recent graduates, to move around before finding their niche.

I agree with this. Definitely learn to push back. I've been in a similar situation albeit in aviation systems engineering. The way I dealt with a lot of incoming request was to always point out that I had things that were already on the back burner. I would phrase it along the lines of: "I am currently doing Y, and was planning to do X and Z next. Is A you're asking me to do urgent? If yes, I can do it after Y of you're okay with X and Z being delayed." This usually got me a response that indicated want the priority was. I would also really try not to let the current work I was doing being stopped. Stopping something midtask would always make the same item I was working on take longer, so I would push back if they tried to stop current work midstream. I would say: "I'm X hours away from accomplish this task. Can item A your asking wait until then?" That usually got me some good relief.

One item to note that this is also an opportunity to request some training, either formal or informal. Find the skill that if improved would easily increase your task output, find formal training for it in the area or nearby. If you can put a cost benefit analysis on a 1 page word doc, you might be able to take this opportunity to improve your skills as well.

It really depend on what you're doing. From what I'm seeing, documenting ERP customizations, developing/optimizing SQL is not a place you want to be.

Move out if you can, granted, a lot of places on these kind of things tend to be easier on the task load, but it's not true in your case. Have you tried to automate? Are you drawning in powerpoint presentation and word documents? All of these are important to know.