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

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

#31

Post by ManlyBread » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #24

Put yourself in an interviewer’s position hiring you. “So you were given more responsibilities and a decent raise. And you bailed before you really spent any time seeing what that was like?” My suggestion, try to find opportunity here. Successful technology implementations are much more about building relationships and understanding people’s roles, responsibilities and workloads and a lot less about SQL, code, gear,…

It is easy to dodge that question, all that you need to do is to imply that the workload was impacting your work/life balance or that the new set of responsibilties does not match the market rate even after the "decent" raise. I remember saying something similar during interviews after a company that gave me a 10% raise expected me to handle twice the amount of work and responsibility.

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

#32

Post by sethammons » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

heelix wrote: post #23

dragonwriter wrote: post #4

> The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling individuals high up in the subsidiary no. Your boss told you to say no. You tell people “no”, and refer them to your boss, and keep your boss informed of what your current workload is. You are drowning in work because even after being directed to do so you refuse to stop accepting new requests when you are overloaded. Saying “no” is an impo…

It is funny... this is such an important trait we screen for it in the interview process. The requests/scenarios become more and more absurd until they should say no.

Sounds like an adversarial game and a great way to start breaking trust with the candidate.

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

#33

Post by gwbas1c » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

1-2 short stints early in your career don't mean much.

What's important is that you leave for a better job. Focus on where you're going, not where you're leaving. (I once took a job with a few too many warning signs, and in hindsight I should have stayed put.)

Honestly, every person filtering resumes has different things they look for. For every person who filters you out because you had a short stint, there will be someone who filters you in because your new job looks so much better.

Oh, and good jobs have ups and downs. If you generally like the work, believe in the company, and like the people you're working with, you can figure it out.

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

#34

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

I just had something happen that reminded me of this thread. Hopefully this helps:

Often, in our ticketing system, some random person assigns me a ticket. In these situations, I just assign the ticket back. In general, my rule is that: I only take assignments from my direct manager or someone I'm working closely with. All tickets (tasks) that come from outside my small working group must be triaged with my direct manager's involvement.

(I created an email rule for Jira just so I can see these situations.)

There's many reasons why random people try to rope me into their tickets. Sometimes it's laziness. Other times it's entitlement. (You're such-and-such a role so obviously you'll solve my problem for me.) Sometimes it's just passing the buck. Rarely, it's a genuine ask for help; but in those cases I hold firm that whoever is asking for help must retain ownership of the ticket. (Basically, I'll look at someone else's ticket as a favor, but not as my deliverable.)

In the worst case, there are managers who try to rope people into their work as a means of playing power or political games. I don't understand why people do this, but that's when I rope my manager in if some bozo tries to get me to do their work for them.