Quitting a New Job

Completely different type of work, but I once quit a new job at a factory after two days. First day, I arrive early to fill out the paperwork and watch the HR job safety video. Video finishes and I wait for the HR person to return. After a few minutes, I go look for her, but can't find her so I go back to the video room.

Eventually someone else (upset) comes in and tells me that I'm supposed to be working rather than sitting there. I tell him I'm waiting for the HR lady to come back. "She went home for the day." Okay, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Guy gets even more upset, takes me to the back room, points at one of the other workers, tells me to do what he's doing, and then I never see him again.

The only time anyone talks to me is (a) to tell me every couple hours I'm doing something wrong, (b) tell me it's break time, and (c) to shout at me for coming back from break two minutes early. (c) was my supervisor, and that was the only contact I had with him. When the second day was just like the first, I decided I didn't need that job.

The problem with Google's promo/perf process for years is that this trajectory towards upper level positioning was essentially mandatory. When I started they used to say that if you didn't get to L5 in 4 years or so, you would start getting scrutiny applied to you. L5 is sort of "team-lead light" and does require inter-team collaboration, project/code leadership/ownership, etc. I always felt like this process is corrosive towards individual contributors, and doesn't recognize long-standing committed but less-ambitious or less-social people.

This policy was eventually dropped, thankfully, but among some managers I feel like the attitude has remained.

Does leetcode really do much in terms of algorithms though? In my experience, a lot of problems can be solved with sheer brute force, or by merely using the language built-in data structures and memoization tricks.

I think algorithms per se don't necessarily give you much of an advantage. For example, LIS[0] is fairly frequently-run algorithm if you work with web stuff, but nearly no one in that specialization knows how to write it from memory (and knowing about it doesn't translate to being able to write other algorithms)

Where I think leetcode helps is in giving you an opportunity to practice the skill of putting together various building blocks in a semi-realistic fashion (e.g. having to use a memoization trick to get under the run time threshold is something that is similar to real life performance work, despite the exercise itself being completely unrealistic).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_increasing_subsequence

A few things here:

1. Background check companies usually only contact the positions you list to verify your dates of employment and title. They probably won't contact a job you don't let them know about.

2. If it helps you sleep at night, you can still fill out the background check form accurately, but leave stuff off your resume / not talk about it in the interview. Again, there is no rule that you need to talk about every job you have ever had in chronological order on your resume or in the interviews. As long as there is nothing untrue, or some sort of strange conflicts of interest, you are totally welcome to omit things that aren't relevant.

3. In the rare, extremely unlikely chance that you have to explain yourself, it seems perfectly acceptable to say "I've only been at this job for a few weeks. I am not sure I am going to stay longer, so I didn't think it was relevant".

If you are interviewing for the CIA, then definitely list every job. If it's a normal tech job, people simply don't care. Fill your precious chance to impress your interviewer with things that are actually impressive.

I have a habit of slogging through difficult patches that has, for the most part and with only perhaps two notable exceptions, served me well. However, I want to tell the story of one of these exceptions as a counterpoint to other comments here.

A few years ago I started a job where, within the first week or two, I had serious enough doubts about whether or not it was going to work that I spoke to my manager and said that I wanted to leave (even though I had nothing else lined up). He was really good about it and after we talked I decided to make more of a go of it, but it was the wrong decision and I've always regretted it.

In the end I stayed for 8 months and was miserable and frustrated for the entire time. This was, I think, a contributory factor (though by no means the only factor) to the breakup of a relationship that I valued very deeply, and that I have also always regretted the end of. The end of that relationship was really the final straw: the moment I realised I needed to bail, and that I should have bailed long before.

I still I didn't have anything definite lined up, although I did have three options on the table. In the end I chose one of them and started after taking a month off to recover. Even had I left at the beginning, I don't think I'd have struggled for work though.

Every situation is different, and staying is not always the right thing to do especially not - as was the case in my situation - where the cultural and ways of working gulf is so large. I have no awkward explaining to do about my CV but there are sometimes more important concerns in life.

(I've omitted a lot of specifics because I don't want to name either the organisation involved, or impugn the people either - many of them were great. There was certainly nothing unpleasant going on of the sort we've seen discussed a few times recently on HN. It was simply a case of an unresolvable culture clash. The commute was also a horrible slog - anything between 60 and 90 minutes each way even on a motorcycle, and I hadn't realised how exhausting that amount of riding every day would be.)