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Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#131

Post by xcambar »

tluyben2 wrote: post #113

I like this kind of situation to be honest: as senior you can make it better (it is your job) and become a hero as well as demanding more pay, bonus etc. Become friendly with one of the c-levels, preferably the ceo and replace the cto (who sounds bad or at least not good enough) with yourself. That is what I would do (and did a few times).

Senior or not, in many mid-size companies and above, developers are only seen as Individual contributors, with little influence and zero authority.

I'm not saying what you claim is impossible, it totally is possible. Working your way up does not only involve hard skills or soft skills, but also the local context must somehow enable/allow this and that certainly involves a lot of internal politics.

One question though: since you did that a few times, why did you not pick a C-level position (or any high level position) directly after your first success? Why did you prefer to "reset" to developer and work all the way up?

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#133

Post by geofft »

RhysU wrote: post #81

> I'm senior and was hired as such Someone hired you as a senior employee. Senior folks are expected to fix messes like what you describe. Go to the right person and ask for the political capital and support to fix 2 specific things. If you don't get a promise for that support or you don't see that support sustained, leave. If you get that support, fix exactly those 2 things as quickly as possible. Then ask for the s…

Not disagreeing with you, but OP specifically mentions being burned out, and I think for this specific situation it may be better to cut losses and go elsewhere.

If you have the energy and enthusiasm for fixing broken things, this is great advice, ideally before the point of burnout / before six months (but after at least a month or so). But not every senior role has to involve cleaning up messes and picking political fights. You're allowed to look for a company that isn't a mess if you want.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#136

Post by pdimitar »

Unprofessional? Who cares, even if it is deemed unprofessional? (Although it really is not.)

You have to take care of your health, mental and physical, and your career, and your workplace well-being. We only have our time and energy to sell and they are both precious. Spend them so they have maximum impact.

If you don't see any will for improvement, make a 1:1 with your supervisor and tell them you quit. Only state reasons if asked (most such managers won't ask).

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#137

Post by vfistri2 »

It is not unprofessional, at the end of the day market is hot and it is your right to capitalise on it. Also first thing you need to do is take care of yourself, there are always job tradeoffs. And sometimes in the name of money and benefits we all sometimes do a little bit of self-convincing that shit-show is not that, it might improve with time ect. At the end of the day, looking back for each one of those sel-convincing thoughts i've done i felt bad, and felt it should have followed my guts and left almost instantly. At last company i've worked at there was no code reviews, no pull requests, at first it felt wierd but later on I was 100% sure those guys are complete amateurs. Am happily employed atm at one of MAANG atm.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#138

Post by dgfitz »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #124
_odey wrote: post #118

Q: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess? A: No. Notes: personally I would have either abandoned it during the first month or at the end of the probation period, depending on severity, otherwise I'd force myself to stick around for the year, so I wouldn't get questions during further interviews for why I stayed there only X months. A "hack" would be to endure until somewhere in January ne…

An alternative to hacking your resume is simply leaving the short position off altogether. Your resume doesn't have to be a total transcript of your career. It should just be a highlight of most relevant experiences for your desired job. The same goes for really old jobs too btw - having a detailed explanation of your exploits in Java Swing on page 4 of your resume is likely distracting and irrelevant. Consider makin…

I would personally not want to explain the gap in employment.

"Why did you not work for a year?"

Either you lie (I took a personal leave of absence) or tell the truth (the company was a shitshow and I didnt stay long).

I'm not big on lying, and if I tell the truth I'd expect to get "Well why did you leave it off the resume?" And from there I expect the conversation to go poorly.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#139

Post by zabzonk »

I once handed in my notice after two weeks. The whole project was misguided and heading for obvious failure. The project manager more or less got down on his knees to me and pleaded for me to stay. Much against my better judgement I did, on the proviso that I could do a re-design and that half of the programming team would be sacked. None of this really solved issues, and I actually left after a year or so.

Bottom line, if you hate the job, and you can see the product is not going to be delivered in a working and timely state, get out.

Re: Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

#140

Post by lumost »

Think about what you want to do, what the company allows you to do, and what the next job will give you.

Generally speaking one 6 month stint every 5-10 years won't be questioned extensively in tech. The next job you get you'll need to hold for 18-24 months to avoid the appearance of a pattern.

Be sure that you have a good reason for leaving that isn't "the tech stack was a mess" or "I didn't fit in with the culture" and find your next opportunity. If you make it to a full year no one will ask detailed questions about why you left.

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