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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?

#181

A company I worked for once interviewed someone who had just started at a different company. We asked why he was leaving so soon, he explained he had some differences of opinion and that it wasn't going to work out well. He seemed great, we hired him, he was indeed great. After we'd hired him, we asked about the old company again. "Oh, it was an utter shitshow" and he went on a long and very compelling rant about how…

This. You're only unprofessional if you start ranting about it at every opportunity you have, specially during a job interview.

"I'm not doing what I was hired to do" is my rephrasing of "utter shitshow" for the interview.

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

#182
post #145

Just leave. It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself. In 2012 I've left my hometown and went to the other side of my country to work at a startup. Within 20 days I left because the situation was critical. I was already feeling like I should leave on the second week, but decided to wait just to break-even from my moving expenses. It was e-commerce startup where the team lead / project manager was…

> Just leave.

Not a good idea for the OP to leave without having another job to start.

The OP only found this job after a long period of job searching. Having a large unexplained resume gap followed by a short 6-month employment followed by another gap is the type of pattern that starts to scare hiring managers.

Start the job search, but don’t just leave until you have something else to go to. Avoid introducing another resume gap within months of the previous long resume gap.

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

#183
It's weird to read this as I started a new role myself 5 weeks ago and after my first week I've had the exact question linger in my mind. I work for a finance company who have outsourced everything to Eastern Europe and now they're trying to rein everything in house but so many things are half-baked and bad practise or simply wrong, meaning everything will eventually need a rewrite. I spend so much time doing nothing because everyone is so frantic running around no one has helped me identify my work load or even assigns tickets. I don't find it possible for me to just figure out what to work on myself.

The people I interviewed with are so nice I would feel some guilt leaving, but the actual technical team I have aren't here and are hard to work with so I wouldn't feel too bad. Although, the older I get the more frequently I remind myself a companies bottom line is themselves. They don't care about you as much as you would ever think so.

I do not think you would be bad for leaving after 5 or 6 months, heck 2 or 3 wouldn't be bad either. Life is short and you legitimately don't owe your time to a company indefinitely. You won't struggle to find other jobs, people can be incredibly understanding and what you are describing isn't uncommon in the software industry IMO. As I am enjoying a similar experience unforutnately

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

#184
This sounds like a great opportunity to level up and learn some rare lessons.

It's easy to see problems and its easy to complain about them - but even if you're right, there's a vast gulf between complaining and driving change. You may be discouraged because you're hitting resistance but that's the nature of these things - if the organization already was ripe for and acting to fix these things, there'd be no need for you to help make it happen.

That's the nature of the leadership challenge - how do you get people to change things when they currently don't want to or think they cannot?

You think you see the right path, awesome, let's assume that's true. But if you can't find a way to make things better, then aren't you saying exactly the same thing that others are saying - "we have to live with it?"

You may not be in for that kind of challenge, you may just want to write code in a well set up environment, in which case you should absolutely leave. But if you want a real challenge of actually driving change and impact, of leveling up your leadership and seniority, this sounds like a great opportunity. Some will see it that way, others never will.

If you do see the opportunity, then the next question is "how" - finding a way to figure that out is going to be an amazing learning experience regardless of success.

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

#185
post #145

Just leave. It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself. In 2012 I've left my hometown and went to the other side of my country to work at a startup. Within 20 days I left because the situation was critical. I was already feeling like I should leave on the second week, but decided to wait just to break-even from my moving expenses. It was e-commerce startup where the team lead / project manager was…

I’m more shocked that Eclipse even had a feature that would svn commit on every file save.

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

#186
post #31

It's not unprofessional to quit an unfulfilling job. It's unprofessional to quit without notice (since you're a senior person), or to badmouth the company online, to recruiters, or to future prospective employers. If anyone asks why you quit you should say "I found a better opportunity." If you quit without another job lined up you may get asked in the future to explain the gap, so have an explanation that doesn't ma…

It's unprofessional to quit with significantly less notice than the company would give you. If the company wouldn't give you any, you don't owe them any

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

#187
post #145

Just leave. It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself. In 2012 I've left my hometown and went to the other side of my country to work at a startup. Within 20 days I left because the situation was critical. I was already feeling like I should leave on the second week, but decided to wait just to break-even from my moving expenses. It was e-commerce startup where the team lead / project manager was…

> Just leave. Not a good idea for the OP to leave without having another job to start. The OP only found this job after a long period of job searching. Having a large unexplained resume gap followed by a short 6-month employment followed by another gap is the type of pattern that starts to scare hiring managers. Start the job search, but don’t just leave until you have something else to go to. Avoid introducing anoth…

Read the next sentence.

>It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself.

This is the part you somehow missed.

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

#188
Start looking for other jobs ASAP. There's no shame in telling an interviewer, "I accepted my current and it is not the role or company they described during the hiring process".

This has happened to practically everyone at least once. The biggest mistake I've made in my career was taking a job, seeing that it wasn't the role they originally described and sticking around anyway. I ended up languishing there for a few years and it burned me out and set my career back, not irreparably, but noticeably.

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

#189
post #162

A company I worked for once interviewed someone who had just started at a different company. We asked why he was leaving so soon, he explained he had some differences of opinion and that it wasn't going to work out well. He seemed great, we hired him, he was indeed great. After we'd hired him, we asked about the old company again. "Oh, it was an utter shitshow" and he went on a long and very compelling rant about how…

I dunno, unless some criminal stuff is involved, I feel like it is not the business of an employer to probe why a candidate left their previous job in six months. Maybe it is a red flag if their entire resume is filled with 6 month stints, if it is just one job, why bother? Also, the candidate can say something like "the contract ended" or something generic. What is the point of talking about the shortcomings of thei…

I left a job after nine months, and have to defend that decision 6+ years later.

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

#190
That is exactly why it's important to ask questions during your interviews. When it's my turn to ask questions when I'm on a job hunt - I start with "How do you develop software? Please explain it from requirement gathering till deployment". Afterwards, I ask few more to get the pulse of their work style.
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