Always Be Leaving.
Coffee is for deserters?
Signs that it's time to leave a company
181–190 of 354 posts
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well you’re right in that I haven’t been looking for jobs recently, but I find it extremely hard to believe that large grants and salaries are no longer a thing in the software industry at large. A few friends-of-friends I know very recently got nice grants and salaries, with large Mega Corps, but that’s always where the money was?
Everyone on HN knows someone's brother's nephew's wife's cousin's former roommate who makes $600K at MegaCorp FAANG but those kinds of opportunities aren't (and have never been) common. Especially now during our first tech bear market in what, 13 years?
What’s the unemployment rate for software developers? Still basically zero. It’s never moved, but for some reason people seem to think it has. That’s weird.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#183When they:
- Replaced good snacks with random, shittier ones
- Cut wellness benefits
- Closed the cool coffee shop
- Retreat without a strategy to move forward or grow. Sometimes it's a lack of product strategy with arbitrary cost cutting cannibalizing essential features of core product into a shell of its former self. Other times, it's round-after-round of layoffs uncertainty while making record profits and spending $10's of billions on servers without a clear need or purpose.
- No one cool is left because the "party" moved elsewhere
- All of the fun stuff is dead
- Increasing amounts of time-wasting bullshit
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#184Amazon's tech innovation died a while ago. It will continue to operate its successful business lines until it runs out of steam and shrivels up, just like IBM & co. It will never catch up to things like AI and will fall behind. And it's not a bad thing for Amazon, at least for now. They are in a better position than Google, where they have a more diverse revenue stream, and can out-compete everyone else. They don't n…
> It will never catch up to things like AI and will fall behind
Amazon Q is appearing all over the place in the AWS console. The AWS Jetbrains plugin also integrates Q, though I've never actually used it. I can't judge the quality of their AI offering, because as I said, I've not used it, but they're definitely not asleep when it comes to AI.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#185Two years and six months. If you do not get any promotion, perks or increase of benefits during that time, your not going to get any ever. Waiting with the mindset of "maybe I will this year" will only cause you mental anguish, to the point you'll become disgruntled and end up shooting yourself in the foot. Why two years six months? It's takes three months of constant effort just to score an interview/new job and thr…
Waiting for "maybe I will this year" will only cause you mental anguish The problem there is the 'waiting' bit. If you expect other people to see your impact and reward it you won't get it. You need to advocate for yourself. Make sure you're talking directly to stakeholders and leaders in your org. Post about things you've worked on in company channels. Update everyone when you hit goals and milestones. Celebrate you…
It might be good for the career but this sounds like the opposite of fun to me.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#186That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…
In my experience, "little software shops" are about maintaining "living fossile" systems. They survive by signing contracts with non-tech companies (supermarkets, healthcare, etc.) to develop a system and offer support, but never update it. There is no need to update or improve anything since there is no competition. The customer would have to sign a contract with another software shop, and non-tech companies are highly risk-averse, as long as it gets the job done they keep paying.
It gets frustrating most of the times since you'll be working with old and unsupported tools, and you cannot update them. I am talking Postgres 8, AngularJS, ASP.NET, etc.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#187That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…
So privately held companies? """Shareholders"""" are the worst...
Privately held companies have shareholders, too, and some of the inter-shareholder drama at a small company can impact your day-to-day life as an engineer more than at a BigCorp.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time and time again job announcements are mentioning fast-paced environments , and exactly those companies like to churn through an immense body count. Loyalty needs to go two ways. Stability seems to be a game for the older folks, whereas younger people prefer efficiency and risk taking. "we can't have infinite exponential growth forever", I agree, but I can create infinite exponential personal growth for my younger…
> Loyalty needs to go two ways This is one of the more perplexing elements of both working as an IC and a manager. I'm constantly battling the line between treating the relationship as purely transactional and one where work is more meaningful than that. The problem is that whenever you bring other things in - "loyalty", "passion" etc etc you are at very high risk that these are circumstantially dependent on the coin…
It depends on whether you consider software development a rote activity or a creative endeavour.
The transactional approach certainly makes sense from a rote activity stand-point. Money, however, is a remarkably poor motivator for most people when they are required to pour their creative juices into a task. A sense of ownership, a higher cause, or a sense of accomplishment are much stronger drivers.
I think the problem stems from management lumping both types of work into a common bucket. That's when what you describe starts to occur.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#189The big RSU grant is depleted and you don’t get a new one that is comparable in size. There is zero reason not to leave in this case, because you will absolutely make way more money by leaving. You can even leave and rejoin the same company to get another grant, as dumb as that is. Make sure you actually ask for a new grant before quitting, nobody is going to give you money for free. You also need to be good but that…
They're treating you like an idiot who can't count, and so the proper response is given them the middle finger by moving on. You owe them nothing.
Most MAANGs will match RSUs so you rarely must stay somewhere miserable just to vest. If it's not a fun place to work, it's not worth wasting your (work)life.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#190The big RSU grant is depleted and you don’t get a new one that is comparable in size. There is zero reason not to leave in this case, because you will absolutely make way more money by leaving. You can even leave and rejoin the same company to get another grant, as dumb as that is. Make sure you actually ask for a new grant before quitting, nobody is going to give you money for free. You also need to be good but that…
Not everyone is in for the money.