Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to know when it's time to go

bitfieldconsulting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#21

Post by h4ny »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #10

> It’s no good nursing your private resentments for years, while telling your boss once a week that everything’s fine, and then suddenly walking out on them. Strongly disagree with this point. Your departure should be an enormous shock to management, otherwise you've just spent weeks or months mouthing off about work to them, they've not fixed anything and indeed might even have lined up your replacement already.

I agree with you that anyone who don't get the appreciation they deserve should leave and make it painful for management. But I think whether or not you should keep talking is highly situational. If you have a manager/boss who genuinely cares about you (hard to tell most of the time from personal experience), then the next paragraph of the article makes sense:

> Instead, you should make sure that if you’re unhappy about something, your boss knows it pretty much as soon as you do.

Keeping a paper trail of those discussions also help even if it's just for sanity check for your future self.

Chances are most people won't help you because most people are bystanders or cowards in those situations (anecdotal, maybe everyone I know and I are unlucky).

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#22

Post by nehal3m »

raddan wrote: post #14
nehal3m wrote: post #13

>Ultimately, work that’s too easy is no fun, and it’s not the basis of a rewarding career. All you’re doing is selling time, and as you get a little older you’ll come to realise that time is a non-renewable resource. There's this strange myth that white collar workers try and find meaning or reward in their work. If the stars align so that the unquenchable thirst from your brain can be satiated with white collar work…

> There's this strange myth that white collar workers try and find meaning or reward in their work. It’s not entirely a myth. I am one of those people. But I do think that most people kind of just go through the motions. It’s possible that my work history helped shape my perspective. My earliest jobs were things like unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and waiting tables. Those are hard jobs, physically. When I final…

>So it’s not that white collar workers (or even blue collar workers) try to find meaning in their work. Some do, some don’t. It’s that they SHOULD.

Since blue collar work tends towards more tangible outcomes I would think finding meaning in blue collar work is easier, but that's speaking as an office drone. Maybe the grass is greener, but it seems to me that receiving a broken motorcycle and it leaving your shop running is easier to find meaning in than delivering TPS reports. On the other hand, shoving out burger number fifty thousand doesn't seem steeped in inherent meaning either.

And that illustrates my point; if you end up in a situation where you have a job turning a crank, be it white or blue collar, and it's hard to get out of that situation because it's your only income, then pursuing something more meaningful is very difficult. Maybe you can convince yourself that because your work has economic meaning you are fulfilling someone's needs somewhere, but when you come home too exhausted to enjoy your own time you can quickly spiral into nihilism.

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#23

Post by tmn »

raddan wrote: post #11

I think it’s always important to have ambitious life goals. Goals can be career-related. But at least a few should be about your personal life. So, for me, it has always been easy to decide when to go. Is work helping me reach my goals or standing in my way? As an example, in the early 2000’s I had a comfortable, well-paying job in IT. But I wanted to be a part of something bigger. I wanted to be an expert, pushing t…

Did you reach your goals?

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#24

Post by beepboopboop »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #17

The issue that I have with this type of article and why they never resonate with me is that they seem to assume you’ll be able to find a job with a similar salary if not a higher one, by snapping your fingers. I’ll tell you my experience: I’ve been working for 21 years, and I’ve only worked for two companies in that time period (there was a short stint at a third one, but I didn’t fully quit one of the other two so I…

A couple things struck me from what you said:

- Have you talked to your manager about a promotion?

- On one hand you said it bothers you that others are being promoted to managerial positions, on the other you said you’re not crazy about getting into management. It’s ok to not go into management - the developer career path does not begin as a developer and end as a manager, it begins as a developer and ends as a developer. And on the flip side, the software development manager career path typically begins as a developer and ends as a manager. They’re just different paths, one will fit better than the other.

- When you have a young child, consistency and security are good features in a job. You can take risks later if that’s what you want to do. In my opinion, some stagnancy is a reasonable trade off to better enjoy these early years with your kid that you’ll only get once.

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#26

Post by xivzgrev »

apwell23 wrote: post #16
nehal3m wrote: post #13

>Ultimately, work that’s too easy is no fun, and it’s not the basis of a rewarding career. All you’re doing is selling time, and as you get a little older you’ll come to realise that time is a non-renewable resource. There's this strange myth that white collar workers try and find meaning or reward in their work. If the stars align so that the unquenchable thirst from your brain can be satiated with white collar work…

> invest that time where you're sure to derive meaning from it. all my time is taken up with doing work, chores at home and childcare. I feel fucking depressed.

I’m in the same boat! I wouldn’t say I feel depressed though, I’d say strained. There’s no “me” time.

The thing that keeps me going (besides love for my family) is a little bit of hope. How can you take small steps toward a more balanced place today?

Do you know what self care you need? How can you start making time for it? Can your wife / parents / in law help? Can you hire someone? Or can you combine stuff?

For a while (before I fell off wagon), I was jogging with my kiddo so I took one task (watching kid) and knocked out 3 birds with it (watching kid, giving kid outside time, exercising)

Another one: I want to start eating more healthy. And my kid doesn’t eat vegetables on his own. So during his meal times I started eating a bowl of veggies with him. I eat veggies, and he will often start eating with me too. Win / win.

It’s the small things that help me get through.

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#27

Post by anon-3988 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #15
nehal3m wrote: post #13

>Ultimately, work that’s too easy is no fun, and it’s not the basis of a rewarding career. All you’re doing is selling time, and as you get a little older you’ll come to realise that time is a non-renewable resource. There's this strange myth that white collar workers try and find meaning or reward in their work. If the stars align so that the unquenchable thirst from your brain can be satiated with white collar work…

For me it is pretty clear that there was work-before-I-started-raising-a-young-family and work after. To be clear, it wasn't over-night. After all, it took me quite a bit of time to adjust to my new role in life as "father". But once it started to embrace me (or, you know, vice-versa) the importance of work and its rewards diminished significantly. In short, I was soon content to put in the work that got the job done…

I think this is what is missing from most people (especially here, where its more likely to be dream driven?).

Once you have a kid (and properly well adjusted), your life is no longer yours. You can't go on a sabbatical as a father. Your child's future will appear to be the most important thing to you and everything becomes secondary.

I think this is probably what life is for the majority of people. Work is just something they do to sustain the life of their family. They don't have the time (nor interest, nor care) to keep up with C++ conference, the latest JavaScript libraries, etc etc.

This is one of the reason why I think that "dead jobs" is not necessarily a bad thing. It points to a much larger question of "why are we even doing this in the first place?"

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#28

Post by prerok »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #10

> It’s no good nursing your private resentments for years, while telling your boss once a week that everything’s fine, and then suddenly walking out on them. Strongly disagree with this point. Your departure should be an enormous shock to management, otherwise you've just spent weeks or months mouthing off about work to them, they've not fixed anything and indeed might even have lined up your replacement already.

I think business relationship is not that dissimilar to other relationships. I think you should voice your concerns, while still letting the manager know that you are open to disagree and still commit. Only when your disagreement becomes too strong, then you leave.

If you have concerns and constructive feedback, I found most managers to have agreeable reactions to it.

Maybe I was just lucky, but I did have this experience across four companies. What you should not do is bare criticism without constructive feedback. Most managers will respond positively, even if nothing happens in the end. And after voicing it for several times, you can feel better for leaving, because you also did what you could from your end.

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#29

Post by raddan »

tmn wrote: post #23
raddan wrote: post #11

I think it’s always important to have ambitious life goals. Goals can be career-related. But at least a few should be about your personal life. So, for me, it has always been easy to decide when to go. Is work helping me reach my goals or standing in my way? As an example, in the early 2000’s I had a comfortable, well-paying job in IT. But I wanted to be a part of something bigger. I wanted to be an expert, pushing t…

Did you reach your goals?

Yes. Of course, I have new ones now. I’m still working on those.

Re: How to know when it's time to go

#30

Post by anon-3988 »

One thing that I realized recently is that humans are not "designed" to be happy. We will always not be content with the current state of being. We will always be looking for the next improvement or change.

In a sense, what humans actually care about is the derivative of their state. The absolute state doesn't matter that much.

I mean, why would it? Why would evolution design a creature that is content? Happiness and contentment only works (for survival purposes) if it is fleeting.

At some point, I was happy just _thinking_ of buying good, beefy PCs so everything becomes snappy. However, now that I can literally buy them, I don't have that desire anymore.

In fact, I have no idea what to do with my money? I was happy just living with my parents and I could probably afford to do that until the end of their days. But now that I do have the money, that "dream" is no longer there.

I guess what I am trying to get at is to no be trapped by the illusion of "the next good thing". Its designed to be a treadmill. Learn how to be happy with what you have.

Post reply on HN