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How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

charity.wtf

101–110 of 235 posts

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#101

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

[deleted]

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#102

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

On the other hand, some studies show that mildly depressed people have a more accurate model of the world. So what if you were right about your job initially, and the CBT is basically just gaslighting you into spinning things in a positive way?

What is even an "accurate model of the world" in this context? Isn't it all just perception and impression and interpretation?

For example, a depressed person might think: "this company is shit and will go under in 6 months because my coworkers and management are so incompetent and malicious"

Let's say their prediction was true. Good job!

What if the depressed person missed that there were a couple of people at the office who actually were not incompetent and malicious, maybe people they would enjoy to get to know. What if there were opportunities to learn interesting things while the company crashed and burned.

To determine what worldview is most realistic you have to weigh what aspects of reality are most significant.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#103
A couple of rules I have that have worked for me so far is:

Colleagues, tasks, compensation - if at least two of the three are good, it's fine to stay. If not it's time to look for something new.

The first year is a learning year, the second is a productive year, and the third is a "what else can I get out of this place" year. If nothing changes in the third year, then there's not much more to learn from the company and it's maybe time to move on.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#104
My first job was the only job I just went home from and just cried because of how useless thah job felt. We were building a SaaS that took weeks for a simple update with 8 devs (of which 2 were actually good).

This was purely because of the legacy stack and poor management. The boss wanted to scale but did not care about tech, so we just never made real improvements. Sure, a feature got implement at least a week. We saw revenue grow a ton. We never saw time to improve our stack.

Safe to say I felt like I was adding nothing to that company. They just didn't want to grow despite saying the opposite. I get that the shiniest framework will not improve the project, but there were some serious bottlenecks that just got shoved under the rug

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#105

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

On the other hand, some studies show that mildly depressed people have a more accurate model of the world. So what if you were right about your job initially, and the CBT is basically just gaslighting you into spinning things in a positive way?

What does it mean for someone’s model of the world to be accurate? My experience with mild depression is that you notice many negative things which are true but then lack perspective about how much they matter. When you feel better you just don’t pay any mind to these negative things.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#106
I do not agree with the "you know within a week"-take. I'm now 14 years working in IT-Security. 9 of those years for the same company.

I got my next job through a headhunter. The first weeks I had a really good feeling of the company I liked it there after a few months it got worse and worse like they couldn't hide all the bad things anymore. I quit, next job was more or less the same. I quit. My current job? The first month I thought to my self "oh my god, where do I got here?", but now a six months in I really like it.

Maybe also other factors have some plays here like my move from consulting into an internal role, colleagues, the overall freedom, but imho it's hard to generalize something like that.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#107

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

Yeah, reading this I thought the author should suggest to their friend that they talk to a therapist.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#108
The first few weeks at a new job always feel fresh and exciting. It usually takes a few months before I start to really get a sense of whether the job is a good fit.

Over time, I begin to see how I feel about the work itself, how I get along with coworkers, and how the daily pace and expectations fit me.

Curious if others have their own rule of thumb for figuring this out.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#109

My first job was the only job I just went home from and just cried because of how useless thah job felt. We were building a SaaS that took weeks for a simple update with 8 devs (of which 2 were actually good). This was purely because of the legacy stack and poor management. The boss wanted to scale but did not care about tech, so we just never made real improvements. Sure, a feature got implement at least a week. We…

I'm a bit confused by your post here.

> The boss wanted to scale but did not care about tech... We saw revenue grow a ton.

Sounds like the boss was largely getting the scaling they wanted?

Every situation is different and there are people with way more experience than me here, but in general terms I've seen the "we need to rewrite / write a component library" from immature tech. Problem is, they're never satifised, so after they're happy and they've moved on, the next person will say the exact same thing.

That's not to say your code didn't have real problems.

But experience tells me that there's tons of well written projects with no users or revenue, and lots of broken shit making money hand over fist. All else being equal, unless you're in a bubble, you're better off with the money.

( Not intended to imply the job wasn't terrible and the product didn't have real actual scaling problems making your life terrible, I've seen that too ).

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#110
I quit a job via a consultancy to a bank at about lunchtime on my first day.

I'm just not at the stage in my life where I'm willing to onboard to a transformation that starts with a half a day call authenticating so you can login to a remote VM to do your development.

Similarly I had a 2 week gig where they send me some shitheap of a windows laptop that takes 20 minutes to login, where they wanted future engagements.

Nope. Nada. No way.

You can see the value of your productivity straight out the gate. It's not valued and you will never be able to change it from your vantage point of IC or middle manager.

It doesn't really matter that they say otherwise, the evidence tells the story.

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