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

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

#151

Post by Rastonbury »

ObiKenobi wrote: post #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 fir…

Assuming no big red flags (stuff like toxic boss, work culture, misrepresenting the JD), I'm with you on the 6 months thing, in most decently paid jobs there's a lot of complexity, give yourself 6 months to not just learn but gain confidence to start applying and trying to push against the machine a couple of times.

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

#152

Post by 9rx »

sour-taste wrote: post #38

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…

How have you controlled for the possibility that you originally saw clearly and that the therapy is what has distorted your reality?

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

#153

Post by 9rx »

mettamage wrote: post #127
auggierose wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

If you do what you love, then you love what you do. If you love what you do, you didn't necessarily get there by doing what you love. Reminds me of: a duck is a bird but a bird isn't necessarily a duck. I agree it's not the opposite.

> If you do what you love, then you love what you do.

While it is possible to both do what you love and love what you do, often if you do what you love you are apt to find out that you don't actually love doing it. Hence the common refrain that cautions against turning your love into a job.

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

#154

Post by motohagiography »

maybe we need better tools for assessing the dynamics of orgs from the outside. it's not just personalities, it's incentives.

I have opinions about it based on funding stages, but what it really comes down to is that culture is a function of growth. as an employee with a career success comes from hunting growth. the only real growth is from market fit, and even if you have market fit, if you aren't growing non-linearly you're going to get into a negative sum attrition game in the org culture (e.g. linear long term private equity returns).

questions to find answers for on the way in are:

- does anyone actually use their product and like it?

- how is that number growing? (non-linear, linear, attritive)

- what was their last funding round or change in equity ownership? (e.g. who runs it and what do you have to do to satisfy their investment)

- what's their staff turnover and where do they go?

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

#155

Post by corytheboyd »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #53
Vespasian wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that is true, does a more negative way of viewing things actually benefit you (even if it would be slightly more "accurate")? If one has a choice (that means if there is no case of clinical depression): At least anecdotally a bit of optimism improves my life quality a lot and results in a higher productivity, proactive solution finding and a more pleasant work environment. Constantly looking at the negative…

It's not difficult to imagine a number of scenarios where that perspective could bite you in the ass. If you have a false impression of a person's character because you've jedi mindtricked yourself into not thinking the worst of people, you might end up trusting an untrustworthy person. If you are in a toxic work environment, and you convince yourself it's not so bad, you might end up staying in a situation that is a…

> If you are in a toxic work environment, and you convince yourself it's not so bad, you might end up staying in a situation that is actively harming you.

I hate a toxic work environment too, but let’s be real, everything is fake at software companies, so there is no “harm” happening if you stay. So what if leadership is terrible, if you can play their little games, take their money, and not tailspin into a depression… congrats?

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

#156

Post by tartoran »

scarface_74 wrote: post #57

My job criteria has not been as profound. Will it help me get my n+1 job? Will the technology I’m using look good on my resume? Will I just be a code monkey who pulls well defined stories off the board? Does it pay me market rates? Is the bullshit/pay ratio worth it? Post 2020 the rules have changed for me. Is it remote and is it a remote first culture? Does it pay “enough” to take care of my short and long term goal…

> I work for the paycheck.

Would you be open about this in an interview? The majority work for the paycheck but preferred the job had less BS or shitshow.

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

#157

Post by nkotov »

Shortest I've been at a job was 3 months. I knew around the end of the first month that I needed to get out for two simple reasons - I didn't match with the company culture and the company was a sinking ship. I ended up completely leaving my time at that company off my resume because I realized it's not worth going into details.

Ironically, the skills (devops / cloudsec) I picked up in those three months have helped me double my salary.

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

#158

Post by scarface_74 »

tartoran wrote: post #156
scarface_74 wrote: post #57

My job criteria has not been as profound. Will it help me get my n+1 job? Will the technology I’m using look good on my resume? Will I just be a code monkey who pulls well defined stories off the board? Does it pay me market rates? Is the bullshit/pay ratio worth it? Post 2020 the rules have changed for me. Is it remote and is it a remote first culture? Does it pay “enough” to take care of my short and long term goal…

> I work for the paycheck. Would you be open about this in an interview? The majority work for the paycheck but preferred the job had less BS or shitshow.

Of course not. I’ve been playing the game long enough to know how to bullshit my way through behavioral interviews.

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

#159

Post by paulryanrogers »

profsummergig wrote: post #119
sour-taste wrote: post #38

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…

Steve Jobs said it most profoundly: "love what you do". This is the opposite of "do what you love". I wish I understood where he learned this. It's very profound (and true).

One of many platitudes that kept me in working conditions and religion which were detrimental to my career and mental health.

Maybe it's useful to some who are in objectively good circumstances which they haven't learned to appreciate. I'd still advocate for getting other perspectives from trustworthy folks about ones specific situation.

And not taking advice from billionaires who think their fruity diet will cure their cancer.

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

#160

Post by rurp »

mcv wrote: post #146
sour-taste wrote: post #38

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…

I've recently had a job that started out reasonably good, but after a year and a half, I started wondering what I was doing there, was I really in the right place? Some of the tickets I worked on went nowhere, and I didn't enjoy the stuff I was working on. That lasted a couple of months, and I was seriously considering quitting. And then came a complaint from a user that opened up a whole cesspit of necessary improve…

The times I've really had to scramble on something at work describe both some of my best working experiences and some of my worst. I think a big differentiator is clarity. If I know that X needs to be done, and it's important and urgent I'm happy to dig in.

The bad emergencies tend to be scenarios where I'm told OMG we need to fix A, it's an emergency, only to be told a short time later that actually never mind problem B is the real emergency, and then jumping to problem C after that, and so on. That kind of scattered direction can be soul crushing, where I invest in a problem and get far along on a good solution, only to be told that oh actually that urgency was BS, but trust us this new emergency is totally important.

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