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

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

charity.wtf

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 235 posts

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

#171

Post by farts_mckensy »

corytheboyd wrote: post #170
farts_mckensy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a mental cost to that. Essentially having to put on a mask and performatively "play their little games" is taxing. Some are better at it than others. But in those quiet moments, don't you ask yourself what percentage of your life you have to be a different person?

I ask myself a lot of things, but they all require money to do. This is just the society we made, you do some shit that doesn’t matter for a few decades, get some money, then go do whatever you want. I’m fine with it. Would I rather not do it? Absolutely!

I'm saying there's a cost to that mentality. There's a personal cost, which is you giving up a part of yourself--not just your time, but your personality--to grow your net worth. And there's a societal cost to this level of cynicism being so pervasive. When the intellectual laborers of a society just go through the motions instead of being invested in what they do, the society as a whole suffers.

If you have to repeat thought eliminating clichés to justify this, it seems like there's a level of self deception going on. The chickens will come home to roost eventually.

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

#172

Post by varsketiz »

will5421 wrote: post #117
varsketiz wrote: post #99

I like companies that do tryouts. In the last 15 years I worked for 3 employers. Two of them did tryouts - a day or two literally working in their environment. One did not. The two that did it both were great, the one that did not turned out to not be for me. I'm with the last employer for the last 9 years, and not looking to quit :))

You haven’t happened to find a list of companies that do tryouts, have you?

Haha, I wish. Very random that this has happened. One of them was Assembla - Boston based. The other, that I work in now - Vinted - Lithuania based.

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

#173

Post by corytheboyd »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #171
corytheboyd wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask myself a lot of things, but they all require money to do. This is just the society we made, you do some shit that doesn’t matter for a few decades, get some money, then go do whatever you want. I’m fine with it. Would I rather not do it? Absolutely!

I'm saying there's a cost to that mentality. There's a personal cost, which is you giving up a part of yourself--not just your time, but your personality--to grow your net worth. And there's a societal cost to this level of cynicism being so pervasive. When the intellectual laborers of a society just go through the motions instead of being invested in what they do, the society as a whole suffers. If you have to repea…

Oh you’re assuming I just go through the motions. I do care about the craft of my work. Eh okay.

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

#174

Post by aeze »

layer8 wrote: post #162
aeze wrote: post #161

For my past several jobs, I've put together a job satisfaction matrix that I fill out once a month. If it scores below a threshold three months in a row, that triggers a job search. It helps me because I have a habit of fixating on the team’s mission and ignoring my own happiness, so the monthly check-in keeps me from staying somewhere longer than I should.

How many times have you switched jobs already, and what was your average tenure?

Over ~15 years I've switched four times. Three if you don't count being brought over in an acquisition.

- 6 years

- 3 years -> triggered by matrix

- 3 years -> until acquisition

- 5 months -> acquiring company, triggered by matrix

- 2 years, on-going

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

#175

Post by LinuxAmbulance »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #89
parpfish wrote: post #30

i worry that i've job hopped a bit too much and have a series of 2-3yr gigs on my resume. part of my problem is that I get unhappy (or bored) with a job but sit in denial for too long. so by the time I start looking for a new position, I'll desperately jump headfirst into a new gig instead of lining up the perfect gig. Or maybe not. maybe it's impossible to tell if a place is a good fit from the interview.

I'm the same as you. A series of 2-3 year gigs. Some I left because I was bored and not getting any new challenges. Some I was laid off from. Some I left because for some reason everything I enjoyed about the job fell apart. My favorite coworkers left, the executives clawed back all the nice perks, etc I'm in this situation right now. Just passed the three year mark and the new executive team is starting a rodeo I ho…

Don't feel down on yourself in the least. Two to three years is a good run in the tech industry.

If I'm not learning new things that will get me the next better job that's a rung up the ladder, there's no point in staying. I've never had a job where that's the case three years in.

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

#176

Post by aeze »

physicles wrote: post #164
aeze wrote: post #161

For my past several jobs, I've put together a job satisfaction matrix that I fill out once a month. If it scores below a threshold three months in a row, that triggers a job search. It helps me because I have a habit of fixating on the team’s mission and ignoring my own happiness, so the monthly check-in keeps me from staying somewhere longer than I should.

Would you mind sharing this? Seems really valuable.

Sure - it's fairly personalized based on what I'm looking to get out of my career, but it has questions roughly like this:

  - Am I free from feeling frustrated/stressed at work once a week or more?
  - Am I free from work stress/anxieties outside of work hours?
  - Am I keeping up with my hobbies?
  - Do I feel respected and valued, with the ability to influence my work environment? 
  - Do I feel proud of my work and confident discussing my job with others?
  - Am I learning/growing?
  - Am I excited about the company's direction and secure in its stability?
  - Do I feel like my job is secure?
I score each item 1-5 (1 = rarely, 5 = always) and track the total. If that total stays below my cutoff for a few months in a row, that would trigger me to start looking. Sometimes I include notes beside any low/high scores for context.

Friends have challenged this, asking if I can't just feel when it's time to move on, which I can, but I've found this leads to me being more thoughtful and proactive about it.

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

#177

Post by mcv »

rurp wrote: post #160
mcv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 probl…

Exactly. In this particular case, it was fun because I recognised the problem and had/took the freedom to get to the bottom of this and fix it as thoroughly as I could. I could easily have decided to accept that the big import process took an hour, but I stubbornly thought it could be faster, and reduced it to 3 minutes. Biggest dopamine boost ever. Still coasting on that. And in doing so, discovered a bunch of bugs, undocumented behaviour users depended on, and ended up addressing all of it in the way I wanted.

That freedom was absolutely key. The same job could have been frustrating and stupid if someone else had been ordered to do what I did.

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

#178

Post by cardanome »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #167
cardanome wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CBT can definitely veer into gaslightning territory. But then, if it helps you cope, so what? It is the same with religion. Even though gods objectively do not exist, at least not in a literal sense, it can still help people to cope better with their life and be an overall positive force. Or extremely harmful when abused. The world is pretty depressing. Everyone is telling themselves little lies one way or another ju…

>CBT can definitely veer into gaslightning territory. But then, if it helps you cope, so what? That's myopic. There's only so much "reframing" you can do before the tension begins to rear its head. Serenity now, insanity later.

Yeah, that is why I wrote:

> Personally I think striving to have a realistic model of the world is still the best long term strategy and that those little lies are like drugs that will help you in the short term but wreck havoc in the long term but who knows. It is complicated.

Though to be fair much of CBT can also be getting rid of false believes that hold you back.

Ultimately CBT has a lot of empirical research backing it up that shows that it is very effective for certain conditions. Though people should also be more aware that it works less well or can be harmful for certain people. It is not a silver bullet but nothing to sneer at.

Ultimately we all cope one way or another. If you believe that you have no delusions, you are more delusional than most of us.

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

#179

Post by bluefirebrand »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #175
bluefirebrand wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same as you. A series of 2-3 year gigs. Some I left because I was bored and not getting any new challenges. Some I was laid off from. Some I left because for some reason everything I enjoyed about the job fell apart. My favorite coworkers left, the executives clawed back all the nice perks, etc I'm in this situation right now. Just passed the three year mark and the new executive team is starting a rodeo I ho…

Don't feel down on yourself in the least. Two to three years is a good run in the tech industry. If I'm not learning new things that will get me the next better job that's a rung up the ladder, there's no point in staying. I've never had a job where that's the case three years in.

I hear this quite a bit, and I appreciate it, but it is still difficult to shake off the feeling I'm defective. My Dad worked at a Tool Store for 25 years, you know?

Also the company I'm currently at boasts a lot of engineers who have been with the company 10+ years, some who have for 20+. It's an abnormal software company for sure

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

#180

Post by McAlpine5892 »

whstl wrote: post #112
farts_mckensy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’d argue that you can still have an accurate model of the world without the depression part. I can’t back it up but recovering from depression by simply putting “rose colored glasses” is a recipe for bouncing back later. Happened to me. In HN’s case: admitting that companies are quite toxic and more often than not working against you, that most people around you is probably an incompetent if put under a microscope a…

> admitting that companies are quite toxic and more often than not working against you, that most people around you is probably an incompetent if put under a microscope and that the things you’re working on aren’t exactly changing the world for the better

It would be so much easier to deal with if I wasn't surrounded by people, especially management, that act like we're on a mission from $DEITY. Seriously, I can get over on working on whatever inane unimportant thing. It's the entire circus acting like we're not that drives me nuts.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine plumbers get talks along the lines of "We're top-notch leaders in our industry for fitting pipes! True innovators. Pushing the envelope. We are world-renowned for our culture and are continually pushing the limits of what's possible. Every day we inspire people to live their best lives and be their true selves. " Add on to that, plumbers are actually important! And they know it.

Related: did you do anything specific to help with your depression? I've been getting into TMS / ketamine / whatever else territory for mine.

Post reply on HN