Quitting a New Job

This post was just a couple of months too late.

I recently started a new, lucrative team lead job in a problem space I was interested in that promised to be structured, ambitious, and full of opportunity. I even requested a follow-up post-offer to make sure it was a good fit. But after only two weeks, I realized it was a command-and-control death march.

No product ownership. Design your database up front. Complete waterfall but with developers and team leads responsible for each phase. A drive-by micromanaging executive with a team far too large to micromanage. Implementation teams of (only) junior developers had spent months prior to my arrival talking/meeting/designing - with virtually nothing to show for it.

Every day was a calendar full of meetings to prepare for other meetings. Other teams and their managers were reporting fraudulent statuses creating the illusion of progress when no actual progress actually existed. Asking questions or offering any pushback was met with passive-aggressive anger. Any effort to create a little bit of structure amidst the chaos was, almost immediately, thrown away.

So I decided it was best if I resigned. They even kept me around for a couple of weeks after I resigned which was nice, and that two weeks confirmed I made the right decision. A number of other team members and peers reached out and expressed agreement or envy - they wanted to leave as well.

But despite those assurances that I'd made the right choice, it was a tough pill to swallow. I've never worked anywhere less than 18 months. I love building good software and I hate job hunting. I'm debating whether to put this experience on my resume or not because it's such an outlier in my professional experience and was such a short stent.

Here's hoping the next opportunity is a better match. If you're an employer in DFW (or willing to take on a remote) looking for a Team Lead or hands-on Development Manager that can code, I'd love to chat.

As a CS graduate I had this a few years ago.

After 4 months, I felt numb and that would last every week from Monday to Friday. I wanted to be somewhere else so bad.

But instead of option 2 ("Start exploring new opportunities but don’t quit until something better is lined up"), I chose option 3 ("Stick it out for at least a year") for these reasons:

- With only €800 saved up (had just invested €5,000 in a fishing business that had failed) at the moment I realized it wasn't a good fit I couldn't afford even a month of bills.

- It would look bad on the resume, and might have to justify it to next prospective employers.

Also due to unfortunate circumstances, my life was administratively a mess: there was a massive 6-month delay in the delivery of new residence permits. And by the time my papers got processed, social security information was no longer up-to-date (only valid for 3 months), causing an additional nerve-wracking 5-month delay. As a consequence I couldn't quit or even get fired as, in addition to the mess above, I would have to update employment information (and get possibly another 5-month delay). After my annual review with my boss and a PIP, my salary got cut 10% (had no choice)

The happy ending? When I finally managed to get my residence permit and successfully updated my social security information 18 months after I joined the company. I looked for and found a new job, handed in my resignation and joined the other company.

Exactly this!

I am conflicted abiut this - he was working full time at 2 places and performing adequately? Was he that good?

If this continued for a while and you were happy with his work prior to discovering this, why let him go?

I quit a job before even starting. They called me and told me that they had decided to pay me a good chunk less than we had agreed upon. I was in the last days of my two weeks notice for my current job. I had no option. Except that... five minutes later, my current boss made a counter-offer. And ten minutes later it was me who called those charming people to apologize for the inconvenience.

After what they had done, it was a surprise how bad they took it. Very serious threats to my future employability and well being. I really suffered during the whole call, trying not to laugh and keep it professional.

It was also a hardware company. I worked for another hardware company later. Not sure if there are other kind of hardware companies there in the Valley. But for me, there's a clear rule: never work for another hardware company.