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Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

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Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#131

Post by greatiscones »

That's how I feel about a very similar situation.

A corollary I think for me was that for many of the same reasons I didn't recognize the problems -- or maybe because I didn't recognize the problems -- others really couldn't grasp the depths of them either. Sometimes I think other people are better at recognizing problems than you are if there's a bad situation, but sometimes (maybe more often than society realizes) I think people just tend to assume that their functional situation applies everywhere, and so interpret things through that lens. So if you complain about X, they tend to (subconsciously maybe even) think "oh they must have not really meant X, they must have meant less serious version of X".

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#132

Post by dbg31415 »

Thanks for sharing.

In my 20s I had a boss who strung me along for 4 years.

It was a shitty little services agency building custom software.

He would say things like, "Oh, I know I need to get your pay up... just give me until next quarter, budgets are already set." And every time he had a little somewhat plausible excuse. "Oh, we didn't get all the new clients we had hoped..." (even though we got every client where I had been on the pitch) or, "Oh our revenues aren't up because projects you aren't on have taken a loss, can you cover more projects? I can't afford to have anyone else do them... if you save the day, I'll make sure we get your pay and bonus up to compensate."

And after 4 long years, where the last year was just him avoiding me, and where my Christmas bonus was literally a $25 iTunes gift card, when I was running projects worth like like 90% of the company revenue, I was like, "Y'know... I love my co-workers, I got to hire a lot of them, and that team meant a lot to me... but fuck my boss, he's a real twat." And I got an job that paid nearly 2x what I was making. And I helped the people I cared about find new jobs too.

And never looked back.

Lesson learned... Any time you have a boss who gives you a "slow no" you need to run. Don't walk, run away. That person is just using you.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#133

Post by mandeepj »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #51

Thank you for sharing. I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying. Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners. Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons. I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing p…

> They mostly just want me doing grunt work, despite my desire to do larger, “force multiplier” type work. Work that my coworkers and customers are asking for.

Is it possible for you to only share "grunt" work with owners and talk about "force multiplier" only with who "gets it" ?

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#134

Post by water-data-dude »

I recently got out of a job where I had nothing to do, and it was soul crushing. I actually had a boss I really liked, but the company had so much red tape and bureaucracy that our team didn't have any real work to do. I didn't write a single line of work related code the entire time I was there, and it felt like I was losing momentum, like all my skills were getting duller. You wouldn't think doing nothing would exhaust you, but not doing anything _real_ all day stressed me out a lot and I was weirdly tired at the end of the day. This meant I didn't have very much energy for job hunting or personal projects that would help me find another job. I wanted to reply to this post in particular because it hits a point that a lot of job advice posts I see miss: a shitty enough job can make it hard to do the stuff you need to do to get another job. I don't know what advice I can give though, it's a hard problem and a lot of the stuff that makes it hard is in your head which makes it difficult to generalize.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#135

Post by cowvin »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #60
hbn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My days at work where I'm actively engaged in a task and feel like I got something done fly by, whereas the days where I have nothing to do and I'm refreshing HN all day are not only boring but draining. Ironic that doing nothing makes you feel like you have no energy at the end of the day.

When I was a kid I went to work with my dad sometimes. He owned his own painting/handyman company. One of these work trips had a lot of work but very little an 11 year old could really do. I spent most of my day doing nothing, and it felt like the longest day of work in the world. I was tired, bored, and felt like I had actually worked all day. My dad said "sometimes having no work feels like more work doesn't it?" a…

I was a summer intern at a big defense company for one of my first summer jobs. They gave me some fairly simple work but not enough to fill my day. I ended up reading a lot of books for a large chunk of my day. =/

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#136

Post by switchbak »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #93
kiawe_fire wrote: post #51

Thank you for sharing. I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying. Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners. Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons. I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing p…

Before you exit, have you actually told your bosses in no uncertain words what the hell is going on? It sounds like this is a breakdown of effective communication and assumptions about what people want in their career and what they need. If you haven't explicitly aired these specific complaints I think you should at least give them a chance, which for you, could also give yourself the fastest path to build something…

I was in a similar position once. I was working at a green tech startup, took about a 5x pay cut to work there, but it was something I was passionate about.

They had me working on low value BS, internationalization of an old product, etc. Just wasting my time. I don't think they had any idea of my capabilities (despite lots of proof of that).

When I finally said "I really want to be challenged here, I'm super capable, and I want to drive forward on meaningful work", I got no response, and shortly thereafter was laid off. Funny place. I then took another high paying job that assumed I was capable and pushed me hard - much better!

Sometimes you're just wading into interpersonal dynamics and low trust environments. If it's consistently weird, there really is just one choice: find a place that's doing hard work and will value your contributions. Life is too short to waste it with contributions to those who don't value them.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#137

Post by lukan »

j33zusjuice wrote: post #117
kiawe_fire wrote: post #51

Thank you for sharing. I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying. Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners. Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons. I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing p…

The act of planning will make you feel better. Once you start believing that you have options, the stress reduces tremendously. There’s a site called interviewing.io or something like that (I have no articulation, I stumbled on it a couple weeks ago), and you can pay $100 or something to have an hour and a half interview with some FAANG engineer on whatever topics you want. The point is that there are resources all o…

"turns out I’m horrible at suicide!"

Ouch, I am not sure if you meant it like this, but please don't take it as more proof of how you failed.

You did not. Your remaining desire to live was just stronger, otherwise you surely would be dead. So please live this life, because you want to, not because you have to. All the best!

Edit: And screw those performance based love idiots, they didn't know better and you had no alternative, but now you can find people who know better.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#138

Post by moffkalast »

29athrowaway wrote: post #15
tfrutuoso wrote: post #6

I'm there now. The endless cycle of staring at the bedroom ceiling trying to muster the will to get out of bed, the anger at the existencial inertia, the tiny voice inside my head that says "jump" while staring at the abyss. Glad to see you made it out, guess there's still hope out there.

[flagged]

Time to stop shitposting, bud.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#139

Post by diamondap »

I once had a job like that, though my situation wasn't quite as bad as yours. The job started out well and then went sour when they hired a new manager. After years of 70-hour weeks, I couldn't remember what a decent job was like, nor could I imagine a job being better elsewhere.

When I finally did make the jump to a new position, I landed in a great company, with a great manager, and everything turned around.

One thing I'd advise, now that you're in a better place, is to try to work past the resentment. As long as you carry that in your heart, the old boss still has a hold on you. It'll take time to get it out of your system, but do try to get it out. You'll find that a more positive and productive attitude creeps in to the space that resentment once occupied, and your level of happiness goes up another notch.

In case you're interested, I posted about that job gone sour at https://sheprador.com/2022/04/worst-manager-ever/. The guy wasn't mean. He just didn't care. And writing the post made me laugh.

Re: Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you leave

#140

Post by nuancebydefault »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #51

Thank you for sharing. I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying. Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners. Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons. I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing p…

I compare finding a new job with dating. It is scary to do the first view interviews/dates but each one gets easier. Do one every week or 2 weeks and in a few months you are a pro. Don't care about anybody noticing that you are very busy / up to something. The current employer doesn't care for you anyway. The act of searching/taking your faith in your own hands will feel liberating, I promise. Jobs are different, even when they have a similar description. Who you work for and the company culture makes all the difference. If you end up in a wrong place, don't worry and switch again, that time with some interviewing mileage under the belt.
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