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Signs that it's time to leave a company

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Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#161

Post by Avicebron »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #50
auspiv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company does week in-office, then week remote. Quite a bit of flexibility during the in-office weeks too if you have a doctor appt or whatever. I personally really like it. People get stuff done in-office, and then during the remote weeks we bust stuff out that doesn't need to be face-to-face. We are not at all a tech company.

I'm hybrid too, and while I personally like it overall [1], it doesn't help with one of the main sticking points regarding remote work vs in-office: Needing to live within commuting distance of an office. It's expensive, it limits people with kids to certain school districts etc. — In some ways it's the worst of both worlds for some people. [1] I however, really, really dislike going into the office only to have a bu…

I will second this, at my previous role, we had one day a week in the office. Which, unsurprisingly meant that my team would hoof it to the office, and sit around in dead silence at our computers, or sit through zoom meetings with the rest of the teams who were either in different offices or had a "permanent remote status" as management...

As you can imagine, being forced into an hour+ commute to sit in a zoom call with management who weren't even there was the opposite of motivating

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#162

Post by 29athrowaway »

worewood wrote: post #99
29athrowaway wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the largest software projects in history have been implemented by remote workers. Like the Linux kernel. But if you require to read people's reactions and body language and try to figure out if they are telling the truth, or brag about your socioeconomic status or appearance, or if you need to assert dominance over others, or do social engineering like mirroring other's movements, then face to face is perhaps…

I agree with you, except the last sentence, which may vary from place to place. My office is very friendly and people have very good humour. Which is good for socializing but for work, it's tough because so many interruptions and we waste a lot of time "talking about the weather". I am way more productive working at home.

They have good humor, always want to have coffee and lunch, and are your best friends forever. Until you change jobs and you never hear from them again.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#163

Post by givemeethekeys »

I'll add a few more signs to the list.

- When the person who hired you leaves and you don't get an incentive for sticking around and keeping the lights on.

- When the CEO changes and they bring in consultants.

- When you haven't received a raise at least match "wage inflation".

- If you're hoping for a promotion but haven't received one in two to three years. If you still choose to stay, know that this is a big red flag for executive recruiters. They'll think of you as not ambitious enough.

- Your boss hires someone to be in between you and them - someone who you didn't get to interview. Because, nepotism.

- Your boss lacks people skills, and just wants people to do what they're told to do.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#164

Post by opportune »

972811 wrote: post #58
opportune wrote: post #13

Definitely feeling this at another FAANG I think there’s something about post-pandemic work in software that just isn’t working. I don’t think it’s just interest rates or a hiring downturn, nor immediate causes like founders leaving (because I see this sickness at most big tech companies these days). Personally, I believe that hybrid work is not going well. Fully remote teams are good, fully onsite teams are good. Wi…

i agree with all of what you said, but i think the main change is just that these companies aren't growing the same way they were pre-pandemic. everything feels resource constrained in a way it didn't in the mid-2010s and this makes everything inherently political and negative edit: to give an example, you probably don't think at all about an exec's value when you see him once a quarter in an all-hands explaining the…

You’re probably right in general. But I was lucky enough to have some great middle managers during COVID who definitely had their fingers on the pulse of what was going on, clearly communicated goals and strategy, actually understood how the sausage got made. I had some poor managers/middle managers too, but they tended to get managed out and their damage was minimized by communication routing around them.

Maybe I’m just personally unlucky to have had some especially weak ones that didn’t get managed out and that happened to coincide with hybrid work.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#165

Post by fsckboy »

nine_zeros wrote: post #123
erinaceousjones wrote: post #70

That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…

> That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. From first hand experience, let me explain why I need this. It's because when the growth stagnates, management starts to attack their own reports. This is an effort to squeeze produ…

>From first hand experience, let me explain why I need this. It's because when the growth stagnates, management starts to attack their own reports.

from my looong experience (I'm retired), perhaps more second hand than first depending on your definitions, of all the people I have known, who got rich rich are primarily people who stayed at one company a long time, and their career/responsibilities grew through promotions, eventually c-suite. I've known plenty of successful startup lottery winners, but a greater number of "unlikely" successes were people who delivered daily reliability, not fireworks. People who don't get caught up in corporate politics, whether they are attacked or not, just remained reliable.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#166

Post by kabdib »

nradov wrote: post #81
kabdib wrote: post #21

Signs that I've seen before leaving: * There are more VPs than there are restrooms. * The free coffee and soda is no more. * Engineers are co-opted as salespeople ("... and why is the project late?").

There's nothing wrong with occasionally pulling in engineers to help salespeople with writing proposals or participating in sales calls. Smaller companies can't afford to have sales engineers as dedicated specialist positions.

Agreed. In fact, the better that engineers understand the customers and end-users the better-off the company probably is. That is a good, healthy practice.

But having engineers actually trying to do sales to make up for revenue shortfall . . . not so much :-)

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#167

Post by ptmcc »

ryandrake wrote: post #61
dilyevsky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you will absolutely make way more money by leaving That is a pre-2023 advice my friend, unless you’ve been there like 10yrs or an ai researcher or something

It's pre-2023 thinking and early-career thinking. Without job title growth, eventually everyone plateaus. There's only so much any company is willing to pay a non-manager individual contributor worker bee. Early in your career you can go from say $45K to $60K to $100K like it's nothing, but the more you job hop, it'll start looking more like $110K -> $120K -> $125K -> $128K and so on, asymptotically approaching your…

A lot of tech companies have figured out pushing ICs into management is counter-productive and have IC tracks with very high ceilings. Until you're a principal/fellow pulling down $500k+ you haven't hit the IC asymptote yet. And yes this exists outside of just FAANG.

The corollary is that you often will have to stick around more than a year or two to get promoted into the senior+ ranks due to the scope of work and actually seeing large initiatives through.

Or you can bounce around every 18 months from senior dev role to senior dev role and hit a ceiling with small marginal gains a lot sooner.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#168

Post by klardotsh »

closeparen wrote: post #94
ryandrake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pre-2023 thinking and early-career thinking. Without job title growth, eventually everyone plateaus. There's only so much any company is willing to pay a non-manager individual contributor worker bee. Early in your career you can go from say $45K to $60K to $100K like it's nothing, but the more you job hop, it'll start looking more like $110K -> $120K -> $125K -> $128K and so on, asymptotically approaching your…

Note: the national median for software developers is $127k, don't let anyone sell you that as some kind of career ceiling. Especially if you live in New York, Seattle, or the Bay Area. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st

Yeah, at this point $127k for a SDE in Seattle MSA is... high-junior through low/mid-mid level salary. A senior title in Seattle MSA should easily be clearing $160k base cash. Maybe drop those numbers slightly in the startup scene, particularly very-early-stage, but honestly, post-2021 salaries need to match post-2021 COL, which skyrocketed already-bad numbers (I remember laughing at Zillow listings here in 2017, even) well into the stratosphere.

I do think the asymptotic curve analogy still holds despite the numbers being higher in these areas (in vast majority part, IMO, because of housing purchase costs out here (or landlord greed, whichever you want to attribute to)). The jump from senior to staff bands, especially in take-home/post-tax dollars, is way, way less than the jump from mid-senior bands.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#169

Post by sleepybrett »

iamthirsty wrote: post #38
geocrasher wrote: post #11

- Investors are priority over customers - Getting stonewalled at every opportunity to be heard - Drastic change in ownership with nonsensical goals - Family ran company with lots of family infighting and drama - An office full of cokeheads Some of my personal faves.

> - An office full of cokeheads Ah, the 80's. What a time.

... and the dot com boom. One office I worked at had jager taps and a rotating cast of nose blowers into and out of the single toilet restroom.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#170

Post by cgannett »

Turskarama wrote: post #109
3737hdhd7372 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, something about working hybrid just feels like “why are we doing this?” It’s like an awkward inbetween I also don’t get why companies seem unphased about paying for a giant office that is empty the majority of the week

Hybrid can make sense _if_ there are scheduled in person activities on the in office days. If you're coming in to the office just to work by yourself then it should have just been a work from home day.

This is what drives me nuts. I don't mind coming to work if we are doing in person meetings or something. I like seeing my coworkers. If I am gonna be alone in an office the whole time might as well be at home where my already purchased food is.
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