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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

#171

Post by moffkalast »

rcbdev wrote: post #127
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #71

"Try and get a job at somewhere growing rapidly" Personally I try and get a job at a company whose mission and ethics I believe in so I don't feel like a hapless techno-weenie cog in some generic startup wheel whose driving purpose is to give the founders a nice exit. Sadly for my skillset, the people hiring are generally evil or their net effect on the world is negative. Looking into goat farming.

I've found local governments (city or district) to fill this niche nicely for me. They usually need a guy to help with all kinds of IT stuff, value any kind of automation work and are not as bloated as federal. You help your community and the people who keep it running. Only downside is, your pay will be significantly less than as a cog in an evil machine.

Agreed, having recently gone from a startup job to a government/university one it's like a large boulder of stress is suddenly gone. Being in that original mindset it's genuinely alien to see a workspace without a slack and kanban board, but also unimaginably freeing. There's more trust and people still get things done on time regardless, emails and impromptu in person chat works just fine. People genuinely living life instead of being on a capitalistic ass grindset. I've lost count the number of times I've seen the startup founder neglect family stuff to make the latest deal or sale or whatever that inevitably fell through anyway lmao, and naturally dragging the rest of the team into the mess at weird hours.

As you say the downside is indeed pay, but as long as it's livable it's still an acceptable tradeoff.

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

#172

Post by snerbles »

dotancohen wrote: post #121
droptablemain wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like, little software shops My first dev job was at one of these. They didn't even use version control.

That doesn't mean that _you_ can't use version control. Or just introduce it to the company.

I introduced Git at an industrial automation firm.

A handful of folks thought it was "pretty cool", everyone else kept on versioning with myriad copies of "Copy of plc_control-1a (new) (final) (1) (b).ACD"

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

#173

Post by thegrim22 »

I know it was only one piece of the article that talks about RTO, but as an aside, I don't think I've ever once in my life, in person or online, seen someone arguing for remote work that provided even a single piece of data, a single number, to back up their assertions. Their arguments instead just presuppose that RTO is awful and remote work is amazing, as if everyone "just knows" it. And apparently everybody that's involved with RTO is supposedly just a complete idiot that doesn't know anything about their business, or, as hinted at in the article, they're involved in some sort of grand conspiracy to force an "ineffective" RTO on workers for conspiratorial reasons.

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

#174

Post by Chyzwar »

auspiv wrote: post #39
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary discussions can happen at any time, though. Restricting it to once per year is just delaying tactic. If you resign and they want or need you, all of sudden everything is possible

Vast majority of large, publicly traded companies (at least in the US) only do pay determination (and associated raises) once per year. Promotions can definitely happen whenever but there may be a cycle associated with that as well.

I worked in a large multinational bank with yearly promotion/raise process. When I was quitting, they managed to get a 50% raise in counter-offer.

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

#176

Post by ironmagma »

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…

Well, we are forced to constantly be seeking continual growth as individuals. If you don't, you are viewed as stale, a dead-end. So the least we can do is expect the same in return from our companies.

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by andrewstuart »

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…

“Little software shops” are hell.

I say this as someone who owned/ran one for a number of years.

Never again. Never.

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

#179

Post by ryandrake »

ska wrote: post #151
closeparen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're both right - you point out the absolute values achievable are a bit higher, but parent is pointing out that early career jumps are typically faster than later career ones (for good reason). So maybe it's 160k (or whatever) not 128k but the argument stands. Asymptoting to some sort of local-to-you maximum is how most peoples career arc will go. At some point there are no more big jumps to be made unless you wil…

Yes it's always a risk on HN to post example numbers because people fixate on the values of them and miss the gist of the comment. I'm not saying that $128K is the magic number but that for every job title, in every area, in every industry, there absolutely is a number, and your late-career compensation is likely to flatline approaching it.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

lxe wrote: post #28

Amazon's tech innovation died a while ago. It will continue to operate its successful business lines until it runs out of steam and shrivels up, just like IBM & co. It will never catch up to things like AI and will fall behind. And it's not a bad thing for Amazon, at least for now. They are in a better position than Google, where they have a more diverse revenue stream, and can out-compete everyone else. They don't n…

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