[HN Gopher] Quitting a New Job
___________________________________________________________________
Quitting a New Job
Author : fullung
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-01-04 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| Dig1t wrote:
| I also did this, worked at a startup for 3 months and left for
| FAANG. Everyone was surprised, and my manager wasn't super happy,
| but on the whole my coworkers understood and tbh it was the best
| decision of my life. Definitely do not regret it in any way.
| spectramax wrote:
| This statement is just sad "After a few weekends of furiously-
| paced Leetcoding".
| busterarm wrote:
| Sad that this is what we all have to compete against.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Reply that I posted to another comment:
|
| Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them
| to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with
| computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff
| rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate
| Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I
| think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so
| they whine instead. I don't think whining will help them.
| xapata wrote:
| > I think people are just lazy
|
| Yep, that's me.
|
| > don't want to learn new stuff
|
| No, I like learning some kinds of new things. I read non-
| fiction regularly. I just don't want to practice algorithms.
|
| Yes, this means I probably would be a failure as a BigCo
| employee.
| deeteecee wrote:
| I get what you're saying but in my view, it's more of a
| massive time sink. I think of it as having to spend many
| hours preparing for an exam. And I have to do this every time
| I switch jobs.
|
| The algorithms and ideas do sort of stick to me somehow but I
| still have to repeat this silly exam prep over and over
| again. And it's sad because the truth is this part of the
| interview process has almost no relation to your actual job.
| bunfunton wrote:
| It's arbitrary and takes loads of personal time. All leetcode
| does IMO is teach your arbitrary pattern recognition that
| helps you in leetcode.
| swyx wrote:
| because leetcode problems tune for a narrow set of jobs. many
| software jobs bear no relation to leetcode problems in
| practice. so the sadness is either that employers might be
| continuing interview processes that bear no relation to the
| real job (not always true, but also at least partially true),
| or that OP feels like he needs to grind leetcode to get a
| job, when he may have other practical skills and experience
| that would serve him better in the job search.
| filoleg wrote:
| >I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode.
|
| Because they think that the employer should recognize their
| greatness by just looking at their resume and having a simple
| conversation with them, instead of assessing them on some
| skill that they have to brush up on.
|
| After being on the interviewer side myself recently, I think
| those people just don't realize how hiring actually works.
| I've seen some people with impressive resumes and who could
| bullshit their way around a conversation greatly, to the
| point where they make you believe they are one of those magic
| 10x-ers. And when you get to algorithmic problems, they
| struggle to figure out when or how to use a hashmap and
| cannot even do some super basic bruteforce parsing of binary
| trees or even know what they are used for.
|
| Of course there are some edge cases where a great developer
| would fail a leetcode-style interview, but those exceptions
| are very rare and only seem to affirm the rule. I know that
| leetcode style interviewing is far from perfect, but I
| struggle to think of anything that would work better. A take-
| home coding project sounds like a great option, until you
| realize that each one of them takes about a week of working
| on it a couple of hours a day, which is an unacceptable time
| sink for any adult with responsibilities and who interviews
| at more than one place at a time.
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| Leetcode focused on tricks and memorizing algorithms.
|
| I've rejected a good bunch of candidates that can pass
| coding tests while not having any good understanding of
| theory, hardware, OS, networking, security
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| There are more cases that get under your radar: good
| developers that won't suffer a coding interview. Folks that
| don't do well with someone looking over their shoulder and
| talking to them while they're trying to work. Folks
| interviewing for a job that isn't simple algorithms.
|
| To be honest, most data structure wonks are great at
| scaling cloud services or massive middleware business
| logic. But not all programming is like that.
|
| It's easy to fall into "If they won't do a coding
| interview, they have something to hide!" But it doesn't
| (only) work like that.
| bunfunton wrote:
| So why not give a simple coding test? Talk through peoples
| thought processes. Giving leetcodes only reward people who
| have grinded leetcode. Grinding leetcode gets you better at
| solving leetcode and takes tons of time
| st1x7 wrote:
| I don't think it's sad to prepare for the interview process. I
| see it this way - whatever you do at your current job might be
| very specific to your current tech-stack/product/problem-
| domain/team/company. When you're looking for a new job, you
| can't possibly learn the stack or problem domain of each and
| every company that you will interview with. In that sense it's
| great that you're assessed on more general skills like data
| structures and algorithms. Those few weekends of brushing up on
| skills you had anyway allow you to apply for a wide range of
| jobs. You then pick a new job and specialise in it until the
| next time you need to switch. Sounds healthier than most of the
| alternatives.
| faitswulff wrote:
| > The sense I get is that you're allowed to quit a new job once
| in your career without any repercussions. If you do it multiple
| times, however, then recruiters and hiring managers might have
| second thoughts about interviewing you without strong internal
| references or some other signal that you'll be a good employee.
|
| I've had a few jobs, but I've largely hopped around doing short
| stints in between chasing hare brained startup ideas, which has
| come back around to bite me. What can a self taught programmer
| like me do about my spotty employment history?
| deeteecee wrote:
| A pretty informative post. I like the mindset and towards the
| end, yup, the only big mistake that was made was not trying to
| switch to other teams at Stripe first. But certainly nothing
| wrong with switching jobs like that.
|
| Live and learn.
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| "When I started my second job search, I was worried that the
| short tenure in the job I was trying to leave would be a turn-off
| to perspective employers. In reality, however, it wasn't a big
| deal- people asked about it, but seemed satisfied with my 20
| second summary and then moved on to other things."
|
| Alternatively, you can simply leave your new position off your
| resume and not talk about it in the interviews at all. There is
| nothing wrong with saying "My last gig was a software engineer at
| Stripe. I left there to focus on looking for a better fitting
| opportunity".
|
| There is no need to have your resume be a complete record of your
| employment. In fact, such resumes are often less desirable
| because they are long and don't highlight any specific strengths.
| Instead, make your resume highlight your most relevant and best
| accomplishments.
|
| I've only been a professional for 10 years, but I am already
| condensing my resume, removing descriptions from my first few
| jobs. I imagine that as time goes on, I will even group jobs
| together like "2010 - 2015 - Software engineer at Companies A, B,
| C" to keep my resume a nice, neat one pager, and focus on the
| more important things I have done recently. Like the OP, I've
| also quit two jobs shortly after I stared them during my career
| and those are definitely not on the list - its simply not
| relevant.
| dilly_li wrote:
| Well, most companies run background checks which would reveal
| all the short and long jobs. At that point, you would still
| need to explain it somehow.
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| A few things here:
|
| 1. Background check companies usually only contact the
| positions you list to verify your dates of employment and
| title. They probably won't contact a job you don't let them
| know about.
|
| 2. If it helps you sleep at night, you can still fill out the
| background check form accurately, but leave stuff off your
| resume / not talk about it in the interview. Again, there is
| no rule that you need to talk about every job you have ever
| had in chronological order on your resume or in the
| interviews. As long as there is nothing untrue, or some sort
| of strange conflicts of interest, you are totally welcome to
| omit things that aren't relevant.
|
| 3. In the rare, extremely unlikely chance that you have to
| explain yourself, it seems perfectly acceptable to say "I've
| only been at this job for a few weeks. I am not sure I am
| going to stay longer, so I didn't think it was relevant".
|
| If you are interviewing for the CIA, then definitely list
| every job. If it's a normal tech job, people simply don't
| care. Fill your precious chance to impress your interviewer
| with things that are actually impressive.
| hasmolo wrote:
| i've actually done this. my tact was to leave off resume
| and disclose in background check.
|
| i got an email asking why the job i left out wasn't that n
| my resume. i simply said having it on there always drives
| the conversation to why i'm morally opposed to that
| business after working there. that's apparently a fine
| answer and i was given the offer.
|
| going forward i'm just gonna leave it off the resume and
| the background check. i simply updated my other job dates
| to 2/2002 - 3/2003 && 5/2003 - 8/2005. if asked i say i
| took a long break. been fine since
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| I feel like what people don't realize is that by the time
| the background check is happening, the company has gone
| through a ton of effort to find you, interview you and
| give you an offer that you accepted. So, they aren't
| going to be like "this person is a great fit, but they
| have a slight discrepancy in their employment history...
| I guess it's time to find someone else..." They are
| simply going to ignore all that stuff and bring you onto
| the team as quickly as possible.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I once quit a job after 6 weeks. From the day I started (when I
| saw my boss for about 30 seconds, was not given a computer or any
| information about how to get started/set up), it was clear things
| were not going well. The team I was joining had mostly disbanded
| (a mix of fired, left for greener pastures, or transferred to
| another region). As a result, there was no institutional
| knowledge, just as my team was put in charge of handling an
| immense new project.
|
| I could see that in the best case, I would be there long enough
| to get up to speed on my position, just in time to leave. That
| wouldn't do a service to the company, so I gave my notice after 6
| weeks.
|
| To my boss' credit, he offered that I could stick around for a
| while until I found my next gig. Looking back, I guess this
| served his interests also -- it would have been hard for him to
| recruit for this position if a newly-arrived team member left so
| quickly, following on the heels of several other departures.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I haven't had success switching teams at all. I had a few that
| wanted to still interview me. I had a vp say he won't let me
| switch. The only time I ever switched teams, I had that decision
| made for me, worked out fortunately.
|
| Having another internal team still want to do a technical
| interview was ridiculous to hear though.
| st1x7 wrote:
| A lot of this comes down to company culture and size. In some
| companies it's completely expected and even encouraged to
| switch teams. In others you're treated basically like an
| external hire.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I have a friend at Microsoft that decided to switch teams. He
| absolutely regretted it. This isn't to say Microsoft is bad (he
| had plenty of good things to say about it) but he said that
| switching teams gets really messy. The people on the previous
| team feel betrayed, the people on the new team feel like you
| are an opportunist, and unless you are running away from a
| specific department manager there is likely going to be very
| little change between the teams. He also complained that he
| feels like he started a new job, is starting on the bottom of
| the new team, but without the benefits of new job title or
| salary.
|
| He regretted switching to the new team, when he expressed his
| disastisfaction to the new team manager the team manager felt
| like he simply wasn't a good fit and transferred him to a third
| team. Now he is the guy who has been on 3 teams in 6 months and
| he feels all the same problems as before, but with the label of
| being a "team switcher" whenever something doesn't go right.
|
| Over Christmas he told me he plans to start applying for new
| jobs outside of the company at the start of the year.
|
| As a manager, I have personally moved employees from other
| teams to my team twice and neither time did it work out well.
| There is often a reason that the previous team wasn't working
| out. Many people see switching teams as an easy and secure way
| to get a new job. But it is a lateral move and not a job
| switch. I haven't seen it work out well in either of the two
| times I have allowed it. Both employees lasted less than 6
| months after switching teams.
| mxuribe wrote:
| This is almost as bad as those folks who have to interview for
| their own jobs...usually during lay offs, or in the midst of
| big organizational changes. Maybe __on paper __some of these
| ideas __seem __ok, but it really is either silly or humiliating
| or both.
|
| EDIT: To clarify, I'm referring here to folks who are already
| employed at some firm, and that same firm is asking them to
| interview (again) for their existing job, or a new job that is
| almost identical to the legacy job...all within the same firm.
| mathattack wrote:
| Trying out the commute is huge. Losing two to three hours a day
| is a big drain. Worth it if you have an ideal job but not
| otherwise.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| > the upper rungs of Stripe's engineering individual contributor
| (IC) ladder put a lot of emphasis on cross-team coordination and
| other, managerial-like activities that I didn't enjoy and felt I
| wasn't very good at.
|
| That's just the reality of senior IC engineering positions. At
| some point, there's a limit to the amount that you can contribute
| by sheerly by your own work - to have a bigger impact, you'll
| need to need influence/improve/impact others
| hinkley wrote:
| Not every place is so enlightened. Plenty of places will focus
| on your individual contributions at review time, essentially
| devaluing any communication or force multiplication work you've
| done.
|
| Gee it's too bad you saved everyone on the team 8 hours of work
| a week because you only got 80% as much work done as they did
| (ie, we're actually punishing you for making everyone else more
| productive by comparing you to the yard stick that you just
| changed).
| kyrra wrote:
| I'd argue that it's the reality of _most_ senior IC engineering
| positions. As a Googler (opinions are my own), to get higher
| ranks, you need to lead larger projects that are cross team (it
| 's even in our engineering ladder description) and do
| leadership type work.
|
| BUT, I've met a few people where that is not always true. They
| tend to be people that can come up with unique solutions to
| difficult problems that are actually useful in the long run.
| They tend to be people that have PhD's and thrive in that type
| of work (and are actually good at it, while also being able to
| work as a team).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The problem with Google's promo/perf process for years is
| that this trajectory towards upper level positioning was
| essentially mandatory. When I started they used to say that
| if you didn't get to L5 in 4 years or so, you would start
| getting scrutiny applied to you. L5 is sort of "team-lead
| light" and does require inter-team collaboration,
| project/code leadership/ownership, etc. I always felt like
| this process is corrosive towards individual contributors,
| and doesn't recognize long-standing committed but less-
| ambitious or less-social people.
|
| This policy was eventually dropped, thankfully, but among
| some managers I feel like the attitude has remained.
| hobos_delight wrote:
| The policy was not dropped, the terminal level was just
| moved to L4.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| You can also quit working for other people and pursue your own
| projects or seek out contract work. Yes yes, easier said than
| done, but so is advancing along a company's career path.
| asciident wrote:
| This is true. It takes a while for some people to really accept
| this, as it breaks the lone coder myth. There are some people
| who consider communication and influence to be politics, and
| think they can do their job solely by programming.
| nraynaud wrote:
| you can also lead by example instead being verbal and
| deliberate in your communication.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Having worked in hardware for most of my career, I can tell you
| that hardware labs are generally dark and messy.
|
| Commutes are hell. If you are working on hardware, especially
| _secret_ hardware, it 's unlikely that you'll be allowed to work
| from home.
|
| Note in the Apple Press Events, they always have this zoom thing,
| where they burrow into the earth to show you the hardware labs.
|
| Sort of like The IT Crowd...
| dvt wrote:
| I've done this before. Got an offer while I was still
| interviewing with a few other companies. Accepted the offer then
| a few weeks later another, significantly better, offer came
| through.
|
| I have absolutely no qualms about it, and I don't put the tiny
| stint on my resume. My work and expertise speaks for itself. It's
| sad that job hunting has become rife with Machiavellian
| machinations in the past three decades, but this is the world we
| live in. Acting otherwise is self-sabotaging.
|
| Long gone are the days where we'd become "company men" loyal to
| CEOs and corporate pillars. We'd get to retire in our late 50s
| with pretty wives, a few kids, and decent savings. Job hopping is
| the most reliable way to get a raise. If you don't job hop, you
| might be on the chopping block come the next layoff wave.
|
| This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully
| underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in
| yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even
| though we provide orders of magnitude more value.
|
| It is what it is.
| [deleted]
| sweeneyrod wrote:
| Anthony Levandowski got a $120m bonus. What makes you think he
| is less of an outlier than your friends are in finance?
| (although FWIW unless your friends are very senior I suspect
| they're lying about getting million plural bonuses)
| ABeeSea wrote:
| It's not about how much value your labor provides. It's about
| how much unique value your labor provides.
|
| Most IBs aren't making millions in the same way that most
| engineers are making what a Principal at a FAANG makes.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I had a friend that did this last year. He job hunted for about
| 3 months, then took a job at a company he thought he would
| enjoy for about 6-8 business days (1.5 weeks) and then got a
| job offer with another company that came through from his
| earlier job search.
|
| He felt really bad leaving so early but he wasn't particularly
| happy with the environment after the first week and took the
| next opportunity that came his way and paid significantly more.
|
| Of course he said that the second job hasn't been much better
| to his happiness, but his logic was that if you are going to do
| something you hate, you might as well get paid more to do it.
| The second job is also more convenient for his commute.
|
| He told me that he doesn't plan on putting the one week job on
| his resume going forward.
| amdelamar wrote:
| I did this and still feel gross about it even though I don't
| regret the decision. Accepted an offer for a Java/Spring
| developer, but a week later I got a better offer for a Scala
| engineer at Apple that had swept me off my feet. I don't know
| why I still feel gross having to renege after accepting the
| first offer; I think its because I annoyed the recruiter. That
| even if the first offer had salary-matched the other offer, I'd
| rather be programming in Scala than Java/Spring and that wasn't
| something they could compete with.
| [deleted]
| jfk13 wrote:
| > This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully
| underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in
| yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even
| though we provide orders of magnitude more value.
|
| That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid.
| It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely
| overpaid.
|
| Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of magnitude
| more value" may be questionable. Some of the highest-paid
| engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to
| optimising ad click rates. "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not
| humanity in general, I think.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I
| think."
|
| The organization they're employed at. Which is obvious
| because we're talking about jobs here; that's what salaries
| are, in part, based on.
| madsbuch wrote:
| In that case, finance people with said bonuses indeed make
| that kind of value.
|
| Though I am not quite sure the average finance person makes
| more than the average software engineer.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I didn't claim to agree with the original comment. I
| didn't even give an opinion. I just clarified where value
| is being measured.
| dvt wrote:
| > Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their
| considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates.
|
| I worked on an ad product with a team of 10 or so data
| scientists + engineers. I'd wager most of us made between
| 100k-175k + some tiny bonuses here and there. The product we
| built was making the company $2.5 million a _month_.
|
| But hey we all got some cool jackets and a pat on the back.
| Give me a break. Money talks. I don't know why engineers are
| so shy when it comes to wanting more.
| kickout wrote:
| Double your teams salary to get the cost to the company
| including benefits like health insurance (which are very
| real).
| wins32767 wrote:
| Depends on where you are. Cost of benefits doesn't really
| scale with geographical increases. In Boston, my last
| several startups have used 1.35x salary as the fully
| loaded cost for engineers.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| It typically costs an employer double what your pay is,
| once including benefits, matching social security
| contributions, etc. So your employer had 10 people it was
| spending 200k-350k a month on, so 2000k-3500k in expenses,
| for a product that made 2500k a month.
| [deleted]
| mperham wrote:
| 200k _per year_ * 10 people is $2m /yr.
|
| It was making $2.5m/mo.
| maximente wrote:
| i would guess that a hypothetical survey of the software
| engineering profession would rank "solving intellectually
| challenging and interesting problems" as one of the top
| values if not the top.
|
| if you buy that, it's no surprise that many software
| engineers (albeit not necessary ultra professional ones)
| are willing to give away their labor _for free_ to the
| world, on the internet, in their (spare?) time. to them, it
| 's just a fulfilling use of time, and that it may be
| valuable on its own or on behalf of capital, isn't really a
| big deal.
|
| it should also be no surprise, then, that despite
| potentially automating away entire industries (e.g.
| transportation) whose proceeds will ostensibly go to those
| deploying the labor of the engineers, they're perfectly
| willing to settle in for a "good salary", "cool perks",
| "comfortable lifestyle", and, most importantly, being fed
| very difficult problems to hack on. as long as the SWE
| isn't too bored or too uncomfortable, i think they'd
| continue to plow ahead, even if their employers stand to
| gain $Billions from whatever they're doing.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Well, we have this myth of meritocracy, but some proffessions
| are systemically underpaid like teachers - millions of future
| earnings depend on them, but noone ambitious wants to become
| a teacher, so our schooling kida sucks
| shuckles wrote:
| Really great teachers could probably find a way to make
| huge incomes. I tutored competition math on the side to
| rich families' kids for nearly $500/hr.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It's a supply and demand problem. There are a lot of folks
| who are willing and able to be teachers for a low amount of
| pay, but it turns out you can't live off discount engineers
| or finance people.
|
| I assure you, if SV could get away paying $12 an hour to
| engineers or finance, they would.
| iamleppert wrote:
| Seems to me like he felt out of place at a robotics company where
| the bar is quite a bit higher than your typical webapp company.
| Different strokes, different folks.
| goldforever wrote:
| Exactly this!
| francisofascii wrote:
| I definitely can relate to this. I also went to work for a
| software/hardware company which had tight, open office desks,
| hardware everywhere, no remote options, longer hours, stressful
| deadlines, etc. I knew I made the wrong decision during my
| orientation. I choose option 3, which was was stick it out for
| two years. Ironically by the time 2 years was up, I was in a much
| happier state. I had just become used to the situation. I learned
| a ton from the experience and all the smart people working there,
| but I would never want to go back.
| Animats wrote:
| _At Stripe and each of my jobs before that, I had had a short
| commute to a beautiful office, and got to experience the instant
| gratification associated with developing purely software-based
| products. Now, I was stuck taking a crowded train to a dark
| office littered with hardware parts, working on a product that
| would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky
| little things like manufacturing and road safety._
|
| This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed
| different.
|
| He may also have felt out of place with people who know
| computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. If
| all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in a
| robotics company.
| goodpoint wrote:
| This person in the article is whining because hardware is
| difficult and software is easy in comparison. And calls it as
| "littered with hardware parts"
|
| And HN responds by upvoting the article and downvoting
| @Animats!
| microtherion wrote:
| Apart from "webcrap", this seems an entirely apt comment to me.
| If you join a hardware company, you should expect to get some
| grease on you.
| vowelless wrote:
| > This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed
| different.
|
| > He may also have felt out of place with people who know
| computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.
| If all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in
| a robotics company.
|
| I agree with you, but that is worded really harshly. I was
| surprised to see it come from you, of all people. I usually
| love to read your comments.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Pretty rude. I know a few folks at stripe and I actually
| interviewed the author for another robitics company (which he
| passed on =)) and i can assure you he doesn't "just know
| webcrap"
| ramraj07 wrote:
| It's likely this person is good technically, and there might
| be a place for them in large corps where software engineers
| are just cogs, but their attitude and their resume suggests
| some issues: their resume is listed with year long stints in
| every major company, and their attitude suggests that
| apparently nothing can keep them happy. And also not
| interested in solving the most important problems (as
| evidenced by the knock on what sounds like a reasonable
| promotion deal), just the ones they might (or might not, even
| they don't know apparently) be interested in. Sounds elitist
| as hell and doesn't reflect someone who's genuinely seeking
| growth in their career.
|
| Which is fine, compared to twitch streamers making millions
| for doing squats this is still a great career, but if
| anyone's looking at all for constructive criticism then they
| should introspect how priviliged all this stuff sounds like
| and whether it's healthy for their own development to live in
| such a bubble for too long.
| carlineng wrote:
| "working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-
| market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing
| and road safety."
|
| I know that sentence was probably meant to be humorous and not
| taken too seriously, but it comes off as smug and disdainful.
| Manufacturing is very difficult, and road safety is anything
| but trivial.
|
| He joined the company because he believed in the mission, but
| then decided the lifestyle tradeoff wasn't worth it? His
| conviction must not have been very strong to begin with.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Nothing wrong with quitting early. I'm a bit surprised at the
| reasoning, after all he knew how long the commute was, and what
| the product was. But it's fine, we don't all know how we'll feel,
| like any relationship that goes from maybe to signed up.
|
| As an employer, I tend to think we dodged a bullet. I've had one
| or two early quits over the years, and it's fine, we mostly
| avoided investing too much in them. People come, they sniff
| around for a week, they leave. Or they come, we find out we don't
| like them, and they go. Both have happened.
|
| I've also been on the employee side of that. I joined, and then
| found the place to be a mess. So I left immediately when
| something else presented itself a few weeks later.
|
| The thing about jobs, as opposed to school, is that the only way
| a job ends is that someone calls time on it. School ends because
| you're done. You graduated, passed the viva, whatever. A job you
| have to decide to end if you don't like it. You can't just slog
| it out through that course that you don't like, because there's
| no end.
|
| I wouldn't worry at all about the CV impact. Chances are you can
| explain what happened if you decide to have it on your CV.
| Alternatively, I don't think anyone would hold it against you if
| you omitted or obscured a few weeks of your life. I certainly
| wouldn't.
| nickff wrote:
| I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new
| opportunities but don't quit until something better is lined up"
| is rather harmful to the team you're working with. If someone's
| just started, they're generally a net-negative, so the individual
| is both drawing pay and sucking resources. This is almost
| 'quitting in-place'.
|
| If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in terms of
| pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the same of
| employees.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Don't throw the ethics word in the sole business that the
| employees have some leverage. Employers will let you go without
| a second thought about your family / health situation and you
| will be told that this is just business.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > we should expect the same of employees.
|
| No we shouldn't. The reason being that this puts employees at a
| significant disadvantage compared to the multitude of companies
| doing much worse things.
|
| Obviously, there is always a line that one should not crossed.
| EX: don't do anything that is blatantly illegal.
|
| But taken advantage of at-will employment status, which is
| fully within someone's legal right to do so? Go for it. If the
| company is upset about it, then they should have offered better
| employment terms.
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| I'm confused by the statement on ethics. What ethic is being
| broken by the employee, who is searching for a new job from a
| new company, while still under employment with his current
| company?
| analog31 wrote:
| I think the general theory is that the employee has the net
| disadvantage. If they lose their job, it's 100% of their
| livelihood, whereas for the employer, losing one employee out
| of a dozen or more is rarely an existential threat. Also, the
| employer has more power over the work environment.
| TylerE wrote:
| How come almost no company that wants that kind of loyalty is
| willing to pay for it?
|
| Like, say, 6 months of guaranteed pay if you are let go for any
| reason non-criminal.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _" exploring new opportunities but don't quit until something
| better is lined up" is rather harmful to the team you're
| working with._
|
| How so?
|
| > _If we expect startups and companies to act ethically (in
| terms of pay, benefits, options, etc.), we should expect the
| same of employees._
|
| I'm not sure what an ethical action from an employee would look
| like under this framework; quit and live without an income
| during any job search?
| [deleted]
| filoleg wrote:
| >How so?
|
| Yeah, I am confused by that one as well. If you are
| delivering value in the same capacity as you did before you
| started the job search (aka you ain't slacking and doing the
| bare minimum, with the rest overflowing onto the rest of
| engineers on your team), then how is it harmful or even
| noticeable to anyone at all?
| maximente wrote:
| capital can feel free to take a good faith first step by doing
| things such as sharing salaries, equity control, how much $ you
| would actually get were the company to be sold for $1B
| tomorrow, etc., or offering contractual employment (not at-
| will).
|
| until then, no thank you - if you are hoping to win people over
| by using warm-sounding moving targets like "ethics", well,
| hopefully we've seen enough of that to know better by now.
| mikestew wrote:
| _If we expect startups and companies to act ethically..._
|
| Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago. So where does that leave
| me in light of the second half of your sentence?
|
| I know where it leaves me: it leaves me in the place where
| employers pushed for "at-will" employment in the state
| legislature, and just like an employer might want me to train
| my replacement, I'm going to "not quit until something better
| is lined up". I'll still do the work that I was hired to do,
| but I'm not quitting until it suits my needs, just like an
| employer won't keep me around even one minute longer than suits
| their needs.
|
| Ethics don't come into play, these are the rules that have been
| foisted upon us while no one asked us our opinion on the
| subject. To argue ethics in this case makes me suspect
| manipulation at worst, naivety at best.
| logicchop wrote:
| It is harmful to the team you're with, but there's no
| alternative right now. It is substantially easier to find a new
| position when you are currently employed, even if your stint
| has been brief. This is common knowledge, and as such self-
| reinforcing: if you quit, then apply somewhere else, the new
| place will assume you were forced out, since nobody on their
| own volition leaves a job before finding another one. So
| there's no way around it right now, so here's my advice: unless
| you are about to have a breakdown, never quit until you find
| something else.
| janosett wrote:
| This is the risk with at-will employment in CA. The employer
| could very well decide after two days of you working there that
| they wanted to let you go -- there's no part of the contract
| keeping either side from ending things early.
|
| I don't think it's unethical to leave after a short amount of
| time given the employer has no equivalent expectation.
| stanrivers wrote:
| I agree with this. However, I will say unless there is
| something major wrong with you or major at the company, you
| are now going to be fired very quickly. The company also
| doesn't want that reputation.
|
| I work in finance and certain hedge funds have a reputation
| for cutting people quickly they don't like. It attracts
| people that are ok with that and most stay away.
|
| That all said - you got to look out for you and your family
| and friends, so you got to do it sometimes. Just wanted to
| say that, most of the times, the feeling of a commitment to
| each other goes both ways during the honeymoon period between
| company and person.
| blisse wrote:
| now or not going to be fired quickly?
| kevinpet wrote:
| You're equating legal obligations with expectations. Firing
| someone after two days because you realize you found someone
| better might be legal, but a company would be rightly
| criticized for doing that.
| sethammons wrote:
| A buddy of mine got a new job, quit the old one, showed up
| day one and was laid off immediately. Apparently their budget
| had changed. Oof!
|
| We also hired a c-level exec who came aboard apparently
| having already accepted a different offer and came on for
| under a month to collect pay and get some juicy stock.
| Apparently they negotiated well and walked off very, very
| well paid.
|
| Edit: not sure if I have a point there other than both
| employees and companies can be jerks. We should all be
| better.
| macintux wrote:
| > We also hired a c-level exec who came aboard apparently
| having already accepted a different offer and came on for
| under a month to collect pay and get some juicy stock.
|
| At a previous job, I worked fairly closely with a sales
| representative who, it turned out, was working in sales
| "full time" for two different tech companies in different
| fields.
|
| Needless to say, once he was discovered he was jobless
| (unless, of course, there were more undiscovered jobs out
| there).
| icedchai wrote:
| How was he discovered? It would be easier to do this
| nowadays, given the whole remote thing.
| macintux wrote:
| The other employer found out, IIRC, through his LinkedIn
| profile and contacted us. Been several years though so
| I'm only moderately confident in that memory.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 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?
| macintux wrote:
| -\\_(tsu)_/- I'm a peon, so I don't know what options
| were discussed, but I suspect once you've been revealed
| to be that dishonest, it's hard to trust that you aren't
| pulling other shenanigans.
| Guest42 wrote:
| Agreed. I have seen a couple employers fire brand new
| employees that had moved their family across the country for
| arbitrary reasons that seemed designed into a filtration
| process.
| spectramax wrote:
| Nailed it. At-will employment in CA, so the employee can be
| fired or laid off instantly in an afternoon - happens all the
| time. But, they're generally expected (not required) to give
| 2-3 weeks notice. I always found this a bit asymmetric.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > But, they're generally expected (not required) to give
| 2-3 weeks notice.
|
| California at-will employment cuts both ways and requires
| neither employer nor employee to give notice.
|
| Many employers will typically notify employees 30 days in
| advance of layoffs and provide severance on top of that.
|
| Many employees give employers two weeks' notice before
| quitting.
|
| Some employers and some employees do neither, which is
| fully within the bounds of at-will employment in
| California.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| This is absurd. Even with a beefy severance package,
| employees can face very serious risks after being laid off,
| while companies face minimal risks.
| nickff wrote:
| Would you have a different expectation if the employment
| agreement specified severance compensation for the employee,
| or if the law required severance?
| janosett wrote:
| Yes, I would openly encourage different types of work
| contracts in California / the US. I'd commit, for example,
| to 1-2 year auto-renewing contracts. Probably would need a
| few conditions:
|
| * If I am terminated without breach of contract I still
| will receive full compensation (at least for some months).
|
| * Contract may not be broken related to any unexpected
| health issues.
|
| * No arbitration requirement if one side accuses breach of
| contract.
|
| Of course this would benefit me more than the employer :-)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If the law required severance the law is also pretty likely
| to make requirements of the employee as well so things will
| still be equal - when I say pretty likely I mean in every
| case I have ever seen.
| mathattack wrote:
| It's not unethical though it may take some explaining later
| on.
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| When I was a manager, I had a rule that all my directs had to
| always be looking for new opportunities. If they find something
| better, I wanted them to leave. It made sure of 2 things for
| us: 1. We knew that anyone could leave at any moment, and we
| always planned accordingly. 2. We knew we had to keep people
| happy. If someone didn't like something, we had to change if
| possible or that person might leave. Conversations about having
| interviews and being contacted by recruiters became open,
| honest, and casual. There was no fear about someone might find
| out if you were looking, and people shared what they found out
| about talking to potential employers.
| mancerayder wrote:
| >I realize that HN is very employee-centric, but "exploring new
| opportunities but don't quit until something better is lined
| up" is rather harmful to the team you're working with.
|
| And how about their bills? People have to pay for shelter and
| other things. There's ethics and there are material needs. Not
| everyone is a made man / woman.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _As I noted in a previous post, switching teams is a lot easier
| than switching jobs. I didn't do this before I left Stripe
| because there weren't any other teams that I was super
| enthusiastic about at the time. But, in retrospect, I probably
| should have given this a try before quitting._
|
| A few years ago, I was looking for a new job after being laid
| off. I had two competing companies to choose from, and chose the
| one that sounded like it would be more exciting. After about five
| months, though, I was miserable and called the other company to
| see if they'd still take me; they did, and I've been happily
| working here since.
|
| But after I announced my departure, a few engineers from other
| teams came up and told me they wished I'd let them know before
| quitting, since they would have been glad to have me on their
| team instead. They knew the reasons I was feeling frustrated, and
| felt confident that those issues were either not a problem on
| their team, or were at least being worked on. I still kind of
| wonder how true that was, and what would have happened if I'd
| made the switch internally, instead.
|
| Anyway, that was kind of a long and boring story - two whole
| paragraphs! - but I think this was probably the one of the more
| valuable parts of OP's post. An internal team change is often a
| lot less stressful and less risky than going to a different
| company.
| bartread wrote:
| I have a habit of slogging through difficult patches that has,
| for the most part and with only perhaps two notable exceptions,
| served me well. However, I want to tell the story of one of
| these exceptions as a counterpoint to other comments here.
|
| A few years ago I started a job where, within the first week or
| two, I had serious enough doubts about whether or not it was
| going to work that I spoke to my manager and said that I wanted
| to leave (even though I had nothing else lined up). He was
| really good about it and after we talked I decided to make more
| of a go of it, but it was the wrong decision and I've always
| regretted it.
|
| In the end I stayed for 8 months and was miserable and
| frustrated for the entire time. This was, I think, a
| contributory factor (though by no means the only factor) to the
| breakup of a relationship that I valued very deeply, and that I
| have also always regretted the end of. The end of that
| relationship was really the final straw: the moment I realised
| I needed to bail, and that I should have bailed long before.
|
| I still I didn't have anything definite lined up, although I
| did have three options on the table. In the end I chose one of
| them and started after taking a month off to recover. Even had
| I left at the beginning, I don't think I'd have struggled for
| work though.
|
| Every situation is different, and staying is not always the
| right thing to do especially not - as was the case in my
| situation - where the cultural and ways of working gulf is so
| large. I have no awkward explaining to do about my CV but there
| are sometimes more important concerns in life.
|
| _(I 've omitted a lot of specifics because I don't want to
| name either the organisation involved, or impugn the people
| either - many of them were great. There was certainly nothing
| unpleasant going on of the sort we've seen discussed a few
| times recently on HN. It was simply a case of an unresolvable
| culture clash. The commute was also a horrible slog - anything
| between 60 and 90 minutes each way even on a motorcycle, and I
| hadn't realised how exhausting that amount of riding every day
| would be.)_
| munchbunny wrote:
| _They knew the reasons I was feeling frustrated, and felt
| confident that those issues were either not a problem on their
| team, or were at least being worked on. I still kind of wonder
| how true that was, and what would have happened if I 'd made
| the switch internally, instead._
|
| That's always a judgement call on your part. Were your problems
| just with your part of the management tree, or were they more
| systematic with the company? If it's the former case, switching
| teams might help. In the latter, best to get a fresh start and
| new perspective. Most people feel a bit of exceptionalism when
| it comes to their team being not like the others, without
| knowing what your particular issues with your current situation
| are. In my personal experience "if only you'd have let me know
| beforehand" comes more from a place of self-interest in
| finding/retaining talent than necessarily interest in the other
| person's career.
| hinkley wrote:
| You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
|
| What people say they will do for you after you've already
| said goodbye and what they'll do when you just ask for change
| are often very different things.
|
| It's one of the reasons they say not to take the counter-
| offer. Because one day while you're brushing your teeth you
| realize that if they could cough up that much money or
| control when you tried to quit, why hadn't they factored that
| into your previous review, when half as much might have
| prevented the situation in the first place?
| r00fus wrote:
| > But after I announced my departure, a few engineers from
| other teams came up and told me they wished I'd let them know
| before quitting, since they would have been glad to have me on
| their team instead.
|
| You know I know folks who've actually taken these kind of
| opportunities and sometimes it works, but other times it
| results in a) you finding out there are problems with the
| transfer (headcount or manager blocks transfer) and b) being
| distracted from getting out of your current situation.
|
| It's 20/20 hindsight, for sure - but I like to think of
| opportunities missed as simply "outside my light-cone". How
| likely was it you would have broadcast your departure early?
| monkeybutton wrote:
| I've done this and having a strong manager advocating for me
| made all the difference.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| How did the initial conversation with your manager go about
| you leaving? I've definitely left companies before instead
| of just switching teams because it felt like I had a tough
| time explaining that my wanting to switch teams wasn't the
| manager's fault and it was easier to explain wanting to
| switch companies instead without making it seem like a
| personal affront to the manager. I'm wondering now if I
| wasn't giving my old manager enough credit for taking bad
| news well.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This strongly depends on the company structure and the
| political structure. There are many managers that would rather
| have an employee leave than go to a rival team.
| lhorie wrote:
| If there are rival teams, then doesn't that mean that by
| definition resources are allocated less efficiently? (and by
| extension that competitors will be able to outbid for talent)
|
| Some recent Apple threads seem to support the idea that there
| was intense internal competition and lower overall
| compensation at Apple, compared to other tech companies of
| similar caliber.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Does this solve the other problem, that job hopping is the best
| way to get a raise?
| ketzo wrote:
| In my admittedly limited experience, nope. Team changes are
| almost never accompanied with a raise; usually your job title
| isn't even changing.
|
| That's not to say they're a bad option, but it still seems
| like you've gotta jump to a different company to maximize
| earnings.
| theptip wrote:
| The power move is to have an offer in hand and then tell your
| company that you're considering leaving for <reason>, but
| you'd like to give them a chance to beat your new offer by
| <increasing salary to $X, resolving reason X with a team
| move>.
|
| Some companies will flat-out refuse to negotiate in this way
| as a matter of policy, and some will really appreciate you
| giving them the opportunity to bid to keep you; it really
| depends on the company and their comp strategy. I think as
| long as you're earnest about the conversation and don't try
| to run a bidding war, most companies won't burn bridges with
| you over a round of negotiations in this fashion.
| lhorie wrote:
| In my experience, no. I did an internal team transition at a
| company several years ago, and while it gave me a pretty good
| salary increase, it was not as big an increase (percentage-
| wise) compared to my wife's job hopping during roughly the
| same time span. I hopped jobs a couple more times a few years
| later and currently make three times more than I did back
| then. Some of this is attributable to differences in pay
| levels between cities but there's generally just a lot more
| room for negotiation with a new company than there is within
| the same company. I know many colleagues that left a company
| because of the ease of negotiating better offers outside of
| one's company.
| hinkley wrote:
| It could even go the other way because now your yearly
| review is thrown out of whack.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Not only that, but I'm getting the feeling a developer's best
| option these days for maximizing pay increases is to spend
| their free time on Leetcode. Which in my opinion is a problem
| from an industry perspective.
| whitepaint wrote:
| > Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry
| perspective.
|
| Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply
| them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit
| with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn
| new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many
| developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think
| it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and
| don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead. I
| don't think whining will help them.
| lhorie wrote:
| Does leetcode really do much in terms of algorithms
| though? In my experience, a lot of problems can be solved
| with sheer brute force, or by merely using the language
| built-in data structures and memoization tricks.
|
| I think algorithms per se don't necessarily give you much
| of an advantage. For example, LIS[0] is fairly
| frequently-run algorithm if you work with web stuff, but
| nearly no one in that specialization knows how to write
| it from memory (and knowing about it doesn't translate to
| being able to write other algorithms)
|
| Where I think leetcode helps is in giving you an
| opportunity to practice the skill of putting together
| various building blocks in a semi-realistic fashion (e.g.
| having to use a memoization trick to get under the run
| time threshold is something that is similar to real life
| performance work, despite the exercise itself being
| completely unrealistic).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_increasing_subs
| equence
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| The toughest parts of my software career have been
| managing relationships with my peers & working on my own
| attitude. For too long time I thought I could code my way
| out of any problem and/or win any argument with the
| technically more correct solution. I was super wrong. No
| amount of knowledge about how to write a weight balanced
| binary tree prepares one for the day to day grind of
| working with actual people.
| hinkley wrote:
| And even when it's "computer stuff" you find out that
| there aren't that many n^2 problems to solve, and you'll
| recall every n^3 problem you fix because they almost
| never happen.
|
| Mostly what you deal with is architectural problems. And
| when it comes time to fix slow code, the problem won't be
| O(n^2) code but a mountain of code where the constant
| factor C is somewhere between log(n) and sqrt(n).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Because it's like hiring an industrial petrolium chemist
| based on how many party tricks he can do with fireworks.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| To be fair, I would probably give the candidate with the
| most party tricks extra points. It demonstrates an
| interest in the subject matter as well as an ability to
| demonstrate it in an exciting way. Also, how fun would
| that interview process be? Just sayin...
| bigiain wrote:
| I'd _totally_ hire that guy!
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Because learning a bunch of algorithms doesn't translate
| well into day to day programming capability. This is
| _exactly_ why those dumb whiteboard problems aren't good
| for interviews; you're not measuring what makes someone
| successful on a day to day basis.
| whitepaint wrote:
| > This is exactly why those dumb whiteboard problems
| aren't good for interviews; you're not measuring what
| makes someone successful on a day to day basis.
|
| If that was the case, you think all of the biggest tech
| companies that have billions of dollars would continue
| using it? Did you ever consider that you might be wrong?
| bigiain wrote:
| Cynical response: Because thats what the people already
| at the big company had to put up with during hiring, and
| damned if they're gonna let any prospective newbies off
| with an easier recruiting process, no matter how broken
| and pointless it is...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Or, nobody has a better idea, at least not one that's
| possible to administer cheaply.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > Or, nobody has a better idea...
|
| No...
|
| > at least not one that's possible to administer cheaply.
|
| Ah, yes. AFAIK, Behavioural interviewing works, but it
| does require training and thoughtfulness. You have to
| know what you're looking for, and ask questions
| specifically targeting that. You definitely cannot just
| throw a random employee into an interview with a list of
| questions and expect it to work.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I mean, for a while there Google thought that asking how
| many basketballs could fit into a school bus was a good
| way to find good coders. Just because Google does it
| doesn't mean it's smart.
|
| And when is the last time you had to balance a binary
| tree or write Djikstra's algorithm from memory anyways?
| bigiain wrote:
| Curiously, in my non coding management role, I busted out
| Djikstra's algorithm last year to the amazement of most
| of the developers, who thought the problem in front of
| them was insoluble. It turned out that yes, it is in the
| general case, but it was totally possible to brute force
| the results required for the constrained task at hand on
| a laptop in Python and store the ~60k optimal solutions
| in a lightning fast key/value store.
|
| I didn't reproduce it from memory though (but I did
| choose to port a Java version in preference to any of the
| existing Python versions I found, because it's code was
| structured in a way that I grokked much easier. Possibly
| due to my not totally expert idiomatic Python skills, I'm
| really a Perl coder deep down.)
|
| (And I never had to do any whiteboard performative coding
| to land this gig either.)
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Interesting anecdote non-withstanding, a white board
| interview would have not been a good way to predict your
| ability to have done that. The limiting factor was not
| your ability to remember the algorithm from memory, which
| you didn't do, but the ability to make complex decisions
| based on real world constraints and data. In a whiteboard
| situation, chances are the "correct" answer would be
| "it's not possible", since without knowing the actual
| data set that's true.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think people who think software development is about
| 'do[ing] quite a bit with computers' have blinded
| themselves to the fact that you mostly need to do quite a
| bit with _people_. They didn 't know that was going to be
| the case when they signed up for college classes and now
| they rationalize as hard as they can that they can
| actually treat the profession that way.
|
| I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new
| stuff so they whine instead.
| jinushaun wrote:
| Because LC problems has no applications in day-to-day
| work. You're just doing it for interview practice. It
| only seems "useful" because it's programming problems,
| but it's as ridiculous as studying chemistry or calculus
| as interview prep.
| PeterisP wrote:
| We're looking at a target audience of people who already
| can "do quite bit with computers", know all the
| algorithms they need for the job they are going to do,
| and don't really want to spend time on leetcode because
| they would rather be doing or learning something else, or
| perhaps they have done leetcode or stuff like that a lot
| ten or twenty years ago and they wouldn't learn anything
| new, just re-adapt to do useless things quickly once
| again.
|
| I'm not trying to denigrate it by labeling it useless -
| competitive problem solving/"sport programming" is a fun
| activity and can be a rewarding hobby, but it's important
| to recognize it as such, as a hobby that's only
| tangentially related to most actual development work once
| you move above a certain base competency level ( I'll
| grant it that it is useful for people without much
| practice in actual programming to do a bit of it.)
|
| It's a problem from the industry perspective if we as
| industry have many people spend a lot of time doing
| things that don't benefit the employer (since grinding
| leetcode doesn't make a non-junior person better at their
| development job, it's an orthogonal skill) and that
| doesn't benefit themselves personally (we're talking
| about people who don't want to do leetcode just because
| they enjoy it) but only through the zero-sum game of
| competing for jobs effectively by "peacock signaling" of
| who invested/wasted the most effort in leetcode. This is
| effectively a lose-lose competition, spending a lot of
| everyone's time without a net benefit.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I did ACM programming competitions at both high school
| and collegiate level. So I'd like to think I have a
| pretty favorable opinion the types of things leetcode
| tests -- algorithms, data structures, big-O and big-
| theta, etc. They are incredibly important.
|
| But these topics are very, very far from being everything
| important. I would put them under soft skills, especially
| in cross-collaboration and working with non-engineering
| groups. And I would put them under having the type of
| knowledge and experience in approach that, especially
| combined with the above soft skills, allow us to push the
| direction of the company forward.
|
| As a dumb example off the top of my head: It's great if
| you know how to average a batch of numbers efficiently.
| It's better if you know how to do such in a streaming
| fashion, and recognize that we can use that within our
| architecture to materialize savings. And, it's best if
| you can convince the business that there's no need to
| calculate the average because we can do streaming
| estimates for any quartile.
| xapata wrote:
| Leetcode, Project Euler, etc. may not feel like a
| programmer's daily tasks, but they may yet be a good proxy
| for many behaviors that large employers desire.
|
| For example, a large employer may want a willingness to do
| arbitrary, difficult tasks that appear meaningless. These
| same employers may have a variety of software maintenance
| tasks that require recognizing a pattern of problem,
| knowing the appropriate algorithm from Ye Olde Textbook,
| and quickly applying it.
| [deleted]
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| >For example, a large employer may want a willingness to
| do arbitrary, difficult tasks that appear meaningless
|
| Exactly! Thank you for formulating what I always knew
| subconsciously.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > These same employers may have a variety of software
| maintenance tasks that require recognizing a pattern of
| problem, knowing the appropriate algorithm from Ye Olde
| Textbook, and quickly applying it.
|
| These edge cases might exist, although I argue the more
| likely problem is that hiring is hard, expectations can
| be unrealistic, and so it's easier to fall back on
| puzzles and call them an objective measure of technical
| competency and soft skills. Project Euler is fun, but
| Stack Overflow is likely more relevant for your day to
| day for solving business problems with software.
| xapata wrote:
| I also measure my candidates' ability to fix bugs by
| learning the details of a language feature they're not
| familiar with, by finding examples and documentation.
|
| I find that many junior-level candidates scrape by with
| Stack Overflow, but sadly have little competence when it
| comes to reading documentation. Candidates for more
| senior roles have a similar problem regarding systems
| design. They can find and parrot little statements
| they've seen on forums, but when you ask them to explain,
| their understanding turns out to be shallow.
|
| I don't use programming exercises as a sufficient
| measure, but they are a necessary one.
|
| Now I feel obligated to add that footer: We're hiring!
| ;-)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I absolutely agree they're necessary, but should be a
| realistic problem that needs solving (as you're doing).
| batter wrote:
| I have changed my first project because manager was unbearable.
| After spending one more year in the same company but different
| project and almost ideal manager i have realized that company
| in general has so many problems that make me unhappy that i
| have started job search outside. It's really hard sometimes to
| predict what difficulties are waiting for you in new
| team/company.
| bird_monster wrote:
| > An internal team change is often a lot less stressful and
| less risky than going to a different company.
|
| This statement really nails it. If you change teams and are
| still unhappy you can always quit. If you quit without having
| changed teams and then hate your new job, you might not be able
| to go back to your previous company (but new team). I think
| it's general good practice to give another team a change before
| you leave the company if you're on the fence. If you know it's
| a company problem, bail, but if you think it could just be your
| team, give it a shot.
|
| Maybe it's just me, but I like to minimize the amount of
| decisions I make that I cannot undo.
| hluska wrote:
| This story isn't boring at all - it's valuable advice,
| particularly for younger engineers. This is yet another comment
| on here that I really wish I could email myself twenty years
| ago.....:)
| austinl wrote:
| I can appreciate this -- I stayed with my previous company for
| 5 years, which seems like an eternity to most folks I talk to,
| but I worked on 3 very different teams during that time period.
| It felt like joining a brand new company each time with new
| challenges and things to learn. I'd recommend exploring that
| route before leaving if it's open to you.
| crandycodes wrote:
| I've done this as well. Been at MSFT for 7 years, been on 5
| different teams, and switched between PM and Dev a few times.
| It's been great from a quality of life perspective, I think.
| I've got a lot of experience I wouldn't have had if I stayed
| on the same team and work has stayed pretty interesting. I've
| also got a pretty large network of folks I know, which is
| helpful for a variety of reasons.
|
| Biggest downside is economic; can't negotiate new pay when
| changing teams by policy and you've gotta build a new case
| for promos/etc. People who have changed companies 2-3 times
| are likely making significantly more money than I am. I try
| to keep it in mind that I'm paying for quality of life by
| staying, so I need to get my money's worth or it's not worth
| it.
| yourabstraction wrote:
| I'm about a month into a new FAANG job, and I hate it so far. I
| can't decide if it's better to quit sooner as to not waste the
| companies time (and avoid suffering more), or if I should give it
| some more time. My team's work seems super boring, I'm not
| interested in the tech we use, the setup process has been a shit-
| show, and I'm feeling zero motivation.
|
| I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the
| past, but I decided I'd try to do things differently by cramming
| leetcode and chasing that fat FAANG pay check. Now I'm kicking
| myself, this is what happens when you follow money over passion.
| The silly thing is I'm fine financially, yet I lusted after a job
| with technology I'm not interested in working on just for the
| lure of the almighty dollar.
| war1025 wrote:
| > I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the
| past
|
| I saw an anecdote a few years ago about a hiring manager
| basically saying, "If you worked happily for a small startup,
| you will most likely be unable to put up with the bureaucracy
| of a large enterprise from now on"
|
| I've often wondered how much truth there was to that statement.
| yourabstraction wrote:
| The bureaucracy sucks, but I think I could deal with that.
| The biggest buzzkill for me is working on such minuscule
| parts of enormous systems. In software, the results of your
| work are already pretty abstract, but working for a huge
| company, it's on another level, and I just can't find any
| motivation in it. It's never interested me, and I'm not sure
| why I thought it would for the right price.
| capiki wrote:
| Probably a lot. Unless you're getting paid enough to put up
| with it:) That being said, I think a lot people that aren't
| singularly money-focused overestimate how much money will
| outweigh other factors in their job.
| yourabstraction wrote:
| I was super motivated by the money when I was doing
| leetcode prep, and then when negotiating and playing offers
| against each other. And that makes sense, the work I was
| doing had a direct correlation to the total compensation I
| ended up signing for. But now that those fat pay checks are
| coming in, they provide zero motivation, it's just a
| slightly bigger number in my bank account.
| twodave wrote:
| Oh man. I left a remote job in like, late 2017 because of some
| problems I had with their ethics. I took a job that paid less and
| required me to drive (not too far, and I was missing seeing
| people's faces a bit anyway).
|
| It was a bigger company that had acquired probably 7-8 businesses
| --my team's job was to integrate them all together to help the
| business operate more fluidly. It took me about 2 days to realize
| that a) the project was doomed, b) all the people working here
| (except Dave, the guy who told me to "abandon all hope" as I sat
| down on the first day) were just faking it and c) literally every
| person with decision-making capacity was incompetent.
|
| The SMEs were all siloed into a different (you might even say
| competing) team. They were actually trying to encode all the
| business rules into something akin to MuleSoft. They were
| inaccessible to us.
|
| The architect on the project couldn't write code to save his
| life. He was in love with some inane microservices architecture
| for which the example project wouldn't even compile. It was
| basically a mock of a microservice architecture, but built on top
| of SOAP. It was a bunch of crazy nonsense. He got fired shortly
| after I left.
|
| The development manager was a nice enough guy, probably too nice.
| I'm not sure what he did other than set up interviews for me and
| a couple of the other senior developers to conduct.
|
| I left after 3 months, for a job that was still a pay-cut from my
| first job, and was twice as far to commute to. But at least it
| wasn't a total crapshow.
|
| I still keep up with Dave though. So I guess it wasn't a total
| waste :)
| corytheboyd wrote:
| On the point of returning to a company you previously left for
| good reasons... don't. I made this mistake, and things of course
| boiled to a breaking point for me after another year. Chances are
| nothing has changed, listen to that gut feeling. This probably
| isn't everyone's experience I don't know, but it's my experience
| for what it's worth to anyone reading this.
| kamyarg wrote:
| As someone that has done this, I think if the company is big
| enough and you are aware of another team that you know you
| would fit right in, go for it.
|
| I left Company A(Parent: B) for C, I was not happy in the new
| place, talked with a friend from B, he said they are looking,
| interviewed and have been here for quite some time now.
|
| Very good example of "The Evil you know", especially if you are
| "miserable" in the new company(personal reasons similar to the
| original author, not company C's issues), there is a good
| chance you don't want to take any chances and just find
| somewhere you will be relatively happy again.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I realized a few days into my current job that it was a bad fit
| for me. Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation
| package if I left, so I decided to stick it out.
|
| Last year I interviewed with a company and was ready to take the
| job but I had drinks with the manager and decided it was too much
| of a brogrammer shop for me. Looking back, if I had taken the
| job, I would have worked with friends, the brogrammer aspect
| wasn't as bad as I thought, and I'd be planning my retirement
| after 3 years of work.
|
| Sometimes you just never know. It does pay to do your due
| diligence though. Same thing with buying a house. Big changes,
| like jobs or living arrangements, demand adequate investigation.
| paxys wrote:
| > Unfortunately I'd have to pay back the $10k relocation
| package if I left, so I decided to stick it out.
|
| For the future, this kind of stuff is very easy to negotiate
| with the new company, and should definitely not be the thing
| holding you back. E.g. "you would have paid relocation for me
| but I'm in the same city so help me pay back my current company
| for it instead".
| jupiter90000 wrote:
| Not necessarily, but worth a try. Had to turn down an offer
| from a prospective employer due to a company unwilling to
| help with this, ended up burning alot of my and their time
| for no good reason and it was made clear early in the process
| this was needed.
| shuckles wrote:
| I have never heard of anyone paying back signing or relocation
| bonuses if they didn't want to. It's usually not worth it for
| the company to pursue.
| trentnix wrote:
| 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.
| wolco2 wrote:
| It wasn't fair to others for you to stick it out because your
| heart wasn't in it so you wasted everyone's time training you for
| a few months only to quit when you are finally half productive.
|
| The real reason you left is the commute and office decor. Moving
| from a 15 walk to an hour trainride is a big change. Moving to an
| environment where people care more about product than impressing
| people is a huge culture shift.
|
| In the end covid would have forced everyone wfh anyhow.
|
| "I figured it wasn't really fair to my colleagues at Nuro to
| stick in a job that my heart wasn't in."
|
| So, in the end, I decided that option 2 was the best fit for me.
| I continued at Nuro and did my best to get up-to-speed and to
| contribute to my team's work, but at the same time jumped right
| back into the job market"
| otagekki wrote:
| 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 EUR800 saved up (had just invested EUR5,000 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.
| pearjuice wrote:
| Though I like the sentiment of the post, it's funny and maybe
| remarkable how software engineers are in such a privileged bubble
| most probably don't even realize. Quitting jobs after a year at
| arguably the most innovative fintech company because you didn't
| feel satisfied, taking a vacation, casually mentioning you can
| "hack" interviews by focusing on leetcode problems for some
| weekends, working somewhere for 2 days, taking another vacation
| and then switching to a new job. Probably hopping through a few
| salary negotiations and gaining tens of thousands of dollars. Be
| sure to take a moment to realize.
| jmkd wrote:
| I didn't enjoy the sentiment of the post as it came across as
| far too entitled.
|
| - Disappointed that Stripe wouldn't just give him a job and the
| same pay back. - Referring to the new job as a downgrade when
| in fact it was simply a bad fit. - Job hopping every 18 months
| as if that is perfectly acceptable and sustainable for the
| employers.
| pearjuice wrote:
| I don't agree with all his actions but I appreciate the
| transparency. The writing gives exposure, documentation of
| his CV and is arguably showcasing a skill. Job hopping isn't
| sustainable and shouldn't become a permanent pattern, but
| it's not unacceptable. Early career it's the fastest way to
| gain salary, experience different kitchens/industries and
| arguably just how the job economy is; you will not be
| rewarded for job loyalty so why optimize for it.
| novask wrote:
| I'll put my experiences down as a cautionary tale.
|
| I've had 3 relatively short stints in tech jobs, but none where I
| left responsibilities on the table, like leaving in the middle of
| a project, or promising some work only to bail. Notice was always
| given, and I made the best effort to transition by completing all
| work before the end date. My reasons for leaving each are a bit
| more serious than a lifestyle downgrade, but none-the-less, that
| doesn't matter to future employers.
|
| There are lots of sectors to jump between that utilize
| programming and IT knowledge (DevOps, Cloud roles, security
| roles), so even when you go to try them out, it's being
| considered a job hop by recruiters/hiring managers. If it doesn't
| work out, you're now potentially job hopping twice when you try
| to go back to something you know you can do due to world events.
|
| Not only is this the major take-away from the article, it also
| applies to switching industries, and in my experience for
| switching industries, it applies _even if you have a recent
| certification in the new industry which gets requested by a lot
| of companies_ :
|
| >It's ok to quit after a few weeks (just don't make it a pattern)
|
| Unfortunately, companies won't see the notice you gave or the
| transition work you did. Those companies likely can't verify
| that, so they really only have your employment dates to look at.
| If they don't like it, they just won't put you forward regardless
| of how much they like your skills.
|
| For some people, there will be companies where they don't fit in
| with because of personality traits. If you get particularly
| unlucky, you'll run into 2 or 3 of those companies in quick
| succession, with the latter positions being even worse than the
| first, and so you'll have to stick it out and endure more. This
| unluckiness doesn't do you any favors, though. But it's really up
| to you if those personality traits need to be fixed or not.
|
| The only thing that seems to count is your tenure, so don't fuck
| it up. You might not even get to the leetcode step if you do.
| narag wrote:
| 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.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Margins for hardware tend to be thinner than software which
| typically means less salary, not as nice offices, and more bean
| counters.
|
| I imagine there are exceptions to this rule (Nvidia).
| fastball wrote:
| Given their behavior, sounds like you dodged a bullet anyway,
| but this is also a good time to point out if you're job hunting
| while already employed, you should never give in your notice at
| current co until you have a signed employment contract from the
| new one.
| microtherion wrote:
| I was set to criticize OP for never having tried out the commute,
| until I remembered that I once took a job without having worked
| or lived a single day within 9 time zones of the place of
| employment. It's somewhat par for the course for foreign hires,
| and indeed, some of them discover they (or, even more frequently,
| their partner) don't enjoy the location.
|
| I did ask them to show me what a typical office would look like,
| though.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Completely different type of work, but I once quit a new job at a
| factory after two days. First day, I arrive early to fill out the
| paperwork and watch the HR job safety video. Video finishes and I
| wait for the HR person to return. After a few minutes, I go look
| for her, but can't find her so I go back to the video room.
|
| Eventually someone else (upset) comes in and tells me that I'm
| supposed to be working rather than sitting there. I tell him I'm
| waiting for the HR lady to come back. "She went home for the
| day." Okay, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Guy
| gets even more upset, takes me to the back room, points at one of
| the other workers, tells me to do what he's doing, and then I
| never see him again.
|
| The only time anyone talks to me is (a) to tell me every couple
| hours I'm doing something wrong, (b) tell me it's break time, and
| (c) to shout at me for coming back from break two minutes early.
| (c) was my supervisor, and that was the only contact I had with
| him. When the second day was just like the first, I decided I
| didn't need that job.
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