July 21, 2016 at 9:11 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How do you know when it is time to leave a job?
July 22, 2016 at 12:39 am
With few exceptions I stayed in most of my jobs too long and share the experience expressed in the editorial.
In all cases I stayed because I got on well with my co-workers, the commute was acceptable, the businesses were interesting. I learned alot.
But. There comes a time when you are not learning anything more that would be of use if you HAD to find a new job. Your accountability goes up, your responsibility goes down. That is you receive the blame for stuff that you are powerless to prevent or put right.
One issue I did face was being seen as a nay-sayer. Because I knew the systems like the back of my hand I knew where the bodies were buried and when there was a high risk of digging them up. The skills I needed were to be able to articulate why something would not work and in a manner that was acceptable to the person whose sacred cow I was proposing to kill. After a while you get seen as a blocker even if you are proven right
July 22, 2016 at 1:03 am
Ben, That is so true!
Although I am leaving my current employer, I was faced with the same scenario as you, more support less development!
Im glad to be moving on.........
July 22, 2016 at 1:54 am
Time to leave?
Hmm, with some companies its the day after I started.
July 22, 2016 at 3:55 am
"I was only doing support and very little new development" <-- mostly this. Often when I have been somewhere a while I am the only person who knows about X, or I was the one who developed Y originally, I end up doing a lot support - skills stagnate and I get bored/frustrated because other developers do all the new development while I get to maintain all the legacy systems.
The last place I left was a combination of the above and that my administrative tasks (going to meetings, writing emails, managing people) outweighed my technical ones by about 3:1.
July 22, 2016 at 5:57 am
Many variables here. Sometimes fear is a perfectly good reason to stay put, especially if you have a family. Look at our economy since 2008 and how many families have been devastated due to lost jobs, repossessions, kids having to drop of college due to their parents' financial situation.
If career and skills development is the only criteria, that's one thing.
Age plays a role, and not just discrimination. I'm 68, indicated to my current employer of 14 years I was going to retire and move. I moved and continued the job telecommuting 100% since they never looked for a replacement. I learn what I need to learn to remain productive, but promotion isn't on my mind at this point.
July 22, 2016 at 6:05 am
When you realize that your job is just a 'job' and not a career anymore, it is time to leave.
A job is something that you do for the money only while a career still makes you excited to get out of bed, even though you have to support systems, attend meetings or do mundane tasks from time to time.
A career also implies that there are opportunities for growth, learning and promotion.
One year at a SQL Saturday event, someone made the following comment:
People who attended the event (and sacrificed a Saturday in the process), probably considered working with SQL to be a career.
People who stayed home, probably considered working with SQL to be a job.
July 22, 2016 at 6:39 am
My tale of staying too long very closely parallels Bens.
I've always been more a production guy than a development guy, my last employer I was the AD Admin, Network Admin, phone system admin, DBA, server admin, desktop support, over-the-phone customer tech support, on-site customer tech support guy. I might even have missed a couple things.
Well, my direct boss would either pooh-pooh any suggestions / recommendations I would make about improving / replacing old hardware (and I would have a recommendation researched out that would both replace and improve,) as being either "too expensive" or "not giving him enough control." As an example of equipment I suggested replacing, our primary and only network router was a re-purposed IBM desktop PC with an old Slot-1 style Intel CPU. He wanted something that could load-balance / bond the 3 or 4 various internet connections together, I suggested a "plug-and-play" unit from a large networking company (Barracuda) with a couple year support contract. Nope, $4k (total!) was too expensive, it didn't give him control over *everything.* So he bought a refurb Dell rack server (quite a few years old, and NO chance at a warranty), a couple port NIC, some SCSI hard drives, and had one of the other guys load up a free, open-source router package.
The developers were working on the companies new product and finally moving from a Visual FoxPro back-end to SQL Server. I poked around in the DB they were working on and tried making suggestions to improve it (normalization? What's that?) Nope, they didn't have time to take a look, and they couldn't provide me anything as to what fields might relate to others.
Management wanted me to work up recommendations for the back-end servers for the customers, I recommended a minimum of SQL Standard. Nope, too expensive, we're sure SQL Express will be fine. I found out from a co-worker later that the first customer hit the 10GB limit a couple months after I left. If I recall correctly, the company wound up eating the cost of quite a few SQL Standard editions for the affected customers.
Arguably, I probably should've started looking for a new job several years before I did, but I did like the majority of the people I worked with (it was a small company,) and for a time the work was both stimulating and fun.
July 22, 2016 at 6:53 am
I stay at my current job mostly for loyalty to my boss. He took a chance on me and allowed me to work on a new product that we built from the ground up. We were a small company, but extremely hungry and fun.
Today, he sold the company to one of the biggest and most successful companies in our vertical. I stayed with him, and now I work on some of the biggest brands in the world.
I come into work because my work still allows me to learn, it's still very exciting and it's amazing experience to work on some really huge brands that everyone knows.
My prior career, which was much different, left me out to dry when I was laid off. Prior to that, I had to quit because the industry I was in did not pay well. It took advantage of hungry minds.
July 22, 2016 at 7:06 am
Great points Indianrock, well said. I agree 100%
July 22, 2016 at 7:20 am
Unfortunately sometimes non work factors forces your hand. I have shared custody of my son which restricts the region where I can work. On top of that the city I live in has a small IT job market. Because of that I have to commute to another city to get to work. Thankfully, right now I'm very happy where I am but the money could be better.
July 22, 2016 at 7:54 am
I'm pushing 4 years at current company, normally would have cut my losses at 2 years for reason of no meaningful technical projects. Just being thrown at business BA/PM projects.
I'm still where I am for health reasons (back goes out frequently). Current boss doesn't mind if I tell him working at home, he also has back problems and cuts me probably too much slack.
New companies tend to want you in the office every day, at least at first.
So maybe it's fear, but fear that I can't meet the expectations of a new employer (being able to be where they need me, when they need me).
I've been looking at open jobs for 2 years, so far I haven't found a 100% remote job, my sub-specialties outside SQL require more face time with people.
And the real fear is what I'd do next if I ever get laid off or company goes under.
July 22, 2016 at 8:08 am
I stayed at my last job far longer than I should have career wise mostly because I got comfortable there which can be a very dangerous trap. After I'd learned all the technology and business what not I was going to learn I ended up sticking around until they shut off the lights, twice, once while I was in the office....
In my defense my apartment didn't have AC and for the last few months they were basically paying me to drink scotch and watch netflix in the biggest office(the empty IT room) during the hot hours.
July 22, 2016 at 8:42 am
Moving into more of a support role never bothered me. I was completely content with my job as database developer and administrator with the state and thought I would retire from there. I had worked for the state at two different agencies for 15 years.
Then a developer left and they hired someone straight out of college, with all of these "great" ideas and no practical experience. This person was a charismatic talker and convinced management that we should completely re-write an integral part of our system using new technology no one was familiar with, within a short time-frame, with no discovery on effected systems. Management staff was also all new and didn't know me from Adam. They didn't appreciate my knowledge and insight into the situation and didn't listen to my warnings that it would be a complete disaster to make such a major change without vetting all the effects and ramifications. The new employee would start arguments with me, and I had absolutely no backing or support from management.
So I left a job with the state after 15 years because of one person. The job I took when I left was out of desperation which turned out was completely mis-represented by the employer. So then I was unemployed for the first time in 25 years. I found another great job within 6 months, better than my last, but had to uproot my household and family and relocate. The whole experience was very devastating, upsetting and frightening. I could not believe I let one person do that to my life.
Within that first year, the system at the last place did completely crash and burn like I predicted and I felt just a little bit vindicated, but at the same time resentful that management couldn't take the work of a senior database developer over the mis-guided enthusiasm of a newbie. On a side note, I did offer myself up to help them as needed both as a contractor and a temp hourly worker. I know, I am crazy to do that, but that's me, always wanting to solve the problems and help wherever I can. They recovered and the person responsible still works there!
I used the experience as an opportunity to grow and work on myself so that I could maybe handle a similar situation differently in the future without such devastative results. I went back to college online and got my BS in Information Technology - databases with Western Governor's University. I previously only had an AAS and tons of hands-on experience, which contributed to my lack of confidence in that bad situation. I was doubting myself because no one was listening.
Now, 4 years later, I know that in the long run I am better off and a better person for it. I am making more money, working with more like-minded people, have exposure to cutting edge technologies, and working for a school district, am working toward a good cause. Going from an IT group of 4 to 75 was a great career move for me. I am doing more enterprise wide database work that I never would have been exposed to at the state agency I worked for. So all in all, it's all good.
Thanks for listening!
July 22, 2016 at 9:01 am
I've been in the same place as the article describes and wound up in my current position which I am very happy with. I was doing field support and the micromanagement was driving me nuts, so I took a chance and landed in a dev/support job, which has been slowly migrating to basically development and supporting my own creations. Been having a ball for several years.
Unfortunately, I may be in exactly in the converse situation soon. There's a fair chance I'll be facing some kind of job shift very soon (can't go into detail for a number of reasons). At the moment it's kind of 50-50 whether I could be shifted to a different job within the current company or wind up packing up the kit bag for someplace entirely new.
____________
Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 42 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply