When It's Time to Move On

I'm now in the final stages of moving from my current company to a new one. What follows is a rundown of what's been going on in my brain throughout the entire process, my motivations, and my reasoning.

This is not intended to disparage my current company nor hold the new company up on a pedestal. This is my (limited) perspective.

Coming to Conclusions

Hindsight is, of course, 20:20. Every time I've left a job, I've been able to see where the thought of leaving started, why it kept brewing for so long, what I did or didn't do to perpetuate the thought, etc. With each new job, I'm unable to see that moment when it actually happens, or for that matter, I can't seem to see the lead-up to that moment.

Why am I feeling like leaving?

I can cite many reasons for leaving at this point, but what it comes to is two points. I'll dive into these in a moment.

• I'm feeling bored and have been for some time  * Bored People Quit
• I feel like management ignores my voice and perspective

Bored?

Talk about a first-world problem, right?

"I'm booooreddddddd, somebody give me something interesting to dooooooooo"

It's not as trite and silly as it sounds though. If you haven't read the above link, stop reading this and go read Bored People Quit now otherwise what I'm going to say going forward won't make much sense.

At my current position, I ended up getting hit in the crosshairs of two separate "boredom" concepts that Rands talks about:

Keeping an interesting problem squarely in front of them.

They can only ‘take one for the team’ for so long.

Somewhat related to one another, my position ended up being prod support for an unnecessarily complex and complected piece of software. While I understood the reason behind my "taking one for the team" (I actually volunteered for it because I was the logical choice given domain knowledge, skill set, etc), it extended far longer than I expected and far longer than I was able to be intrinsically motivated. Prod support isn't terribly interesting and this exacerbated the situation.

I should have realized that I was getting "bored" much sooner than I did and I take full responsibility for that.

When I realized what was going on and started speaking up... well...

Is anyone truly listening?

In short, I felt like no one was hearing my concerns. I was speaking out primarily in one-on-one meetings, but occasionally in larger meetings, "hey, we need to stop band-aiding this issue and actually fix it."

As a shy introvert, I tend to not speak up a lot. This leads to my team lead or manager putting on literally every review "needs to speak up more". Same thing I've heard since elementary school. Sorry people, I'm not wired that way. If I'm talking, chances are I have something important to say. Unfortunately volume, in both loudness as well as amount, is valued over content.

This historically has led me into a downward spiral of "no one's listening to me anyway, why should I speak up?!"

What am I looking for?

This was a critical question for me to answer. Was I looking for "different" or was I actually looking for something "better"?

Those look different from one another and I decided that I was looking for "better". This led me to turn down interviews and severely limited which companies I was applying to. Where I work is a good place to work so finding "better" ended up being an interesting challenge. I was done with the current company by this point and my intrinsic motivation had shifted from "working on something interesting" to "finding something interesting to work on".

Looking Elsewhere

Resumes and interviews are a game of numbers. With that in mind, the best advice I can give is to spread your resume as far and wide as you possibly can. My offer came through a new-to-me website called Hired.com which I was very happy with. It took me a couple of tries to get responses from companies but I had two solid interview experiences and almost nothing by applying directly. I estimate that I probably sent out my resume to 20-30 companies.

Out of that pool, I got a grand total of 4 phone screens, which led to 3 2nd phone screens, and 1 on-site.

Like I said, it's a game of numbers.

Different vs. Better

The Final Decision

How does it feel to leave the best company you've ever worked for?

Leave it to one of my best work buddies to ask the hard questions. What it feels like to me is I'm not leaving the best company I've ever worked for. I'm leaving a company. That's it. When I first started, it was the best company I'd ever worked for but over time, that transformed into "just another job." Once it hit that point, it was no longer the best company I'd ever worked for.

The Fallout

Emotions Run High

It's important that once you make an announcement you let any feedback roll off your back. Coworkers will feel betrayed, happy, angry, panicked. The whole gamut of emotions, sometimes in rapid succession, sometimes all at once. It's rough, both for them and you, so give them the benefit of the doubt.

Who is this person anyway?!

You find out interesting things about people when you "betray" them by leaving. Remember, leaving a company is like going through a breakup. You're essentially telling them and the company that they aren't good enough. Try to let them down easy but don't patronise them either. And for insert-deity-here's sake, help through the transition. You're already holding a blow torch to a gas-soaked bridge by leaving. Do your best to not light the bridge!

Time Off

Always, always, always, make sure to take at least a week off between companies, longer if possible. Take that time to reset, clear your head, and drop any baggage you were carrying from your former employer. It's not fair to the new company, your new coworkers, or yourself to carry that pile of crap with you into the new job.

Freshness

Once you've (hopefully) taken that time off, walk into the new company with fresh eyes. Your first months at a new company are the most valuable, in my opinion. You have the perspective of looking at the code, infrastructure, policies and procedures, etc with an outsider's perspective. That perspective doesn't last long so at the very least take notes and ask the dumb questions. Those questions that seem simple on the surface but question the status-quo. That's not to say you should expect anything other than "that's the way things are and we can't change it."

That being said, you might just spur a vastly positive change for the company. At worst, you learn a ton about the history of the company and how they got to "now" which can only make you more effective at your new job.