On changing jobs and moving on
(This is part three in a series of posts about figuring out if a new job is a good fit. Parts one and two are here and here.)
If you’ve come to the conclusion that the great new job you started actually isn’t so great after all, and you’ve decided that moving on is the best thing for you, you’ll have to start figuring out what happens next. This can be broken up into two categories of questions: How do you deal with the not-so-great job in the meantime, and how do you try to prevent another not-so-great work situation from taking you by surprise next time?
People often ask how soon is too soon to quit. There aren’t any hard and fast answers here, but there are some things to consider:
Is the work environment just annoying (or otherwise disappointing) or actually harmful? If you’ve realized that you’re never going to get the projects or promotions you were hoping for here but the day-to-day work isn’t bad, you might not need to leave immediately. On the other hand, if the workplace is harmful or abusive, don’t feel compelled to stick around just to avoid having a short stint on your resume.
How long were you at your last few jobs? While job tenures in tech these days are on average shorter than they used to be a decade or more ago, there is still some concern about the appearance of job hopping — hiring managers don’t want to bring in someone new just to have them leave in a few months. If leaving jobs quickly has been a pattern for you, you’ll have to balance the optics of that against the story you can tell about it. In an ideal world, a good hiring manager would listen to what you have to say and understand that, especially as an URM, it’s unfortunately all too easy to go from one toxic environment to another, but there’s always the risk that people will look at the dates on your resume and put it straight in the skip pile.
Are you able to quit right away? Remember that thing where we don’t live in an ideal world? You might find yourself in a position where you can’t just up and quit right away — maybe you really need the health insurance benefits this job offers, or maybe your immigration status is tied to a specific job, or maybe you don’t have a financial cushion that would allow you to be unemployed. It absolutely sucks to feel like you’re stuck in a bad situation for reasons outside your control, but if quitting immediately isn’t in the cards, you may have to balance the reality of that versus the desire to just tableflip and leave.
If you can’t leave immediately, there are a few things you might try to make the best out of the situation in the meantime.
Are there skills you can learn? Especially if you’re worried about how a short stay might look to future hiring managers, you’ll probably want to see if the work you do in the meantime can help with your next job search. Are there opportunities to pick up some new skills or play around with some new technology you’d been wanting to try out? Is there a particular project that would look especially good on your resume or help you go in the direction you’ve been wanting to go next?
What would be fun? If you’re less concerned about building out particular marketable skills, is there work that you would just enjoy doing in the meantime? It’s easy to get caught up in the mindset that everything has to be productive and working towards some big career goal, but if you’re happy with the level you’re at and just want to do some projects that are fun or interesting to you personally, that’s fine too.
Can you switch teams? If your new-job regrets are more about your particular team than the overall company, you might see if there’s a way to move around internally. I’ve seen this work both at small startups where teams are loosely defined and people are used to wearing a lot of hats, as well as at larger organizations with more formal internal transfer processes.
Can you build up your network? Even if you read part 2 of this series and realized that you’re working for an evil puppy-kicking organization, it’s unlikely that every single person in the whole organization is terrible — if that were the case, you probably wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. See if you can find your people, both on your team and elsewhere. Someone on your team who you enjoy working with can make the day-to-day a lot better even if you know you want to leave sooner rather than later, and if you can find like-minded or empathetic people throughout the organization, those can be connections you take with you long after both of you have moved on to greener pastures.
Is there a raise/promo cycle coming up? This might not be relevant if you’re in your first few months at a company, but if you’ve been around for longer and are on the fence about when to start actively moving on, think about this sort of timing. If you think a raise or promotion is possible, that might be worth sticking around a few more months for, since you can use that higher title/salary as part of your negotiation for your next role.
Are you keeping your resume up to date? I don’t know about you, but I often find it hard to remember the things that I’ve done in a particular role months or years after the fact. Even if you’re happy in your current role, get into the habit of keeping your resume up to date. I have a symbol for accomplishments in my work bullet journal and a quarterly calendar reminder to go through and use those to update my resume. As a bonus this sort of practice can help with your annual reviews or manager 1:1s as well.
The next and last (in this series) big question to ask yourself is: How can you prevent yourself from ending up in a position like this in the future?
Unfortunately, there’s really no great answer for how to suss out the truth in every job search. Every company is different, every interview is different, and there is no magic question that will get you an honest answer to the things you really need to know about. Especially if you’re an URM trying to figure out if a particular company is actually an inclusive and safe place to work or just pretends to be, it can be really difficult to get the information you’re looking for. Even the puppy-kicking-est of companies are unlikely to admit to the real downsides of their work environment up front in an interview process, and it’s hard to tell from a few hours of questions and code screens what the day to day will end up being like.
Knowing that, is there anything you actually can do during your next job searching process?
When you’re looking for companies you might want to interview with:
Look for patterns in your job history. Have you had more problems with companies of a certain size, such as early-stage startups versus larger organizations? Or maybe you’ve learned that certain styles of leadership don’t work as well for you. If you’re able to identify these patterns, you can start to exclude from your job search orgs that are less likely to be a good fit for you.
Change what you’re looking for. On a similar note, there might be some changes in how you approach the search that could help filter out potential companies. I’ve known people who have picked jobs based on getting to use a specific programming language or tool, only to leave a few months later when they turned out to hate the culture. Or if you’ve been only focused on particular job titles or salaries, there might come a point when those stop mattering so much as having coworkers you enjoy or being able to truly disconnect at the end of the day.
Use your networks. If you can, getting recommendations about places to work (or places to avoid) from trusted people you know can be very helpful. This can be especially true if you’re an URM and have other URMs in your network (though if your network is all cis white men and you aren’t in that demographic, keep in mind that what makes a great place to work for them won’t necessarily be true for you). You might also check places like diversifytech.co, who will decline to work with companies that have had recent issues reported in DEI areas, unlike other lists of “great places to work” that companies can just buy their way onto.
During the interview processes, there’s a few more things you can try as well:
Ask for specifics. If they say they have fair pay and promotion processes, ask what those processes are, and what the processes for correcting inequities outside of the standard cycles are. If they say they have trans-inclusive healthcare, ask to see the policy documents that explain what is and isn’t covered. The specifics of what matters to you will vary, but if there are specific things that really matter to you, don’t just assume that you and the organization will be on the same page — make sure to get the details when it’s something you care about.
Talk to more people. If everyone you’ve interviewed with so far has been a white man and you aren’t one, ask if you can have an informational interview with someone who looks more like you, even if that person is on a different team. If there isn’t a single person in the organization in your demographic group, that probably says something. If you wanted to, you could ask them about that directly and see how they react, which can be very telling. (For bonus points, if you are a white man and only interview with other white men, definitely ask this question.) Ask around in your networks as well - if you can chat with a current or recent former employee, that can surface a lot of helpful information that can inform your decision.
Decide ahead of time what you’ll walk away from. If a particular salary or job title is a must-have for you, keep that in mind throughout the process. If you’ve been interviewing for a while, you might start to get tired of the process and wanting to accept something/anything, especially if you’re trying to leave an unhealthy environment, but if you accept a salary or title cut that you aren’t actually okay with, you might end up with buyer’s remorse shortly after the rush of quitting your old job has worn off. Again, the specifics of what matters in your particular situation are up to you, but you should know up front for yourself what’s important to you and what isn’t.
The question of whether or not any given job change is going to turn out well is one without any easy answers. With so many different factors involved, both at individual and organizational levels, it can be difficult to recognize patterns even for yourself. My aim with this series of posts was to give people some things to think about, questions to ask themself when they’re thinking about a new job or an upcoming job search. Good luck out there, and remember to pay it forward whenever you can — lend your network and privilege whenever possible, and try to leave the places you work even a little bit better than you found them, so we can all try to improve the industry one small fire at a time.