Ask Slashdot: Why Did You Quit Your Last Job? 540
An anonymous reader writes: Plain and simple: What motivated or pushed you to leave your last job? Did you have any colleague or friend or family who had left their job for a similar reason?
Poached with money (Score:5, Informative)
I've left every job because I was poached with money.
Re:Poached with money (Score:5, Funny)
I've left every job because I was poached with money.
Always with money, never poached using water?
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Or gold?
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Re:Poached with money (Score:5, Insightful)
I've left every job because I was poached with money.
Roughly the same for me. Lost my job due to the great economy crap and the only alternate I found was a contracting position. Said contracting position offered me pretty much the same hourly I was making at my full time job with no benefits. A month later they gave everyone a job cut across the board. A year later I asked for at least cost of living increase, pointing out that from the 12 engineers hired with me, I was one of only two the customer kept on, and was turned down. Found another company with benefits and told them they just needed to match my current hourly and they happily said yes.
If you don't want to pay benefits, at least compensate with sufficient hourly wage...
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Doubled my take-home. Not leaving work from home (Score:4, Informative)
My last two job changes each nearly doubled my take-home pay. My habit of studying rather than playing Candy Crush probably had something to do with that.
I could get another big jump in pay by switching again, but I REALLY like working from home rather than dealing with traffic. I also like that we don't normally work long hours.
My next move will probably be because of two things:
A strategic move to inoculate myself from offshoring and H1B.
Evidence that I won't be able to continue in my current position because either my job is being sent overseas or the company isn't doing well.
I've identified two companies near where I live in Dallas which will be my next destination, hopefully. Now I need to carefully read their want ads and make sure I become familiar with the skills they'll need.
Fulfillment (Score:3)
Immigration (Score:5, Interesting)
Couldn't get a visa for my wife, so took my skills and tax contributions and left.
A bad immigration policy not only deprives the country of the immigrants it needs, it drives the natives out too.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If you were working in the US on an H-1B then you can sponsor your family under the H-4 visa.
If you are a permanent resident you also can easily get a spousal/family visa.
The only way your wife would be denied in the US is YOUR status didn't allow for sponsorship or she was crazy, diseased, or a criminal. And no country would allow those types of people to enter legally.
Re:Immigration (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we'd rather grow our own.
Re:Immigration (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, the UK is one of the worst in the world for family visas.
Several years ago the government made a most unwise promise to reduce immigration to the "tens of thousands" (net). At the moment it's about +230,000 [ons.gov.uk] net which is actually down quite a bit from a peak of around +330,000 due to Brexit.
There are about 85,000 family reunions a year. The rest is skilled workers, foreign students who keep the university system going and fees for British students down, and EU workers exercising their freedom of movement rights.
The government could have stopped about 60% of immigration any time it liked (40% is EU freedom of movement), but obviously didn't because it would be economic suicide. So the squeeze is being put on families, particularly British people with foreign spouses and children. They don't have commercial interests backing them, and they don't have money to pay the ever increasing fees or fight decisions in court.
This will probably only get worse after Brexit, as the demand for falling immigration increases. Some Brexiteers like Rees-Mogg promised that it would get easier, but they were lying. The worst part is that most people don't realize. Literally every single person, 100% no exceptions, that I told I was getting married followed up with something like "oh, and then she is coming here?" Most people assume that if you are married and a British citizen you have a right to unite your family here, but in reality it's extremely difficult and the Home Office will resist in every way possible.
When people talk about having a guest worker system that doesn't allow families to come they are being delusional. No skilled worker who isn't fresh out of university and free from all attachments is going to want to move to another country by themselves and abandon their spouse and children. If you want skilled labour you have to accept the family of skilled labour. Most countries are fine with this, except for the ones in the grip of populism and anti-immigrant scaremongering/scapegoating.
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I wouldn't risk it.
Even if you can get a visa, which is pretty difficulty and will require a lot of paperwork you might not have, when you get here you will be living in fear. Fear that the Home Office decides to deny the next sequential visa you need, fear that they will decide to revoke your current one.
When they do that they will send you a letter telling your wife she has 7 days to leave the UK. You will then go into panic mode and spend thousands on legal fees and appealing, not to mention the stress.
Y
The company was going to fail. (Score:5, Funny)
The first rat to leave the sinking ship gets the primo spot on the adjacent ship.
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The first rat to leave the sinking ship gets the primo spot on the adjacent ship.
I've done that several times- and always landed in a job with more money. Planning on sticking out where I am now though long enough to get full retirement.
Last job I left was because it was boring... it was very heavily regulated. I wasn't allowed to do any work without specs and sometimes I'd go two weeks without any specs- and then they would hand them to me and I had two weeks to complete a 4 week project. So I'd alternate with literally nothing to do- and then 80 hour work weeks.
Another job I left w
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...because it was there.
It was. Literally just up the road and they had been bugging me to join them for a while.
Bankrupt (Score:3, Informative)
The company went bankrupt.
Laid off after corporate merger/acquisition (Score:5, Interesting)
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Microaggressions (Score:5, Funny)
well ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... the precipitating event was that a manager I used to work under called me up, and asked me if I'd consider going where she was now. I said yes and am super glad that I did.
I was receptive to that because of a number of factors. But the root factor to all those factors was (in my opinion) a Marketing department that couldn't stop making decisions based on "ooh, shiny!"
Parenthetically, I either have a knack or great luck at leaving places before the ship sinks.
Unfulfilled Promises (Score:5, Insightful)
Travel (Score:3)
I did consulting for many years. I loved the challenge and variety of the work but hated the travel. Nobody could give me any guarantee that I wouldn't have to travel so I found a local gig. It has its ups and downs but overall I'd rather be sleeping in my own bed every night.
counterpoint: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was fired from my last job for pointing out the copious failings of the IT manager, who was the son of the acting CEO (who was actually the CFO.) I don't know if that guy is still there (we'll call him "Screech" since that's who he looked and sounded like — that's not one of the things I pointed out at the time, BTW) but I know his father-in-law has subsequently been shown the door. They wound up hiring two people to replace me.
Burnout, Re-orgs, and Death. Oh My! (Score:5, Interesting)
Combination of burnout and no longer doing what I enjoy.
The burnout came during a really rough, 3-year development cycle. We spent three months planning with the principal team. They approved the plans and let us run in one direction for a year before dropping a bombshell on ALL the partner teams. We had to drop what we were doing and start over with a completely new (and woefully incomplete) API, tool chain, and environment. Roughest two years I've spent in software ever.
Had a former manager swoop in and rescue a number of us. Spent three years learning new stuff and enjoying my work and team. Then a big re-org came. Moved to something I'm not really enjoying and I can feel the "don't give a shit" attitude building up.
Top it off with a death in the family and it's time to go.
Fortunately, a great stock and housing market will allow me and my partner to enjoy some time off. Hopefully a year or two of doing what I want to do and exploring topics I want to learn will help clarify things. I'll find my passion for the work again or find another thing to fire my passion.
Health care isn't about doing a good job (Score:5, Interesting)
I wasn't allowed to perform at a level I was comfortable with. I'm a physician.
Too many people often with training that is not the same as mine (MBA vs MD or nurse admin vs MD) trying to tell me how I should to my job. Being forced to use EHRs that are just good enough for the hospital admins to okay but are nowhere close to what physicians need to perform well. There is only so much time in a day. Not completing all the task you'd like the way you feel they should be after 12-14 hours of work with no lunch or rest is very disheartening on many levels. Experiencing this nearly every day has a way of killing your spirit. After 10+ years I said no more. I had worked at an acedemic cetner and later a community non-profit.
I work in medical informatics now so I am able to solve some of the EMR problems plaguing physicians today. I only practice medicine on weekends - the hospital admins and insurance company representatives are off. Practicing medicine this way is much more enjoyable.
Re:Health care isn't about doing a good job (Score:4, Interesting)
We once wrote a prototype EMR system that BLEW THE SOCKS off of med professional who saw it. It was fricking amazing. EVERYONE loved this thing, saying things, "This is exactly what we need!". However, we eventually demoed it hospital administrators who not just said "Meh..." they said it would mean they'd have to retrain everyone so, no, they'd keep the old shitty system." I left within 3 months.
Re:Health care isn't about doing a good job (Score:4, Interesting)
That sounds about right. There are a lot of problems with health care today. One that is really unappreciated is how bad hospital admins are and enabling their highly trained workers to do their job. Its a joke. The US system has purposefully shifted power to them over the last 15-20 years. Its not surprising now that physician satisfaction is very low and their suicide rate is now among the highest of all professions. That's what happens when lessor trained people tell well-intentioned highly trained people how to do their job.
When I was at the non-profit, I took on a number of admin task related to EMRs. While I did enjoy what improvements I could enable, it was always an uphill battle. They never want to support anything that would require any effort beyond a day or two of developer time. They minimize physician needs based on the grumpy bad players or those that bring in a lot of revenue - not the well intended majority.
The joke was on me! (Score:2)
I didn't appreciate being shot out of a cannon! When they tell you that "we're hiring cannon fodder" and laugh, it's supposed to be a joke!
On second thought, maybe I should have suspected something when they told me to put on dress like a clown and put on a helmet because a circus is no place to be clowning around! ;)
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Open office plans suck (Score:5, Informative)
Too noisy, way too distracting. Open office plan of the newly acquired office, was terrible. I can just move to a better work environment, and I did just that.
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I had my own "office", more of a windowless room with some equipment but still it was mine. I hated it, left for an open plan with about 5-6 people in it and much preferred it.
Boring af (Score:2)
It was boring af.
Low pay, hostile (yelling), layoff every year (Score:3)
It was the most hostile workplace I'd ever seen with open yelling in offices and hallways. Some might consider that normal but I hadn't seen such yelling in 35 years of working.
The place was going down the tubes. I was hired to backfill someone laid off a month before I started and there was a layoff every year I was there.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent about that awful place.
Negative environment, poor pay (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked as the System Administrator/Software Developer for a smaller company (~35 employees). I architected and built out a multi-channel eCommerce solution that synced their ancient database (inventory, pricing, etc) to a modern SQL database that could be tied into Amazon, eBay, their own webstore (which I also built). Automatic repricing to stay competitive based on our inventory costs, custom pricing for custom sizes, bin packing problems, plenty of complex stuff.
Very very negative environment. Frequent company wide meetings where we were referred to as replaceable and disposable. Cost of living raises once every 24 months if we were lucky. Any time money came up, the company owner would go into a rant about how much each employee costs to employee.
Pay wasn't keeping up nearly enough with my increased responsibilities (even though my software was responsible for several million per year *profit*).
They haven't replaced me (have tried a few times, have a few friends who work there) and none of them worked out. Amazingly my software is still running after a couple years. The first major API change to any of the eCommerce channels will break it pretty bad.
Now I'm a Software Architect (with a heavy dose of DevOps) for a multi-billion dollar company making nearly 300% of what I did there.
tl;dr - Worked well beyond my job responsibilities, made the company a lot of money, they wouldn't pay me, so I left for a company that would pay me.
I couldn't stand my boss (Score:3)
I just did not get along with my manager. He made stupid decisions, he blamed me (even wrote me up) for his mistakes. My co-workers basically indicated that it's my job to get along with him, and not his job to get along with me, so that impacted my relationship with my co-workers too.
I think the final straw was that I had surgery right before my annual review was due. A week in the hospital, a week on bed rest, a week light-duty-no-driving, a week light-duty-with-driving. He asked me during my "bed rest" week to come in for my annual review. I declined. He asked if I would come in during my no-driving week, and again I declined. When he finally gave me this annual review, it had zero raise.
PostScript -- one of the co-workers I stopped getting along with over this incident -- he left six months later, citing this same manager's stupid decisions.
Hostile Work Environment (Score:5, Informative)
I left my last job because it was a hostile work environment where my boss' boss was fond of yelling and blaming folks for what ever happened to suit his fancy that day. Sometimes it was for not following his instructions. Sometimes it was because his instructions where followed but we should have known better. He was always yelling at individuals about one thing or another and often yelled at his direct reports all at the same time. We had weekly 3 hour meetings for this purpose that often went to 4 or 5 hours.
The last straw was when he demoted me during one of his fits, but didn't bother to tell me for almost 2 weeks. I found out during a meeting when he flashed up the current org chart in one of his long pointless rambling presentations and my name had moved. Say what? So I had my authority to do the work he wanted done taken away and he still wanted to hold me responsible? Sorry buddy, I'm out of here.
Folks where leaving this place in droves, so, I followed them. Now, as a group, we are all happier working for a competitor and meet as a group on a regular basis to remember all the reasons why we would never go back... I will NEVER work for him again, I'll cook burgers and fries for a living if I have too.
Nothing but the old and new furniture being happy (Score:3)
Plain and simple: when you start neglecting mid-level workforce - those that have 2 or more years of seniority - it's a bad sign for any IT-related work. IT already has a high job-hopping rate, and not keeping your no-longer-new signings motivated is a recipe for generalized demotivation.
So when all the happy faces you see are either from management or fresh acquisitions, you know the company is abusing the lower ranks, keeping them stagnant for margins. This is especially excruciating when your company publicly states it wants to hire more high-level workers - resources that will jump the ranks straight to the top from outside - once again showing their lack of appreciation for the in-house, long-commited workforce.
I'm not saying this is why I quit my last job. It's just something I see a lot in my peers that leave tech companies around here (south Europe), including my current employer.
Stupid company set up voluntary severance packages (Score:3)
Company wanted to downsize.
They gave monetary incentive, essentially "get out of here, take some money, so we don't have to do lengthy negotiations".
Only problem was that the end result was this:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-... [dilbert.com]
(+ a new job waiting right outside for all the competent folks)
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happened to me, 6 months salary + benefits was not that bad :)
Expression (Score:5, Insightful)
"When the disgusted one have gone, the disgusting ones are left."
But that was not the core reason for me. Rather a matter of earning more in an interesting environment with growth potential, and with a more healthy work-life balance than my previous job.
On August 1 I will be 20 years in my current company.
straight out of Dilbert (Score:5, Funny)
My weekly experience at my job became too much like a Dilbert cartoon. So much that we actually printed off relevant ones and stuck them to the wall:
Regarding the latter, we actually bought kilts and wore them to work. Management complained. I went to HR and proved I was part Scottish. We compromised and Friday became shorts day. It was as close as I ever got to having a William Wallace moment, but without the face paint and all of the killing.
Many reasons (Score:3)
Many reasons, lack of recognition, no fulfillment, long commute, work hours, and never really got long with the boss.
When I changed jobs, I went form working a 40 hour work week to 35, 90 minute commute each way down to 12-30 minutes depending on traffic, 4 weeks vacation from 3, a better salary, and a much for fulfilling job and environment ... I should have switched much sooner. When you don't feel like going in to work because of several factors.... you need to reconsider your job. I've been at my new job now for almost 8 years, and I love it. Getting up in the morning is not a chore to get ready to go to work, I don;t call in sick just because I'm sick and tired of the job. I'm so much better off mentally and physically. I save around 15 hours a week if I count commute and work hours..... 15 extra hours for me a week.... that's huge!
I was the sole senror web developer ... (Score:2)
... in a communications agency of 30. The novelty effect wears off quickly and the regular staying time is 3.5 years on average in agencies anyway - so no hurt feelings.
I'm somehow stuck in the agency camp these days.
It does have some upsides. Your the smartest guy on the crew when it comes to software development and deployment and you get to call some final shots. However, frustration tolerance is tested day in and day out as you get to deal with abysmally shoddy setups and dweeps who sell internet proje
Why did the chicken cross the road? (Score:2)
I was offered a better job at a better company with better pay in a much better part of the country. The offer was made by my former manager, who had left a year earlier in search of a better job at a better company with better pay in a much better part of the country.
Notably, he didn't try to recruit anyone else from his former company.
My Boss Was an Asshole (Score:3)
My boss was an asshole, setting unrealistic goals rather than negotiating them, then providing no support to achieve them. His favorite motivational advice was "You figure it out.". I went to work for a competitor with a 50% raise. He fired the next two people who took my old job until his boss figured things out and fired him. I learned a lot from him about how to not treat employees and coworkers.
Company Strategy (Score:2)
The company's business strategy was "Sit around and wait for the contract fairy to drop business in our lap".
outsourced (Score:2)
I've not quit a job, they all where sold, merged, or where outsourced.
Bay Area Living Costs (Score:4, Informative)
My options were to either leave the Bay, or find a job that paid six figures. Thankfully I was able to find the latter. Unfortunately around these parts you have to follow the money - not your passions - unless you're willing to skimp to an insane degree.
Comment removed (Score:3)
As a Freelance Consultant... (Score:2)
...I was engaged by three Fortune 500 CEO's at the same time. Made a pile of money, and retired.
Not bad for a high-school dropout, eh?
Redundancies are worth a lot (Score:4, Informative)
2 jobs ago, engineering company. Got made redundant with a nice payout, started another job 1 week later.
Several years on, plant was closed. Got made redundant with a nice payout, started another job 2 days later.
Currently the bow is going under on this sinking ship. Another comment above says first to leave the sinking ship gets a spot on the adjacent one. Me, I prefer to wait for the bounty.
got a better offer (Score:2)
I quit because I got a better offer!
I quit the boss, not the company (Score:5, Insightful)
I liked my job ok -- I was a sysadmin at a medium sized manufactuer and was there about 2.5 years. After about 2 years I had automated and resolved a ton of things, so when we didn't have a project to work on, i had 15 hours a week of downtime. I'd play in powershell read IT news, read up on tech we had that I couldn't leverage due to licensing or whatever.
but I had lousy co-workers, and my boss was just...painful and frustrating to work for. I had taken on a lot of random support because a coworker would hem and haw and get nothing done. My boss was terrible -- she was the boss by default because she had been there so long. But she was sort of mean, a decade or better out of practice, horrible at troubleshooting, short-sighted at planning and purchasing, had lousy day to day PC and technical skills, and i just got so tired of being there feeling like I had peaked. So i hit up a buddy at a health system nearby and he got me in for an interview. I got an offer for a 25% raise and way better benefits, so away I went.
That was two years ago -- great decision. My boss is great (not much of a people manager, but a good overall manager otherwise), I work with some really smart, hard working people, have gotten a promotion and more money, and have been able to focus what I work on and increase my skill set.
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Corporate IT (Score:2)
I am a fan of small work environments. There are downsides, certainly, but overall I prefer the one on one interaction and the ability to really make a difference.
However, then 2008 hit and my small company job was under threat from budget cuts. Being a single parent I had to find more stable employment, so I took a stable job at a corporation.
Jesus...I always suspected Dilbert cartoons were, if anything, understating the situation, but to see it first hand was discouraging. I became so disillusioned wit
I had a heart attack (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a job that has seasonal crunch-times, followed by a season of long, long hours to support the released product. Think 60-80 hours a week. When I first started, the season of long hours was technically a code freeze; we only checked in critical bug fixes, and code pushes were arranged long ahead of schedule. Emergency code pushes were vetted by the chief architect. All in all, most of that time was spent killing time, waiting, and watching.
One season, everything changed. My boss (dev manager) left to go work for a competitor, and was replaced by someone from Sales. At that moment, the dev team became a boiler room. He over-promised his bosses, and expected us to deliver. Scrum become a bullshit "sign off on this estimate or else." If you tried to be conservative in your estimate, the meeting would drag on while he badgered you about why your estimate was so low ("I just don't see..." was his favorite phrase). Eventually you agreed just to put the meeting out of its misery; and you would be held to that estimate. So the crunch-time became almost unbearable. At the same time, my daughter was born. The combination of these things sent by blood pressure through the roof. My doctor warned me that I was extremely hypertensive (170/100) and that drastic action was needed. I took pills, changed my diet, I did everything but change my job.
You see, my coworkers (the ones that were all quitting around this time) used to joke and call me a "company man." I had never quit a job. Ever. I had only held two jobs before, and lost them both due to problems at the company (the first got hit by the dot-bomb, the second sold email software to ISP's [you can draw your own conclusions]).
The company owners were great; they really loved the employees, and they tried to make it the best they could. Unfortunately, they were blind to the problems with middle-management. The past year, to alleviate the work stress, they changed company policy on long hours. Basically, the new understanding was that, since we had remote capability and were on-call, it was no longer necessary for us to sit around 60-80 hours for a whole season doing nothing. For other divisions, this meant 40 hour work weeks. My manager's takeaway, however, was that the 60-80 hours could not be filled with actual work. Velocity was expected to increase by 50%-100%.
Soon after that first season ended, we had a week vacation and then geared up for another crunch period (yay! Only 40 hours, now!). One week shy of my daughter's first birthday, I woke up in the middle of a Friday night with my chest thumping. But it couldn't be a heart-attack; after all, I'm a hypochondriac, and it has never been a heart attack before. So I scheduled a same-day appointment that Saturday morning with my GP. Turns out I had had a total blockage of my lower-left ventricle for over 12 hours. Three stents, and lucky not to have permanent cardiac tissue damage. Luckier still not to be dead; my brand new cardiologist informed me that I was only hours from a catastrophic and unrecoverable cardiac event. I would not have survived the evening.
My cardiologist and GP agreed on this point: it was not diet, or exercise, or any other external factor that caused my heart attack; it was 100% stress. It should not have happened, especially at my age. They said I had to cut out the stress immediately.
So, being the company man that I am, I gave the company another season of long hours. But this time I did it right. I didn't let my boss get to me, I didn't volunteer for useless and unrewarding tasks, and all in all stopped being the jump-up-and-go guy I had been before. My manager informed me two weeks before my review that I was going to get poor marks for work throughput. I had not received a bad in 18 years, and I was not going to get one now. I put out my resume, and got hired by the first place I submitted it to (keyword search "work-life balance"). I handed in my resignation the day before my review.
Work will always be work, but it doesn't have to be terrible (and shouldn't be).
tl;dr: Don't wait until your job kills you to leave.
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EDIT: "could *NOW* be filled", not "not be filled"
Slashdot, let me edit!!!
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Similar story here. Had two project managers, one was an accountant the other was a "certified project manager". Neither had a lick of IT experience. Everything was overpromised, and we were expected to meet those unattainable promises.
That, on top of getting screwed out of my bonus and raises two years in a row and having management yank a promised career path, still wasn't enough. It took a midnight trip to the ER, and other various cardiac testing regimens for me to conclude that the stress of the jo
I try not to quit... (Score:2)
As an adult I've left my current job twice. Once because I got tired of the boss' attitude toward working me 6 days a week and not paying me for it. I went back after six months when I was having problems and he realized how badly I screwed up. Went back with a bit of a raise. The second time was because I got hurt on the job; found out the boss wasn't legally required to have insurance or workman's comp...so he didn't. I got to deal with a spinal inju
Retired (Score:2)
My last job was with TRW. The work was interesting. My coworkers were friendly. The managers knew how to manage. The company treated me very well. Except possibly when I worked at UCLA at the beginning of my career, TRW was the most positive employment experience I had.
I was at TRW six years, during whichI had the commute from Hell. It took 2.5 hours to travel the 42 miles to home, an average speed of less than 20 miles per hour. Although I was taking not one but two prescriptions for high blood pres
was golden boy, no longer (Score:2)
Was one of the first employees of the business. Boss (who liked me) gave me plum assignment at a huge client. Worked there (quite successfully) for a year, made profits for the company ~20x what they'd paid me, expanded business beyond the original scope, etc.
While I was gone, power struggle at home office, my boss had his bluff called and was let go. When this project ended up at a stable point and I came back and said "ok what next interesting project can I get engaged in" his replacement said "I reall
Better job (Score:2)
It was destroying me mentally (Score:2)
Quite simply: I hated every single day that I went into work.
I managed a small development team for an internal application in the mortgage industry at a global banking/mortgage company. We were in the Risk organization and not in IT, and apart from my three developers, nobody had any clue about technology or how software development works. This resulted in conversations with my peers (business owners) about how nothing worked right, and their idea of requirements was "we had a conversation about this!".
IT projects need business backing (Score:3)
I was hired for an IT project that turned out to have no real business backing / sponsors. After a while it ran out of budget. End of story, end of position.
Overworked and Underpaid (Score:3)
I left my last job because of the workload. I was hired as a programmer and ended up doing all the programming during the day and all the systems administration at night. Nothing was ever done fast enough (go figure) and there was never any money to get the tools or help needed. It was leave the job or leave this life. I like living.
My new job is only some part time programming with a lot of field work. Almost zero stress and I get to travel eight states.
I already knew who my new boss was going to be. (Score:2)
Did not quit. (Score:2)
Grew bored (Score:2)
Mostly I grew bored.
Also got a job offer with better salary, benefits and better collegues which was also closer to my home.
Soo, no-brainer, basically.
False Job Description (Score:3)
Hired as a server and Network Administrator.
What it REALLY was: They wanted an Accountant. Find and tag 500.000 or so mobile devices spread accross the world with only a car and Active Directory as resources. No travel budget.
Um.. No.
Retired (Score:2)
After 33 years of among other things running the various ERP systems at the company I worked for they phased out the last one for the fancy new system that the large company that had bought us 12 years earlier had finally gotten working well enough to bring my subsidiary into the fold. The timing was nearly ideal because I was ready to retire anyway at 64 years of age. Now I'm enjoying not getting up and going to work every day and being a able to spend my time as I see fit.
'Cause it was killing me and our marriage (Score:3)
Now I have no mandatory OT requirement, no mandatory on-call, 40 hour work week, 30+ days off per year (counting federal holidays), comp time, and a 401(k), and they pay, either in part or in whole, for a lot of my certifications and training.
Which is also why I support unionizing IT workers (and my current IT department is part of a union).
Work load not spread out (Score:2)
I Wanted Pirouette Back In Time To Old Hardware (Score:2)
But then I wanted to go back in time and work with real hardware that glows in the dark (vacuum tubes).
So I left Intel Jones Farm in Hillsboro Oregon to retire to Bellingham Washington and volunteer full time at the Spark Museum, where they have antique radios and electroncis.
So, I pirouetted off.
Here is a video of myself pirouetting out of Intel! Dancing at Intel [youtube.com]
IBM Sucked (Score:2)
I worked as a contractor for IBM for 2 years. They had a "duck-duck-goose" style of reducing headcount. You were a cog in the machine with no way of showing the team that reduced headcount your value. Within a couple of weeks of starting there, some guy I'd never seen before walked around the cubicles and tapped the guy across from me, "you're out. have your stuff gone by Wednesday".
When the contract ended, I was fortunate enough to be placed on a new contract. The offers for me at the time was to move to T
No commute, change of work (Score:2)
I'm a consultant, and shifted what I was working on for two big reasons - no commute, and a change in what I was working on. I had been working on my previous project for about three years and thought I was starting to get a little too comfortable just doing very similar work over time... It's great to become proficient in a system and a subject but it's dangerous (carrier wise) to let yourself linger there too long.
Full time working remote was absolutely a great change to make, I recommend it highly and
Motivation to leave last job (Score:2)
I wanted to retire and start enjoy have time to do what I want to do. I had been working since I was 10 YO always in school or work. Spent many years in music business (many aspects) and most of the last 30 plus years in programming and then SysAdmin. So situations came together to make it work so I left. Actually the last job was the worst run and managed place of any and that was a motivation. They begged me to stay another six months, but I knew it was so they could fire others that needed the j
"You don't get what you deserve..." (Score:2)
My dad offered me this advice, years ago: "In life, you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate." You might say that it's a philosophical variation on the old adage, "You have to move out to move up," because the two frequently lead to the same end result. After all, if you stay in a job year after year, than there's a halfway decent chance that you're not negotiating -- or at least, not negotiating hard -- which almost certainly means that you're not getting what you deserve. Thus, in order
Money (Score:2)
Personal reasons (Score:2)
I pay attention to company health now (Score:2)
I've been laid off a couple times now. One caught me completely by surprise. So now I pay a lot more attention to the health of the company and just how important my job is to the company. My last job move I noticed the critical customer I was supporting was winding down their usage of our software, which would make me unneeded baggage. The time before, I noticed my manager wasn't fond of me and was unlikely to renew my contract. I've found I can make much better jumps when I'm still employed rather th
They said there would be CMAKE (Score:3)
But the CMAKE was a lie.
Re: India, thanks trump (Score:3, Funny)
Trump has done more to protect your job from Indians than any president since Carter.
Re: (Score:3)
Except Trump thought his advisors meant Native Americans.
Re: India, thanks trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump has done more to protect your job from Indians than any president since Carter.
Trump has created an environment where you are less likely to have an Indian come to the US to take your job, but more likely to have the entire department move to India.
I have never met someone in charge of hiring (whose budget is not inflated by VC money) tell me it is easy to hire software engineers and other IT staff right now. We have been at "full employment" for quite some time, and likely well over 5 years in the IT industry. The US only has 5% of the world's population but controls around 20% of the world's economy, and we won't be able to maintain the benefits that strength gives us with only 5% of the world's best and brightest working in the US.
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It's simple to find IT personnel if you set wages properly. The only ones having a hard time attracting talent are those with 1990's-level pay. That's what a booming economy is supposed to do.
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It's simple to find IT personnel if you set wages properly. The only ones having a hard time attracting talent are those with 1990's-level pay. That's what a booming economy is supposed to do.
That is a zero sum game, so even if everyone raised their salaries you wouldn't have enough workers. Or we would just start having shortages in other high skill industries if more students moved from pre-med to computer science.
A long term solution could certainly include significant increases in education funding, especially when targeting today's disadvantaged demographic groups, but that would take decades to bear fruit. Increased immigration is the only short term solution.
Re: India, thanks trump (Score:2)
What it would do is focus technology resources on companies doing something worthwhile with technoloy, rather than having dozens of firms in every city that suck up all the talent converting marketing materials into websites, because marketing companies have the most money to throw around.
We need a contraction in software development. Most of it's worthless derivative shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah that's just globalism, neither party can stop that and the Democrats would prefer to increase it.
You're right in that neither party can stop globalism, and I agree, the Democrats are less likely to slow down some of the affects that has on the US; however, Trump's policies on starting trade wars has driven many jobs in some industries over seas. Jobs are moving to avoid tariffs... on the flip side some jobs are moving here too... although everyside in a trade war loses... and the US is fighting trade wars on more fronts than other countries.
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not always. My last manager (and the one before him beofre he left) was great, I even contacted him when we had an open manager position at my new job to see if he would be interested. Its just that everything was wrong wasnt really up to him, he was being hamstrung everywhere by upper management and accounting
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This, this is america 100%. Why and how Fortune100/500 company still exist and operate like this is beyond me.
This AC story is the story about everyone will live in his life especially in software development.
If you got bought by a F100/500 company, you will endure this.
Re: The place turned into crap + last straw. (Score:2)
As soon as you feel unhappy at a job, you should start spending every working hour looking for a new job.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey! #MeToo!
For me it was about 4.5 years ago, when the wave of sexual harassment complaints was just taking off.
I was the subject of a complaint. Kinda sucked because it was a lot of half-truths. Basically I was messing around with someone at work (at least 50% driven by her) and eventually I think her husband found out. So in order to save face, she made a sexual harassment claim against me.
Well, there was a big investigation, blah blah blah, and what they found was that I didn't harass anyone, but I
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Or maybe leave your politics at home? Nobody is paying you to be a political activist in the office on their clock.
Re: Economics (Score:2)
If there's no overtime, why were you working 12 hour days? Just go home. Instead, you continued to get the work done, so OF COURSE they're not going to hire anyone else.
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So... virtue signalling then?
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Did they take your red stapler, too?