
Ask HN: I hate my new job, Need some advice - payamb
I&#x27;m a PHP developer with about 3-4 years experience , living and working in UK,
About 2 months ago i had to move to Manchester, because of a personal situation, so i had to leave my job ( which i regret now ), I was the lead developer of a high exposure web application and i enjoyed what i was doing over there , architecture design, coding, testing, monitoring ..., I was really motivated, keep myself updated everyday, learning new things everyweek and use them in projects right away.
Anyway when i moved to Manchester i had many job offers ( hard to find developers in UK i guess ) but i accepted a digital agency offer ( without actually knowing what i have to do everyday ) , Salary is about average ( £26k ) but i don&#x27;t like my job at all, creating pointless websites for clients, jumping from Magento to Wordpress to Drupal and now, I&#x27;m not only developer, I have to do some designing ( which isn&#x27;t my thing ) and integrate them into CMSes.
I&#x27;m doing the junior developer&#x27;s job now and its hurting me, I feel pain everyday i want to go to work, and i just want to kill time to finish the day and count the days waiting for weekend to come ...
I know I should have done more research before joining this company, its my own fault to put myself in misery, I feel bad for this guys , They have probably spent a few grand for recruitment agencies fees to hire me and if I want to leave them and it takes them another month or two to find a replacement for me.
I have good amount of job offers , But I don&#x27;t know what do to now, I hate my job and I feel bad to leave them, What would you do if you were in my place ?
======
ColinWright
Think hard: Can you take control of your work and mutate it into something you
care about and gives you a degree of satisfaction?

If not, take another job and leave now. Don't hang on, be willing to help find
your replacement, be honest and up front.

If there is a chance that you can take control and change the job then go to
your boss and say what you think should happen to make the company stronger,
better, and offer to help them do that.

If they don't enter a conversation with you about it: leave.

If nothing seems to be happening within days: leave. Accept no excuse.

But if things improve, you've made your job better and helped the company.

But don't feel bad about leaving. You've done some work, you've been paid for
that work at the agreed rate, and so you owe them nothing.

Be prepared to try to take control of your own work, and your own future. You
are of value - the job offers make that clear - and if your current company
doesn't agree, then agree to part.

~~~
payamb
Thanks for your comment, Its a small agency but five managers observing and
interfering into everything, Iv'e tried to change things, I know I'm not
perfect but my experience didn't matter to them and they decided to do things
as they were.

you made me feel better.

~~~
ColinWright
You're welcome. If you can't take control, and you hate what you're doing, you
have to get out. Take a day to plan a definite exit, make a plan, then put it
into action. Be clear that you will help them find a replacement, make sure
you have somewhere to go.

If you're about to start looking for work you should put contact details in
your HN profile, including a pointer to an up-to-date CV.

------
J-dawg
This may be counter to a lot of the comments here, but please, please, please
don't hand in your notice until you have another job offer. I did this a few
years ago, and ended up doing crappy temp jobs for months. My savings ran out,
I lost all confidence in myself and became visibly nervous in interviews. This
created a positive feedback loop as I became more and more desperate. It took
me years to fully recover from the experience. I should add that I was not a
developer at the time (I came to programming somewhat late), but I think this
advice applies to any job.

I never fully appreciated the suspicion you're treated with if you're not
currently employed. I don't know if this is a cultural thing (I'm also in the
UK). It raises a whole lot of extra questions that you really don't want to
have to answer. I've read that some employers even use it as a filtering
criterion.

So by all means listen to the other responders and make a definite decision to
leave, apply to every job you can. Book some annual leave to attend
interviews. But please don't resign until you've accepted another job offer.

~~~
UK-AL
As a developer though, there's plenty opportunity to freelance and contract.

Don't have to be tied to employer.

~~~
cblock811
Yeah but that didn't work well for him. I know people who love freelancing,
but it would give me anxiety. Hedging your bets with a more solid prospect
like working with a company isn't a bad idea.

------
edwhitesell
Life's too short. Find something you enjoy and leave. At least in the US, if
you weren't performing or if you were bringing the team down, that alone could
be enough for the company to let you go. Sometimes loyalty doesn't get you
very far.

Basically, if you're not happy, find something that makes you happy.
Otherwise, your days may be numbered anyway, but not at your choosing.

------
nthj
Worked in a similar situation for a while. I feel your pain. You have three
choices, I followed this progression:

1\. Stick it out. You'll become stupid. Remember those hard problems? The ones
where you woke up early in the morning, excited to solve? Yeah, those. After a
while, you won't be able to solve them anymore. You're out of practice. You
can get the skill back, like any other skill, but it's a scary feeling. And it
makes the drudgery even worse.

2\. Realize this is a business like any other and there are ways to use code
to leverage for more cash. I was lucky to be working with only one CMS engine
we were using for a bunch of clients, so optimizing was easier. This seems
like it may be an even less viable option for you than it was for me. And it
didn't work all that well for me, although it was fun for a little while.

3\. Get out. This is where you'll end up eventually. But 2 months on a resume
looks a lot better than 10, and that's 8 months you'll never get back. And the
agency should have negotiated with the recruiting firm that they get your fee
back if you leave within 3-6 months, and if they didn't, well, that's on them
for being foolish. Your responsibility is to you. When I finally decided this,
my life got a lot better, really quick. Good luck. My email's in my profile if
you want to talk offline. :)

------
nilkn
I'm surprised that developers are hard to find and yet the salary offered is
£26k (~$40k USD). I guess I'm missing a lot of cost of living context, though.
$40k is still paycheck-to-paycheck territory in most major US cities unless
you really cut down on all expenses.

~~~
TylerE
No, that's really what low-end PHP devs get paid.

~~~
UK-AL
The trick is not to be a low-end php dev.

------
ujd739
I relate deeply with you. I am a junior dev with master degree and accepted my
first job in a big company without discussing my duties or activities. I asked
several times what will be my everyday job and never received a clear answer.
I end up doing maintenance on +10 years old application, trying to understand
the architectural vision of the people in the begin-mid 2000's. It's hurt me
everyday.

Long story short: never accept a job without knowing your daily
activities/responsibilities. Never trust the website of a company or the job
ad. Ask questions and ask to meet the people you will work with (or at leat a
team leader).

I plan to quit this job and I am sending applications. What do you think about
leaving before having another job and how to keep busy between two jobs and
explain your decision during future interviews?

------
nbap
I've been in a situation like yours once. I was really upset and didn't know
what to do. By that time I was reading a Derek Sivers's book Anything you Want
and I was feeling so much connected with the author that I've decided to send
him an e-mail telling my story and asking for some advice/guidance. For my
surprise, he replied my e-mail on the next day. I think his answer fits to
your question, and by the way, it was exactly what I did and it couldn't have
been better.

Mr. Sivers's answer: "Quit now. If your heart's not in it, get out. Be honest
with [...]. You're not helping them or your self by doing something you're not
excited about. :-)"

Don't be afraid to quit.

~~~
payamb
Honestly , I think that's the best thing to do, I just didn't have the courage
to do it. I have 3 months notice period, So I guess I better hand my notice in
this week ..

~~~
pavlov
3 months notice even though you started only a few months ago? Is that legal?

I don't know anything about UK employment laws, but at least here in Finland
the notice period is capped based on length of employment (e.g. only a month
if you've been less 2 years, up to 6 months for 10-year careers).

------
thorin
Next time try and find out what the job entails before taking it! I guess you
are permanent, in which case the recruitment company won't get their full cash
until you've been there a few months and you will still be on probation so you
could leave easily.

Surely a few months of bad work isn't the end of the world and you are
learning more about what you actually want to be doing. Salary isn't amazing,
so you could certainly do better. If you really care about your employer you
could talk to them about your woes, but do they have anything more interesting
to offer?

Best start looking for a contract job now and you can find out whether you
like the work first without committing to a longer stay.

~~~
payamb
Thanks for your comment, You are right it was completely my mistake to accept
this job before knowing exactly what's my responsibilities. I was promised
that at least I'll spent 80% my time coding and 20% supporting, but in the
past two months it was always bug fixing and boring server management stuff ..

Yeah I'm permanent , at-least it gives me a bit of peace of mind if they
haven't paid full cash to recruitment agency. I'm going to talk with my
manager today but as you said I don't think they have anything more
interesting to offer.

~~~
tacostakohashi
Don't beat yourself up about accepting the job - it was the the employer's
responsibility to paint a realistic picture of the duties and establish a good
fit so as to avoid this situation.

Hand in your notice now and move. You can probably not even mention this role
in interviews, because your previous long-term role is still recent. If you
find another long-term job you like, you can just leave this as a small gap on
your CV, or explain it away as some traveling time, sabbatical, etc. Leaving
after six or twelve months is a bit harder to explain away and looks more like
job-hopping.

Obviously be as nice as you can about this, offer to help find / interview
your replacement, etc, and hopefully they'll return the favour by letting you
get to interviews during the day and being flexible with your notice period.

~~~
jacknews
Apart from the tricky issue of the P45 (if they still have those); A tax
document that lists your previous employer and salary details, which you have
to present to your next employer.

------
axisK
In the short term you'll probably end up feeling guilty about it but it's much
better to work somewhere where you don't hate the environment.

Before I started my current job, I already had an accepted offer from another
company (Company A). While I had some regrets about accepting the first offer
too quickly I put it down to the second company (Company B) reacting slower
and that they should probably have moved a bit quicker if filling the position
was really a priority (they're interview process took much longer because the
CTO was on holiday during the process).

Eventually I did start working at Company A but realized within the first day
that my co-workers had almost no passion and some of them had very
questionable work ethic. After two weeks I contacted Company B and asked if
they would still be interested in me working there and had the difficult
conversation with my manager. At some point one of the directors had me
explain to a client that I was leaving by my own choice - to this day I'm not
even sure what this accomplished.

I ended up being much happier at my current company and didn't have to work in
an environment that I hated.

Close friends even commented on noticing a change in my demeanour within the
first few days of starting at Company B.

Overall while I would do it again but I think it's also taught me to be
careful when accepting a position as well as that it's much easier to rescind
an accepted offer before you've started adding value to a company than
resigning afterwards.

------
alinajaf
FYI: £26k is not average for 3 years experience. I know kids straight out of
coding bootcamps that started on £10k more than that.

~~~
payamb
Probably in London, But in Manchester 26-30K seems average.

~~~
acron0
I'd agree. With that much experience, this is average for most places north of
Birmingham.

------
morganvachon
I'm where you are right now; I like my boss but I don't like the job, and
instead of using my talents they are keeping me chained to a sales desk where
I cringe every time a sales call comes in. I do my job and do it well, but I
could be a much greater asset if they would use me for what they hired me for.
So, I'm looking for another job and my boss knows it. Now, he's having me
train other existing employees to do my IT and repair duties as they have
time, and is planning on hiring another salesperson.

It's my personal opinion that the owner is being cheap; we recently lost our
lead sales rep and that's why I got chucked into that role. The rep who left
was making three times what I am (he had been with the company for 20+ years)
but instead of hiring a replacement at base pay or raising my pay to a level
where I could accept the extra duties, he is cheaping out. Now, he's losing me
because of it and he admits that he regrets it.

So, I say if they refuse to use your real talents and pay you what you're
worth, it's definitely time to move on.

------
hcho
Well, that's agencies for you. Most of them are terrible places to work and it
won't get any better.

Don't worry about recruitment fees. They don't get paid before you complete
your probation period.

------
UK-AL
Digital agency jobs are the worst. Its often quantity rather than quality.
Pumping out the cookie-cutter projects, often managed by marketers and graphic
designers rather than senior devs.

~~~
webtards
This. They pay terribly, the work is usually boring CMS and cookie cutter
tasks, and there is undue stress because the overpaid account managers can't
even run a basic plan and leave all the coding work till the last minute, even
when they knew about it months ago. Grab a nice cup of tea, maybe a rich tea
or two, pen and paper, make an exit plan, execute it, and good luck!

------
jvandyke
My 2p, quit asap. Start interviewing for the other jobs and enjoy your
downtime in between jobs. It's not going to get better for you and now you
know what working at an agency is like. Appreciate the lesson and move on.

As far as what your current company feels, consider this. Are you producing at
the level you know you could? If not, is it really better for them if you
stick around? I just heard an example of this from the Design Details podcast
where Kim Bost left Etsy to go to a smaller company in arguably a more
socially important field. She wasn't enjoying herself not was she capable of
doing her best work so she left after 4 months on good terms. It's better for
both sides to quit early.

------
shinta
My advice, leave your job, if you say there is high demand, you have one more
excuse. One thing I've learned about working as a coder for more that 12 years
is, if you don't like your job, you MUST quit, you spend more time at your job
than you spend at your house, you can't be in a place where you feel sad most
of the time, because you will feel sad most of the day. Quit and go try to
work for a startup, they don't do high traffic/popularity work on agencies. Or
do remote.

------
zhte415
£26k is not a great salary. I'm not talking about Silicon Valley or even US
scales, but that isn't good for saving money to buy a house in the UK. Make
sure your next offer is competitive, and be creative in making it so, i.e.
"This is my base for this work, for other ... in and above this role, that
I've been consistent in, I'd like to expect an adjustment" and base this
adjustment on the money value you achieve, or proxy it.

~~~
payamb
Thanks for advice, Yeah I accepted it only because this company seemed like a
nice place to work, which might be for designers but not for me ...

------
petepete
There are plenty of jobs in/around Manchester, you shouldn't have a problem
finding something you at least enjoy. Concentrate on that first, working out
your next career step is much easier if you're in a job you don't hate.

It's worth meeting up with other like-minded people, there are plenty of tech
talks at madlab[0] that will be full of people who are hiring or know who is
hiring.

Additionally, check out some of better-known agencies for vacancies[1,2,3,4]

[0] [http://madlab.org.uk/](http://madlab.org.uk/)

[1]
[https://www.fabric.co.uk/about/recruitment/](https://www.fabric.co.uk/about/recruitment/)

[2] [http://www.worshipdigital.co.uk/web-developer-
manchester/](http://www.worshipdigital.co.uk/web-developer-manchester/)

[3] [http://www.magmadigital.co.uk/contact/career-
opportunities/p...](http://www.magmadigital.co.uk/contact/career-
opportunities/php-developers-php-5-object-oriented/)

[4] [http://www.studioskylab.com/careers/wordpress-web-
applicatio...](http://www.studioskylab.com/careers/wordpress-web-application-
developer.html)

Disclaimer; I know nothing about the PHP landscape, so you may already be at
one of the above, or they may be terrible employers. Take care and make sure
you don't take a backward step.

------
payamb
Thanks HN People, You certainly made me feel better. I'm going to hand my
notice today ! Now I know what kinda of work should i look for next time !
Cheers !

------
spdionis
This is the biggest danger of working in PHP actually. A lot of people do very
cool things with PHP (despite the haters) but more people do the exact
exceedingly amazingly boring work you describe. When interviewing for a PHP
position you have to be very careful about what you're getting into.

EDIT: Not saying that there is no boring work in other languages, but in PHP
it's more common.

------
smtddr
Just quit. It's not worth it. Sure, you may feel bad for the company but just
know it's not like they'll go bankrupt if you leave _(right?)_. I had to do
that once, it was painful and I never had to do that before. Though I did try
to work things out at first, after a month on the job it was clear it wasn't
going to pan out. I even found out that someone else quit after 5 days for the
same reason not long ago. I couldn't even do the 2-week notice thing, I just
called my manager into a private office one Friday evening after everyone else
left and just said, _" I'm out. This isn't at all what I thought it was going
to be"_. I put in my email to the manager that the whole thing was totally my
fault[1]

Looking back, it was definitely a case of me ignoring the warning signs and
being too hopeful.

1\. At the time, I didn't see it that way... but I just don't like putting
people in bad situations. I was leaving for a better gig, why not help the
person taking the fall have a softer landing?

------
theaccordance
Don't worry about the company, they need a motivated and happy worker and from
what you've written, you're not that. They also may not be on the hook for the
fee if you leave within a certain amount of time.

Plan your exit, whether that's now or once you land another job, and don't
look back.

------
austenallred
It looks like you really hate this job. "I feel pain everyday I want to go to
work" is not a healthy way to feel. It seems to me that the only correct
answer is to take another job.

There's no worse hell than spending 1/3 of your life doing something you hate,
and spending 1/3 of it dreading that soon you have to go back soon. (The other
1/3 is sleeping). It just wasn't a good fit, that comes with the territory of
hiring. They'll understand.

It's really honorable of you to consider the company's time/money/feelings,
but sticking around will just be delaying the inevitable and making yourself
(more) miserable.

------
jusio
TLDR version: find another job.

If you hate your job, you better leave it. No matter how professional you are,
it will show up on your quality of work, you will start slacking off
eventually, and it will make you worse programmer than you are now. The fault
is entirely on the company who hired you. They've seen your CV, they knew what
kind of work you were going to do. I doubt they've even asked about this
stuff. So it isn't your fault, and staying at this job will only hurt you. So
you should find another job (but be more careful in choosing your next
company).

------
Jack000
I think the "fail early" advice is applicable here.

I left my (quite rewarding) job of 3 years to travel and it was a very
difficult decision. In retrospect I should have left much earlier, but instead
I waited until I owned several big projects. I quit a few months after
receiving their "employee of the quarter" award, still feeling pretty guilty
about that one.

If it's obvious that the situation isn't sustainable and that you'll have to
leave sooner or later, sooner is preferable from all sides.

------
Milner08
£26K seems pretty low, there are many graduate entry jobs with a higher wage
than that. I do agree with the top comment though, If you can make a change,
if you can improve the job your doing at the moment then you may find its
better than another job you could end up with. I'm not really speaking from
experience, but talk to you managers and see what they can do for you. Im sure
they wouldn't want you to quit, and if they aren't fussed then you know its
not the job for you.

------
Udo
It looks like you're on the verge of quitting anyway, so why not march into
your supervisor's office and tell them exactly what you just told us?

Ask them if there is a position within the company that's better suited for
you, or propose to create one that benefits both you and the company. If none
of this is in the cards, at least you tried to work it out with them instead
of just sending them a notice and going away. At this point you don't have a
lot to lose, do you?

------
brudgers
The question that comes to mind is, is it more the job or Manchester? By which
I mean that if moving to Manchester is a source of unhappiness, then switching
jobs may mitigate the issue a bit, but won't solve the whole problem. Of
course, Manchester may be fine, but I only bring it up because it is at the
head of your post, and it is presented as something about which you did not
have a choice and things about which we have no choice can be sources of
unhappiness.

Good luck.

------
alain94040
Nothing to worry about: find a great new job and move on. You don't owe your
current employer anything. You clearly don't like your current job, so change
it.

You'll feel so much better afterwards.

Recruitment fees are none of your concern. And frankly, working for a digital
agency, what did you expect? Pro tip: for your next job, ask for more money.
The higher your salary, the better you are treated.

------
beat
Don't feel bad for them. Their recruiting process failed, or their internal
processes have failed, if they brought someone in and can't make them happy.
They're a business. Mistakes happen. It won't put them out of business to lose
you - especially if you give them a comfortable notice.

~~~
payamb
It was a bitter experience for me, Also I've learnt a great lesson : Don't
trust recruitment agencies any more.

~~~
beat
Some recruiters are really good. Most suck. Good recruiters will carefully
match candidates to positions. Bad ones will throw whatever has a chance at
the problem.

Find good recruiters and only use them. Ask for recommendations from friends
if you don't know any. Recruiters are highly valuable because lots of jobs are
never really published.

------
gorbachev
Do not stay in that job any longer than you have to.

It's not good for you (you're missing out on better opportunities and
developing your skills), and it's not good for the company (you're not
motivated and your work effort is not 100%).

------
petervandijck
Get a job that's not an agency but has an in-house product (you seem to enjoy
that much more), then leave.

Give them a few weeks' notice, you don't owe them anything else really.

------
jacknews
£26k is the UK average salary for an experienced developer, in 2015 (not
1995)? Don't think I'll be moving back anytime soon then...

~~~
SuddsMcDuff
£26k is definitely on the entry-level side. I'd expect most graduates to be
looking for that kind of sum in their first role. I have 8 years experience
and my salary is more than double that.

OP - it sounds like you're worth way more than £26k ;)

------
sdalfakj
Gimme gimme

