
You and your job - robin_reala
http://youtheuser.com/2010/10/04/you-and-your-job/
======
jgoewert
I believe he missed a few situations:

* If it is Tuesday - leave. * If your house is yellow - leave. * If someone sneezed in your building - leave.

The resume you build would be a nightmare for any employer. Once you become
completely competent in your job or become a key player, promptly resigning
seems like the worst possible thing.

Could you imagine the next HR interview?

HR: "Why did you leave you last job?" A: "I learned everything about the
product, was completely productive, and enjoyed the work. So, I had to leave."

Also, stringing off to create your own product would be even worse advice. The
moment your complete the first rendition of a project, you would meet all the
requirements to quit working on it. Your manager, yourself, would want you to
stay, which means you would violate the "If your manager wants you to stay -
leave." rule.

~~~
jrwoodruff
My experience has been that once you're completely competent in your job,
that's the job your stuck with. You can try to grow into other areas (and end
up doing 3 people's jobs) or apply for different positions but you're out of
luck since you've become a 'key employee.' Whether that's bad management or my
inability to play office politics, it's happened more than once.

Which made it time to leave.

~~~
hvs
I've generally found that once an employee is completely competent (or
exceptional) at their job, they are promoted to manager where they are
miserable or ineffective. It's called "the Peter Principle," and it is
disturbingly common in the technology world.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle>

~~~
robin_reala
As an employee you don’t have to accept those promotions. You can push to
expand your role in engineering instead.

~~~
zeemonkee
Provided your company is far-sighted enough to pay you according to your
ability, not your managerial rank. For most the money is too good to turn
down.

~~~
robin_reala
The one time I’ve been in that situation I’ve ended up leaving that company
and taking a much better paid engineering role at a different one :)

------
edw519
As weird as this post was, it was still only half a post. Lots of interesting
thoughts, but the most important questions were never addressed:

    
    
      1.  Where do you go?
      2.  How do you find it?
      3.  How do avoid being in the same position a year later?
    

OP's advice is a recipe for a bad resume and a more miserable employee.
Sometimes you just gotta put up with a little shit for a while before the
right path becomes available to you. Ironically, the times when OP advises you
to leave can be your opportunities of greatest growth when you don't even
realize it.

~~~
madhancr
OP has a point. In my previous job, when I looked around, it seemed like
almost everyone seemed be to just coming to the job to get paid. In some
pathetic cases, after seeing some really unhappy people dragging it for over a
year, I have screamed silently - why don't they go find something else ?

This post makes a point, but its not to be taken literally.

~~~
rglullis
>> why don't they go find something else?

\- Because the opportunity hasn't presented itself.

\- Because s/he can't afford to quit a job when her/his spouse has just been
laid-off.

\- Because the car/house/dental treatment hasn't been paid-off.

\- Because those students loans can not be deferred

\- Because this company actually pays for the a good part of tuition, and
requires that the employee stays for at least a couple of years after
graduating.

\- Because the person has already left four or five different jobs previously,
so it's getting harder and harder to justify to an interviewer why the company
should hire someone that can't stay at the same place for more than 18 months

------
ZeroMinx
I like the sentiment, but a little bit over the top. According to this, there
really isn't a single situation in which you should stay at your current job.

"If your manager is trying to make you stay, they aren’t a good manager –
leave."

If you're doing a good job, I'd say your manager is not doing his/her job if
he/she is not trying to make you stay.

~~~
jorleif
Agreed, the manager is working for the company, not for the employee, so
keeping a good employee is in the best interest of the company, even if it's
not optimal for the employee.

------
Hexstream
What a brain-damaged article. Seriously, what's next?!

"If you have a good life, commit suicide. If you have a great wife, leave her.
If you have kids, leave them and never return. If your company starts making a
profit, sell it at a loss. If you're healthy, recklessly endanger yourself. If
people like you, start acting like an asshole. If you have a nice social
network, cut off all ties. If you're rich, waste it all and then go live in
the street. If you like this article, write me a scathing piece of hate mail."

------
agentultra
This post obviously assumes one can simply _afford_ to leave a secure position
for an insecure one.

What about the wife, kids, mortgage, and bills?

Clearly not very practical advice.

~~~
xenophanes
There is a big difference between

1) impractical

2) does not apply to all life situations

~~~
agentultra
You're right. I should also have been more neutral/PC:

What about the _spouse_ , kids, mortage and bills?

Clearly not practical advice _for people with commitments_.

Funny that reading the post, the younger me would've agreed without question.

------
wccrawford
Programmers -should- feel slightly challenged. If we don't, we tend to make
things more complicated until we do.

One of the solutions I've found for that is to try to make the solution as
simple and clean as possible. That adds the 'complexity' in the right
direction, instead of the wrong one. It's still difficult to do, but not
because the code is an untamable hydra.

Researching new tools, like Unit Testing, has also helped. The difficulties in
learning and using them keep the added complexity away from the code itself.
(Yeah, Unit Testing is an old example, I admit it.)

------
zeemonkee
Utter nonsense. More to the point, dangerous nonsense, because some people may
read it and go through with it.

There's only one good reason to leave a job (other than
retirement/health/personal reasons unconnected with the job itself) - because
you have a better opportunity elsewhere. Whether that better opportunity is
more responsibility, a bigger paycheck, a better work environment, new skills,
whatever, it should be better than what you have now.

To leave a job just because you feel "unchallenged" - well, either you have a
trust fund, or you are plain stupid.

~~~
jasonlotito
I felt that was implied. I didn't see it as "Leave with no attention to other
commitments;" rather, as "leave to someplace better that will offer you this."

Indeed, your taking his advice far too literal.

------
rodh
Instead of "If you aren’t being challenged in your job – leave". I would say:
find a way to challenge yourself. Take some initiative. It might be your job
that's stopping you from reaching greater things, but I bet it's not your
place of employment.

Talk to some experts. Come up with new ideas. Be disruptive. You've got the
knowledge, the contacts, and the credibility to do so. Leaving now without
trying that first seems like giving up to easily to me.

------
bobwaycott
All the criticism of the post is centered on how unconventional the advice is,
and how impractical it would be for one to follow. Both criticisms are
particularly evident in the missive that following the advice "would make for
a bad resume". And yet, that is exactly what is being taken to task here.

The author is suggesting that you release the practical & conventional wisdom
surrounding your job and how it routinizes both you and your life. The first
requirement is that you throw out thinking about your resume. You reject
staying somewhere you're either not happy or not growing just because it might
look good on a piece of paper, or because you think you're actually going to
get somewhere with it.

In another author's words:

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're
not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your
f*ing khakis.

------
KoZeN
According to this post, I reckon at least 95% of people fit the criteria of
those that need to leave their job.

 _"The role of a manager should be to ensure that those that work for him/her
eventually leave and go onto bigger and better things"_

I would honestly love to know the source of this quote.

I'll admit, the ideal manager is one who's primary focus is the employee's
personal development but put yourself in the shoes of the manager; your focus
is almost entirely on two specific things: Your own personal development and
maximising your current staff's ability in order to be a more successful
manager in the eyes of your superiors.

------
robryan
"If where you work there is a business culture of trying to make competitors
fail – leave."

That rules out the vast majority of companies with direct competitors.

~~~
wtracy
At least it rules out a lot of (most?) Fortune 500 companies. It might not
rule out my employer, but it would probably rule out quite a few business
units within my employing company.

I'd say it absolutely rules out Microsoft. ;-)

------
noodle
so what i'm reading is the ideal job is getting paid not enough money to work
a job where people don't like you, you don't know enough about the system, you
fail a lot at the things you do, you're constantly under pressure, your
business doesn't care if you quit, and neither you nor your company are
successful.

------
grammaton
Sure, we all know that no job or entrepeneurial venture _ever_ involves being
knowledgeable, bored, or feeling unmotivated or unchallenged. Nope. The minute
you hit one of these minor obstacles you should throw up your hands and quit
immediately. That's the recipe for a happy life..

"If you aren’t failing enough – leave and go find somewhere where you fail
before you succeed. When you find yourself succeeding too often – leave
again."

I see - and where, exactly, are the people who will hire someone and then keep
them around while they fail on a regular basis?

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pedrokost
The post is unreasonable, but most reasons to leave a job are good in that
they teach you to remain dynamic and doing new, better, greater software (or
whatever you do).

However, I found at least one exclusive set of points: -If you aren’t being
challenged in your job – leave. -If someone is standing in the way of your
progress (either internally or externally) – leave.

Someone may be standing in your way - isn't that a challenge to beat him?

------
motters
A couple of years ago I would have given similar advice. However, since the
recession started the job situation has utterly changed, and you can't just
leave and expect to step into another job quickly - no matter how talented you
are or how many letters you have after your name.

My advice now would only be to leave if you have a good alternative confirmed
job offer or are starting a business.

------
edkennedy
The article was written to provoke discussion. That being said, "There's a
time to earn, and there's a time to learn." The author certainly values
learning and experience over what is typically defined as stability. This
points to his beliefs and experiences with growth.

~~~
edkennedy
Or perhaps he's buddhist. Lao Tzu wrote, "If you want to be given everything,
give everything up."

------
njharman
Post makes a huge assumption, you __are __your job. That is your job is your
life, your most important and proudest accomplishment. To the contrary, many
people work to support what is there real passion(s). It's just a job.

------
oceanician
Was this written by a freelancer by any chance?

~~~
leandroico
Or maybe written by an wealthy heir?

------
msort
Leave a job when and only when you want to.

Leave or stay a job, cherish your time and make everyday as interesting and
satisfying as possible.

------
dbrannan
So, if I feel successful, content, well paid, respected I should leave my job?
I don't think so!

------
wariola
look at Parasoft's unit testing capabilities - it's very interesting:

www.parasoft.com/unittesting

------
Tichy
So suppose I work on a garbage dump searching for stuff that can be recycled.
Because I could not find a proper job. Since I probably don't enjoy my job, I
should leave - to do what?

