Slashdot Mirror
When Should You Quit Your Job?
Moe Taxes asks: "I want to hear from Slashdot readers who have quit jobs or turned down offered jobs because it was not what they wanted to do. Why did you do it? Was it ethics, ambition, pride, or disgust? And how did it turn out? Did you get to do what you wanted to do, are you still looking, or did you come back begging for another chance? I have always written software for windows, but never with Microsoft tools. I don't feel like I have enough control over the product when I use Microsoft programming environments. My company was bought recently, and is in the process of becoming a C# VisualStudio shop. I said thanks, but no thanks and left. Am I a fool for giving up steady work and good pay?"
About the time you start asking Slashdot if it is time to quit:-)
who can know. It's like asking-- "I got Rocky Road at Baskin Robins with my Yahoo coupon, did I get the wrong flavor?"
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Just before your boss catches you reading "When Should You Quit Your Job" on slashdot, when you're supposed to be working.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Dear Mr. Johnson,
Our IT department has been monitoring your web activity these past few months, and we're sorry to say your continued employment is no longer necessary.
Mr. Szleswinsczky
Management
No thanks...
/me is 21 years old.
Punchcard and a hole puncher were all I needed.
Trendy keyboards... damn hippies.
Like to see how many kiddies out there can code a if/then/else in under 5 minutes.
I got a burr up my rear when my company changed hands. I'm an arogant bit of a programmer, and thus left my well paying job.
Now I'm regretting it, and want this forum to bless my rather hasty and immature decision to leave my employee.
Well, I'm not really regretting it, but Mom says it was a fool thing to do, and I'll have to move out of the basement if I dont find work soon.
Thank you.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Shit.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Don't ever quite (read it twice) unless you have something else in line.
:)
The same rule applies to relationships..don't ever break up with a girl unless you have someone else in line.
You're an idiot.
You do realize that you're going to be remembered as "that guy who quit because he didn't want to use Visual Studio"?
They're going to laugh every time someone tells that story. Of course, they'll be laughing on company time, and getting payed for it.
No! dont do that. spend every single weekday sitting in an environment you loathe doing something you hate with people that you dont like. do it for the economy.
wont somebody please think of the economy!?!
air and light and time and space
Quitting is for quitters; real men stay at their work place until they have a psychotic breakdown and come into work the next day with an M4A1 and a couple frag grenades.
I graduated from college with a history degree at the ass-end of the 90s, and quickly learned that history jobs are few and far between. I poked around for a few months until I realized that rent had to be paid every month, not just once, and took a job in customer service. Eight hours a day on a headset, taking nonstop calls from people too stupid to figure out how to place an order online.
I wasn't too worried about zombies at the time; who would be? The dot-com bubble was still blowing, and everyone liked the feeling.
Six months into it, I harbored a bitter hatred for my coworkers, my managers, and the executives of the company. I was convinced I could do anyone's job better than they could. I was right, too, because they were brain-dead morons and I, as a recent college graduate, knew everything there was to know. My degree said so, after all.
I lucked into a position in software quality assurance, which was at the ass-end of that company's development process. Still no zombies, except for a manager who slept at his desk for a few hours every morning, but I was able to get around that. Over the years, the department grew, I was promoted once or twice, and things were working out pretty well. There was some management turnover, which is to be expected, but the real killer was when management turnover had reached the point where my department was sharing a manager with a development team in another city.
David (note: not his real name) would work Tues-Thurs with my team, and then Friday-Monday in a city six hours away. This half-assed management was the killer for me, even though he was using his whole ass, as far as I could tell. In order to demonstrate to his managers that he was a dutiful middle management worker bee, he held daily status meetings when he was in the office, and daily status conference calls when he was out. Dilbert jokes and Office Space references abounded.
I think it was at this point when I saw the first zombie.
Gabe (note: not his real name) was a coworker in the department who moved over to the infrastructure team. He was the one who pointed out the zombie. My first thought was it was just another dev who worked all night and slept in his clothes, but Gabe carefully pointed out the severed arm that the zombie carried and the shotgun blast in his chest. It didn't bother me, though, so I shrugged it off. Our stock price was still high, and the employee stock purchase plan was a gold mine.
There were a few more zombies in the days after that. One of the sales guys tried to take a bite out of me, and I was really tempted to punch him, but I knew that it probably would result in my termination, and I still wanted my health bennies. I managed to duck away and tip a chair over, which trapped him in the cubicle. I stayed away from Sales for a while after that.
I also stopped going to HR to drop off paperwork such as vacation requests and 401k participation forms. One of the HR drones was a zombie and kept lunging at me, so I'd get around that just by sliding the form under the door. Yeah, occasionally I'd get a nastygram saying that the other HR workers had to get the paper away from the zombie, but that wasn't my problem.
But like I said, it was the half-assed management. I was put on a team of employees dedicated to a specific client to keep them from getting even more pissed at us. Me, a few devs, a project manager or two, and some outsourced testers in India who reported to me. This was pretty cool, up until the PMs in the group turned into zombies and wouldn't tell us what the hell the client wanted. I complained to my manager, but he was in Chicago at the time, and all he would say was stuff like, "Help me," and "Please help me," and "Oh god, they're eating me."
I really needed more support from my manager then. The ideal manager runs interference for you and lets you do your job, provides an environment where you can develop your skills, and rewards good performance. David (note: still not his real name) spent alm
You know, the military mentions all that stuff before you enlist.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I'm sorry to hear about your wife. I know it can be very tough to deal with MS. Those outrageous license fees, critical security holes every month, etc. I wish you the best.
/yes I know I'm going to hell for this.
Hell, why break up at all, just start up the next relationship and moonlight :P
I just landed a great job at a C# VisualStudio shop. :D
It comes down to the same reason that gives so much of Slashdot so much trouble getting laid: even prostitutes have standards. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Exactly...the first one will work itself out when she finds out about the second one. All you have to do is fix the glitch...the rest should work itself out naturally.
Gee, you think that one of the three things you mentioned in the above paragraph *might* just be the reason you've looked for a job for so long?
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Sure. Real 'real' programmers don't give a rats' ass in what OS/environment they work. Take for for instance. I used to work in the webservices department; running all these apache servers, java servlets on linux on these big iron S390 was kinda nice.
+ ++[-]>+.
But hey, they needed someone do an update of the telephony taxation programme in brainf*ck on a SCO openserver. It is quite old, I must say, I had to set the date back 10 years, so I don't run into Y2K problems.
Anyway, I don't care what environment I work in. And I start to like Brainf*ck.
>+++++++++[-]+++++++[-]>>++++++++[-]
>>+++++++
I think I do my next assignment in Ook. Preferably in Ook.NET - I already made my first programme, look:
Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.
It never works out that way. Usually, when two women find out they are dating the same man, they mutually agree to join the man in a threesome.
I once interviewed with some idiot tool at Price Waterhouse who took a phone book sized questionnaire out and began reading, head down, eyes down, one absurdly arcane technical question after another. After about 30 of these I asked him if a) he could answer any of these and b) most of them you could just look up. So I got up, called him a idiot tool and walked out.
I interviewed once at a boutique consultancy long since sold out, for an entire day. 12 people, 12 half hour interviews. Each and every one of them had only one thing to say. That anyone hired would be expected to work at LEAST 100 hrs a week 6.5 days a week. The final interview was with the managing partner who had one question: do you think you can work this hard. My answer was "sure I can but I'd have to be retarded to do it for you." and walked out.
I interviewed with the 'director of applications of a retail chain owned by Trump. The fellow was an insane basket case who said flat out "I want to go to meetings and basically do nothing. You would have to be here 80-90 hrs week banging out CICS programs and screaming at the monkeys who work here to do the same. Are you interested?" I suggested that he should either get off or on drugs, right now and seek help.
I was once lectured for 15 minutes at TIAA-CREF over a misplaced comma on a resume by a guy who made me wait an hour to speak to him. WTF kind of OCD poster child did he want to be?
I interviewed at Gartner by a guy who was on his very last day at the company and told me to me face he didn't care who they hired or why.
In short you really have to retain a sense of humor for the people you interview and ultimately work for. Because nearly all of them are shitheads.
If you don't like your job for any reason, please quit it. That way, there will be an opening that I can have. And when I begin to hate that job, I will keep it because I need the money.
Wow, that is extrange. Its succiting and damzazing too!
Yeah, it's like one big, real life version of Survivor. I guess it's reality-reality.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
You may have more talent in this area than you know... ;-)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
- Everyone at the company wears the exact same uniform (supplied by the company)
wear it upside down. Inside out. Be creative!
- I'm not allowed to decorate my office, bring in furniture other than their supplied furniture and can only have one picture in my office.
Not difficult. Mao! 2 x 3 feet!
- I'm not allowed to have facial hair, wierd haircuts (dreads count as wierd), tattoos, peircings, etc.
You still can have tatoos and piercings - just on other places. So you can show them to other people. Big deal. You still can tell them all about your butpiercing during lunch, can't you?
- I am micromanaged to death
Don't let them micromanage you! Micromanage yourself. Keep track of everything you do. Note the number of coffees you drink. Put them down in a spreadsheet. Report them at meetings. Ask your bosses to have the same reports of others. After all, you know how much coffee comes in to the company, but you also should know where the coffee goes out. And by the way - do you already know how much time you spend on the toilet?
Methinks it might be time to check the intarweb thingy for another job.
You owe me a keyboard, dammit.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Girlfriend 1.0 may or may not be compatable with the Girlfriend 1.5 Bonus Pack.
It was always the commute, or being bored with the work, or wanting to move to another coast.
As a proud citizen of North Dakota, I find this offensive and will be writing my senator about having you censored.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
If your company sues IBM you should quit your job. :)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Both will clean out your cache.
I saw that shot more than a few times back when Starbuck was a man. ~ lucabrasi999
I know people don't hire older programmers, and being 27 this is something that's hainting me.
This is news to me since I'm a programmer in my 50's and considered a youngster on my project.
Yes but COBOL programming doesn't count.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Realize that you're speaking to the /. population. Which means you need to provide footnotes:
1) A Threesome is where 3 people engage in sexual activities with each other simultaneously. In Geek Terms it's like 3 processes each with it's own set of IO pipes thrashing the CPU while performing interprocess communication
Now, that being said. The concept of the 1 man 2 woman threesome is one of the biggest urban legends to ever be started. Why? Mostly because men don't want to opinions from 2 women at the same time let alone one.
To Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Of course, lining up the new job before scrapping the old job never hurts
So as an insider, when is Duke Nukem Forever going to ship?
New posting technique to earn karma:
Post something that's entirely nonsense, but open-enough to interpretation that moderators will go "hmm, I'm not sure what it means, but he must have a point to make here..."
Comment of the year
But if the only reason the poster can be bothered to include is that they're moving to C# and visual studio...well, that's just unconvincing to me.
You're so right. Now if he was a web designer required to use FrontPage, well, that would be a whole different story.
'Calvin, go do something you hate. Being miserable builds character.'
Welcome to the club! I've been ultra low-budget for years..
You have a senator?
OK, how many other people checked his web site to see if they knew him from a previous job?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Actually, life is not shorter, it's longer than most people think. As is obvious to transhumanists, the present generation is likely to live forever. Considering this, how much sense does it make to waste the precious years of your humanity on working? What difference would that make to you in 200 years? That's what people should be thinking about, not whether the job is screwing their personal lifes.
Quit the job if you are not making the difference in the world.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.