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?"

Comments

Now

[obrienb]

About the time you start asking Slashdot if it is time to quit:-)

You are the only one

[stoolpigeon]

who can know. It's like asking-- "I got Rocky Road at Baskin Robins with my Yahoo coupon, did I get the wrong flavor?"

When?

[MarkGriz]

Just before your boss catches you reading "When Should You Quit Your Job" on slashdot, when you're supposed to be working.

Dear Slashdot,

[wolf-]

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.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[servognome]

Seriously, who the heck lives in the basement? Why not just use the room you used as a kid?
Dude, my room as a kid is right next to my parents room; I need to be ready with my tricked out pad in the basement for when I get a girl to come over... someday

Re:Better have something inline

[Jakhel]

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. :)

Stupid

[realmolo]

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.

Never Quit!

[PopeAlien]

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!?!

Re:Leaving MS for FOSS

[stanmann]

You know, the military mentions all that stuff before you enlist.

In other news...

[lcde]

I just landed a great job at a C# VisualStudio shop. :D

Re:yes

[tetrode]

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.

Re:Better have something inline

[lucabrasi999]

Unless of course both relationships dump you for seeing two people at once.

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.

Have you ever walked out of an interview

[gelfling]

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.

Re:Have you ever walked out of an interview

[Idarubicin]

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.

Who else here is familiar with the seasonal joy and merriment associated with putting lights on the Christmas tree? Chains of lights used to be almost exclusively wired in series, so if one bulb was bad the whole chain would go out. To find the bad bulb, you take another bulb and works down the entire chain, swapping the new bulb for each old one and hoping that the chain lights.

On occasion, you will go down the entire chain, testing the bulb for a good fit and light in each and every socket, and each time get a negative result. You discover that the problem isn't just the chain of lights--sometimes the test bulb is defective, too.

If nearly everyone you've ever interviewed and worked for is a shithead, one explanation is that you're extremely unlucky....

Re:I quit my WTC job in NYC on Sept, 01, 2001

[oGMo]

and I was expected to do miracles, like being prescient.

You may have more talent in this area than you know... ;-)

Re:Better have something inline

[drakaan]

You owe me a keyboard, dammit.

Re:Better have something inline

[Thunderstruck]

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.

If your company sues IBM you should quit your job

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

If your company sues IBM you should quit your job. :)

Re:Better have something inline

[WinterSolstice]

That last sentence nearly cost me my keyboard... I immedietly saw it as:

if( push( networkBoy, newcrap ) ){
...
}
else{
panic();
}

-WS

Re:This is really extrange

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news to me since I'm a programmer in my 50's and considered a youngster on my project.

So as an insider, when is Duke Nukem Forever going to ship?

Re:I just turned one down last week...

[Blakey Rat]

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..."

Re:Better have something inline

[telbij]

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.

Quick Poll

[metamatic]

I worked at one company that was so disfunctional that a lot of people came out of it damaged--paranoid, burnt out, with bad work habits, and with egos either so over-inflated or badly broken that they were useless to any employer for a couple years afterwards.

OK, how many other people checked his web site to see if they knew him from a previous job?