Ask Slashdot: Why Did You Quit Your Last Job?

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?

Comments

Poached with money

[Anonymous Coward]

I've left every job because I was poached with money.

Re:Poached with money

[Oswald McWeany]

I've left every job because I was poached with money.

Always with money, never poached using water?

Re:Poached with money

[Drethon]

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...

Fulfillment

[zmaragdus]

The job was a waste of my talents. I was persistently bored and not doing what I wanted to do. Left, went to grad school, and got a job that I love. Pay sucked, and boss was a micromanaging egomaniac. That certainly helped the decision.

Immigration

[AmiMoJo]

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:Immigration

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[magusxxx]

Yeah, we'd rather grow our own.

Re:Immigration

[AmiMoJo]

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 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.

Re:Immigration

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Your wife will be a second class citizen for at least five years, and even after that is at risk of being targeted by the Home Office. We have people who have been living in the UK for 30 years getting deported, even people who were born here but couldn't prove their right to live in the UK because they don't have paperwork from decades ago.

If you are a British citizen you could take advantage of freedom of movement and move to a better EU country. You will have to hurry because Brexit is coming, but for now you could go anywhere for work and then it's very easy to get a visa for your wife and she will have all the same rights as you do. Ireland is popular due to the language, but most northern European countries work in English at a lot of places and a great countries to live in. Or head south if you like the weather.

The company was going to fail.

[TechyImmigrant]

The first rat to leave the sinking ship gets the primo spot on the adjacent ship.

Bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

The company went bankrupt.

Laid off after corporate merger/acquisition

[gti_guy]

Twice. Also laid off once after 3rd round of lay offs due to mismanagement. 30+ years in IT

Microaggressions

[Anonymous Coward]

Microaggressions - they were everywhere. The way people looked. The way the did not look. The way they spoke to me. The way they did not speak to me. Unbearable. Now I am without a job and am suing the company for discrimination.

well ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... 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

[cmeans]

They promised me (when I was first hired) more programming and less report writing/technical support etc. They continued to ignore me, so I moved on.

Travel

[erp_consultant]

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.

Burnout, Re-orgs, and Death. Oh My!

[Karnak23]

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

[puck01]

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

[FearTheDonut]

I used to work writing EMR software. I won't name names, but if you have been in the medical field for a long time, you would know this system. I have a Masters in Software Engineering, but also a BSN. My sole purpose for making the switch was because I wanted an EMR system that everyone could not just use, but also positively impact fellow professionals.

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

[puck01]

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.

Open office plans suck

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Open office plans suck

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Low pay, hostile (yelling), layoff every year

[stevegee58]

I started my last job because I needed the job due to being laid off. They knew that and low-balled me so I had to take a 10% pay cut. (Yes, my own damn fault) I moved for a substantial pay bump.
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.

Re: India, thanks trump

[reanjr]

Trump has done more to protect your job from Indians than any president since Carter.

Negative environment, poor pay

[tnok85]

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

[hymie!]

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

[bobbied]

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

[cloud.pt]

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

[Zarhan]

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-...

(+ a new job waiting right outside for all the competent folks)

Expression

[Camembert]

There is a beautiful french expression, translated:

"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

[Jaegs]

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:

• micromanagement bordering on obsessiveness
• incompetent marketing and (some) management
• being passed over for raises
• not being interviewed for internal positions for which I was qualified, because:
  1. they did not want to rehire my position, or
  2. nepotism, or
  3. both
• asinine dress code (women could wear skorts in the summer, but men could not wear shorts, even when working in non air-conditioned areas)

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

[Predathar]

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!

My Boss Was an Asshole

[hduff]

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.

Bay Area Living Costs

[Sydin]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Redundancies are worth a lot

[thegarbz]

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.

Re: India, thanks trump

[magusxxx]

Except Trump thought his advisors meant Native Americans.

I quit the boss, not the company

[xSauronx]

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.

Re: India, thanks trump

[ranton]

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.

I had a heart attack

[halivar]

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.

IT projects need business backing

[magarity]

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

[techmage]

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.

False Job Description

[Zorro]

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.

'Cause it was killing me and our marriage

[Sedennial]

On call 24x7, pager, company cell, laptop always available and required to respond. So no 'vacations' without cell service. Job description carefully written so that we were exempt from overtime laws and standby/oncall compensation. Figured out that just based on the number of hours physically at the NOC I was earning the same as a entry-level clerk at a nearby supermarket, and if I figured in the number of hours responding to issues outside the office I was making less than minimum wage.

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).

Doubled my take-home. Not leaving work from home

[raymorris]

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.

Re: India, thanks trump

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no possible way we can lose any "trade war" harder than we're already losing at trade. ANY change will be an improvement over the status quo.

They said there would be CMAKE

[forkfail]

But the CMAKE was a lie.