Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

242 points by itistricky 4 years ago | 281 comments

Hi, after a long job hunting period I joined a small remote first company 5 months ago.

Problems showed up immediately in the form of chaos and dysfunctions in the microservices cloud project I was hired in. Let's put it this way: say you get the seminal book on microservices and the seminal book on CICD. Now imagine reading along and doing almost everything from code up to project management the wrong way (essentially keeping on-prem 2000's philosophy and revamp it as microservices). On top of that add vendeta-developers in Asia (I'm in a small offshoot team in Europe) handing down half-baked frameworks (not-invented-here and reinventing the wheel are strong) with minimal documentation and a culture based on meetings instead of documenting things. Developer sandboxes that just don't work and unrealistic deadlines. In short a huge draining mess where I felt burnt out just a few months after I joined and where I honestly don't want to spent another minute.

Almost every attempt of mine to change anything was met with either "yeah we know but we have to live with it for now" or a straight denial to hear me out - brushed aside as a newcomer (I'm senior and was hired as such).

So, the question is, is it unprofessional to abandon ship just 6 months in or given the circumstances is exactly what I should do in order to protect my well being and my career prospects (the project is a slow motion train wreck IMO).

henvic 4 years ago |

Just leave. It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself.

In 2012 I've left my hometown and went to the other side of my country to work at a startup. Within 20 days I left because the situation was critical. I was already feeling like I should leave on the second week, but decided to wait just to break-even from my moving expenses.

It was e-commerce startup where the team lead / project manager was actually the only backend engineer.

One of the problems I had was that it was impossible to work with him.

He despised git, so we used svn. Fine. It was in the early days of git, I could understand that. He didn't write proper svn messages (but garbage like... always 'ghnwerigkelrwn'), and told me I shouldn't care about it. Ugh... Okay, I think I can try to change this situation.

Then on my first days of work I noticed that something was very wrong with the repo. Turns out the guy configured his Eclipse IDE to commit to SVN any time he saved any change.

And he'd just type random keys out of boredom in any part of the system (PHP, which is an interpreted language) and break things wildly.

For those that doesn't know: SVN is a centralized versioning system. It's not like git, where you push things 'later'. When you commit, it's sent to a central server.

PragmaticPulp 4 years ago | |

> Just leave.

Not a good idea for the OP to leave without having another job to start.

The OP only found this job after a long period of job searching. Having a large unexplained resume gap followed by a short 6-month employment followed by another gap is the type of pattern that starts to scare hiring managers.

Start the job search, but don’t just leave until you have something else to go to. Avoid introducing another resume gap within months of the previous long resume gap.

dc3k 4 years ago | | |

> unexplained resume gap

Resume gaps shouldn't have to be explained. If someone thinks you're a bad hire because you don't dedicate every moment of your life to working, they are probably not someone you want to work for anyways.

> a short 6-month employment followed by another gap is the type of pattern that starts to scare hiring managers.

Q: "Why were you only there for 6 months?" A: "It wasn't a good fit because x y z"

If someone is scared of that, then they are a crap hiring manager.

Demonizing people for taking time off of work or for not sticking around in a work environment that not good for them is bs that needs to stop.

cweagans 4 years ago | | |

You don’t have to put everything on your resume. Leave and leave the current job off of your resume.

emerongi 4 years ago | | |

This is if you optimize for money.

If you optimize for happiness, the decision process can be wildly different.

gsich 4 years ago | | |

Read the next sentence.

>It's the professional thing to do, if you can sustain yourself.

This is the part you somehow missed.

throwaway123x2 4 years ago | |

Oh God that sounds like a special kind of nightmare. Did you see any hints re:this during the interview?

henvic 4 years ago | | |

Mostly just a bit of 'bro culture'. I also was told they were worried I'd 'rob their code' as I was using my personal computer instead of a company-provided one.

This guy told me the owners were worried because I could just take the code home (of course, I wouldn't delete/create the repo when arriving/leaving each day lol).

I don't know if it was really the startup founders' concerns or his paranoia, though.

After I left, I returned 6 months later to say hi (the founders discovered I was in town and asked me to go there, to their new office). So I went there, hoping this guy wasn't there, and guess what? They fired me about 2 months later after I left.

They played a trick on me, asking me what I thought about him once I came to the office. Only then, after I've politely tried to avoid shaming him while saying our working >style< was very different, I was told that they let him go.

I burst out in a laugh, finally telling them openly that they did the right thing. Then, they asked me why I didn't let them know about it.

I was just too naive, thinking they'd just outright reject my opinion and decided just leaving was the better thing to do for my mental health. I was wrong: honest criticism seemed welcome by them.

jabo 4 years ago | |

I’m more shocked that Eclipse even had a feature that would svn commit on every file save.

henvic 4 years ago | | |

He put it together by writing a script.

kaetemi 4 years ago | |

In such a situation. He's treating the SVN as his own, not as a team resource. Just mirror his changes to git, and move on. Bypass authority.

rkangel 4 years ago |

6 months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to judge a job and leave it.

The important thing is to be able to defend it in future interviews, and do so in a reasoned way rather than an emotional one. For example instead of "the team were incredibly frustrating to work with and ignored all my suggestions", instead "the culture made it very hard to do quality engineering, which over time was demoralising". Sweeping statements about crap organisations sometimes come off as petty on the part of the person making the comments - individual specific examples work better (e.g. a specific, obviously wrong, architecture problem with one framework, rather than talkinga bout them all as a group).

RhysU 4 years ago |

> I'm senior and was hired as such

Someone hired you as a senior employee. Senior folks are expected to fix messes like what you describe.

Go to the right person and ask for the political capital and support to fix 2 specific things.

If you don't get a promise for that support or you don't see that support sustained, leave.

If you get that support, fix exactly those 2 things as quickly as possible. Then ask for the support to fix 2 more things. Etc.

You may want to walk into the right person's office with a list of 5 things to address and ask their input on selecting the right 2.

nomercy400 4 years ago |

It's not bad to look for something else after six months. Shit jobs exist. Keep looking.

Hard questions for yourself: How did I get in this situation? How did I get such a mismatch between your expectations and reality? Why didn't I see this at the job interview?

Answering these will help you evaluate future job offerings.

Ofcourse I do not know how the interview went. Maybe you didn't ask, maybe you did and they didn't answer fairly. In the first case, ask these questions next time (for example: "Describe to me your process on how you go from source code to a production build?" "How do you run your projects? What methodologies do you use?" "How do you document/test/maintain your code quality?" "What kind of meetings do you have around here?"). See if you can ask about cultural difference as well (you mention Asia vs Europe), and avoid yes/no questions but rather something open.

If they didn't answer fairly during the interview, you have no reason to feel bad for running away.

itamarst 4 years ago |

A company I worked for once interviewed someone who had just started at a different company. We asked why he was leaving so soon, he explained he had some differences of opinion and that it wasn't going to work out well. He seemed great, we hired him, he was indeed great.

After we'd hired him, we asked about the old company again. "Oh, it was an utter shitshow" and he went on a long and very compelling rant about how badly managed it was... in far more detail than he had when interviewing.

I feel like this is a reasonable way to do it; don't badmouth your current employer while job searching, but no need to stick around unnecessarily.

alimbada 4 years ago |

Professionalism doesn't even come into it. You're under no obligation whatsoever to even tell them why you're leaving but if you do, you're doing them a favour. If they know what's good for them they'll have exit interviews but I doubt that's a thing they do if they're not willing to hear you out or fix things when you're actively working for them.

ianai 4 years ago | |

Further, anything you say in an exit interview can and will be used against you. So either tread lightly or keep quiet.

alimbada 4 years ago | | |

That depends on the environment/culture of the company. Anywhere I've been that has done exit interviews has done them in order to improve themselves as a company. Yes, tread lightly if you think they'll use it against you but you can still give feedback at most places without burning any bridges if you do it with some tact.

jablan 4 years ago | | |

Can you elaborate pls?

hda111 4 years ago | |

Never tell why you leave, only if you want a bad reference letter.

snassar 4 years ago |

In Germany you have a probationary period of 6 months where both sides can give notice of 2 weeks without having to give a reason. The probationary period is really there to make sure that you fit the organization and that the organization fits you.

It is not usual that people don't make it through the probationary period, but it happens. If you know 5 months into a job that it is not for you and won't work out, then search for something that does. When asked why the time at X was so short, tell the hiring manager why. A place that dings you based on your honest assessment is not a place where you will want to work anyway.

democracy 4 years ago |

Running away when you've created the chaos is somewhat unethical, running away from someone else's mess is very smart and if anything should teach them a lesson (but we all know it won't).

addicted 4 years ago | |

Agreed. The only scenario in which I would consider this somewhat unethical is if you’re the person who created the situation in the first place.

On the flip side, if you’re the person who created the situation in the first place I would probably expect the company to replace you anyways.

thieu96 4 years ago |

I joined a company and within a handful of days it was clear it was an absolute mess. From code to management. As a cherry on top, the only frontend developer would be leaving the company within a month, and the code was a mess. I discussed my termination of the trial month with the CEO and he was shocked, but asked if I could at least give feedback and guidance to the team, which I did for the remainder of the week, after which I left and got a great job at some other company, been here for 3 years now.

Bottom line is, if you're not happy with your job, then quit and look for something else. No amount of money is worth your sanity (maybe for a handful of months), if you give some feedback upon leaving you've handled it fantastically professionally. If they're too proud to accept the feedback then that's their loss and you leave without a doubt in your mind it was a bad decision.

Go for it!

ethbr0 4 years ago | |

This brings up another key point: look around at who else is leaving.

If most of the people you respect and value on your team are leaving, and the other people are staying... well, that tells you more about how everyone else perceives the company too.

sfgweilr4f 4 years ago |

Not unprofessional at all to leave this kind of madness the moment you find something better or, if things are really bad and you can afford it, tomorrow. If there was cost cutting and layoffs, how loyal would they be to you?

Plus, right now you are slowly (or quickly) burning out. That is not an acceptable result. They are incompetent and unprofessional. Employees should not be burning out due to bad work design.

There is a massive opportunity cost in remaining in a bad environment. You may last awhile longer but only if you adapt to it. Do you really want to adapt to where you are and get comfortable in it?

I'd be returning to the resume stage and put the feelers out into my network. Live is too short for this kind of nonsense.

But in reality I can't advise you more than this because I don't know the full story and basically can't. Hope this helped.

_odey 4 years ago |

Q: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

A: No.

Notes: personally I would have either abandoned it during the first month or at the end of the probation period, depending on severity, otherwise I'd force myself to stick around for the year, so I wouldn't get questions during further interviews for why I stayed there only X months. A "hack" would be to endure until somewhere in January next year and then in your CV write only the years of employment like this:

2018 - 2021 Old boring job.

2021 - 2022 Shitshow job (but don't actually write anything bad in the CV about them, only positives).

2022 - present Awesome new job.

If you write it with the number of months, some (not all) recruiters and hiring managers will get suspicious. I've personally had people (colleagues at previous employers, but also random people at random meetups) tell me they trust people less if they see that on their CV, or even filter out such CVs early as they fear you'll do the same there, even though they had the same situation themselves when I checked their linkedin profiles.

I personally don't care at all about the month range when I conduct interviews, and if anybody brings that up I fight against it, as something I've learned from personal experience is this: most jobs suck, most employers suck, I've had to deal with some, everybody I know has dealt with such; then I switch the subject to what's really important: what can you actually do so we get to hire you.

gregkerzhner 4 years ago | |

An alternative to hacking your resume is simply leaving the short position off altogether. Your resume doesn't have to be a total transcript of your career. It should just be a highlight of most relevant experiences for your desired job.

The same goes for really old jobs too btw - having a detailed explanation of your exploits in Java Swing on page 4 of your resume is likely distracting and irrelevant. Consider making your resume a single page with older jobs grouped together like "1999 - 2008 Various software gigs for Employers1 thorough Employer5"

dgfitz 4 years ago | | |

I would personally not want to explain the gap in employment.

"Why did you not work for a year?"

Either you lie (I took a personal leave of absence) or tell the truth (the company was a shitshow and I didnt stay long).

I'm not big on lying, and if I tell the truth I'd expect to get "Well why did you leave it off the resume?" And from there I expect the conversation to go poorly.

ianai 4 years ago | | |

Further, the first few months absolutely are a two way street on “fit”. Hopping out quickly shouldn’t be a red flag. Having 12 employers in 6 years could be a problem or even just standard for certain contractors. Also maybe something better came along.

indymike 4 years ago |

>essentially keeping on-prem 2000's philosophy and revamp it as microservices)

This sounds like a company that is frozen by it's legacy code base. There's a lot of companies like these, and they are trapped in survival mode.

> So, the question is, is it unprofessional to abandon ship just 6 months in or given the circumstances is exactly what I should do in order to protect my well being and my career prospects (the project is a slow motion train wreck IMO).

There's really only a few things you can do: If you want to fix the problem, ask to do so. Be prepared with a plan to do so (here's what I'll need, and here's how we'll approach fixing it). Helping a team out of a corner they've been painted into can be very rewarding, but it's an emotional challenge. If the answer is no, or you don't want to fix it, then get another job and leave. There is nothing wrong with that.

xyzelement 4 years ago |

This sounds like a great opportunity to level up and learn some rare lessons.

It's easy to see problems and its easy to complain about them - but even if you're right, there's a vast gulf between complaining and driving change. You may be discouraged because you're hitting resistance but that's the nature of these things - if the organization already was ripe for and acting to fix these things, there'd be no need for you to help make it happen.

That's the nature of the leadership challenge - how do you get people to change things when they currently don't want to or think they cannot?

You think you see the right path, awesome, let's assume that's true. But if you can't find a way to make things better, then aren't you saying exactly the same thing that others are saying - "we have to live with it?"

You may not be in for that kind of challenge, you may just want to write code in a well set up environment, in which case you should absolutely leave. But if you want a real challenge of actually driving change and impact, of leveling up your leadership and seniority, this sounds like a great opportunity. Some will see it that way, others never will.

If you do see the opportunity, then the next question is "how" - finding a way to figure that out is going to be an amazing learning experience regardless of success.

qaq 4 years ago | |

The above holds if you have serious equity stake otherwise it's an opportunity to burn out without much upside.

xyzelement 4 years ago | | |

The upside is to become a person who has done that kind of thing.

That gets you paid about 5x of someone who can just operate in an environment that's good to begin with.

tekstar 4 years ago |

Just to play the devil's advocate for a moment here, I've seen many developers join and instead of learning what is around and why it's there, just see everything that existed before they joined as a Bad Decision that Needs To Change To Fit My Expectations. In complex situations sometimes the best solution looks nothing like a textbook Best Practice.

That being said, what you're describing sounds like a shit show. I've seen many talented developers stay way too long at bad places, telling themselves they can make things better.

crate_barre 4 years ago | |

One needs to delineate between challenging features/business logic versus obstructionist architecture. The former is fine, you are dealing with a difficult problem space. The latter is not, it causes burnout since straight forward things are not straightforward to do. The latter causes pain and stress.

Business rarely has the capacity to see the blowback of the latter where the product is not nimble/flexible, and there is a clear velocity hit across the board.

From my experience, business rarely has empathy for the latter.

nameless912 4 years ago |

I left a job after a similarly short tenure (roughly 7 months) last year, but for different reasons: the product was essentially bait-and-switched on me. I thought I was being hired on to work on a problem I was really passionate about, and within a few months the business at large made it clear that they just wanted us to be be relegated to a "professional services" type arrangement.

I think it's always okay to leave any job at any time for any reason; I once turned down a job at Google because the hiring manager was a complete asshole (I mentioned I had a dog and his immediate response was "oh god, I hope you never bring that thing into the office because I _hate_ dogs!"), I've left jobs because managers lied about petty shit, and I've left jobs because the company wouldn't allow me to work remotely despite several extremely senior eng leaders advocating on my behalf to do so. IMO, an engineering culture completely devoid of the ability to change is at least as valid as any of the ones I've had to leave, and I can tell you from personal experience that there's a limit to how much any one person can change, no matter their influence, the quality of their ideas, or their passion for righting the ship.

At a certain point, you have to don your own oxygen mask before helping others. Especially if this job is impacting your mental health and/or personal life, cut and run right now. There's no reason to stick around for a job that's not giving you the respect you deserve.

mkl95 4 years ago |

In my experience that's the sorry state of most so-called microservice ecosystems.

Most of those companies are actually running a distributed monolith, which is worse than a good old monolith, and eventually much worse.

> I'm in a small offshoot team in Europe

Some Americans don't really understand how grim the European software development landscape is. I have built stuff for some potential unicorns and the shit product management get away with is insane. Most projects are downright spaghetti.

Sorry to sound so negative. But to answer your question, I think it makes complete sense to leave that job. 5 months is more than enough to realize a job is not going to get better.

afarrell 4 years ago |

To be a professional is to be trusted to do a job in a way that delivers results reliably and sustainably. Part of that is saying no to a job where you would not trust yourself to succeed at that.

spyremeown 4 years ago | |

>Part of that is saying no to a job where you would not trust yourself to succeed at that.

That's solid advice, thank you.

crispyambulance 4 years ago |

"Everything is a mess" is a very common condition, but also very common is unrealistic expectations.

The feeling you have of burnout, of course, should be taken seriously but the other things you describe sound not unusual to me. Yeah, the real world (at least in my experience) is never like it is in the "seminal books". How will you know that the next place you go to isn't the same or messed up in an equally profound but different way?

Certainly part of this is the remote-first stuff. MHO, but it is simply not possible to gain trust from teammates without regular in-person interaction. Remotes will always be outsiders, and outsiders have an enormous challenge when it comes being change-agents.

altacc 4 years ago |

Professionalism isn’t about how long you stay at a job, it’s about how you act around work, which includes joining and leaving a company. There are ways of quitting which are unprofessional but not the act of quitting itself. How much detail you tell them is up to you but don’t feel pressured to go into detail if you don’t want to.

As for career/CV, it’s only a flag for me if there are a lot of instances of short jobs that were obviously meant to be permanent. Personally I still ask the candidate about why that is.

If it’s any consolation, my shortest resignation from a perm job was the morning of the third day. The MD’s motivational strategy turned out to be angrily shouting at people.

chaircher 4 years ago |

No but you need to figure out how you could have found out about this disfunction in the interview process and apply it to your new job search, else you risk ending up in a similar situation again

javajosh 4 years ago |

"Unprofessional" is saying, "You guys suck, I quit." Professional is saying, "Well guys, it's been 6mo and it looks like it's not a good fit, and I'll be moving on. This is my 2 weeks notice." (But be prepared to be let go immediately.)

The thing is, no-one really cares about professionalism though. What they care about is working code, good commits, and if you don't feel like you can get there in this org then leaving is the right thing to do for both. Bummer for them spending 6mo ramping up a new dev that didn't work out; bummer for you you spent 6mo learning crap that doesn't matter (unique organizational failure modes scale with N! where N is the number of independent mistakes you can make). A bummer, but at least it wasn't a 6 year bummer. GL

lambdatronics 4 years ago | |

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

lordnacho 4 years ago |

You have no duty to hang around a place that doesn't support you and basically isn't what was promised. You're a professional, you expect professional conditions.

Quite frankly more people should walk out of jobs like this. I've heard of it happening in more than one well known firm that for instance the person starts a job and they don't have a computer for months. These people should all leave and not feel bad about it.

Get interviewing immediately and see a lawyer about the conditions of leaving.

jstx1 4 years ago |

Leaving early isn't unprofessional in of itself. There are unprofessional ways to leave though, regardless of tenure, so don't do that. Make sure you're polite, don't focus too much on the negatives, hand things over properly, serve out your notice period if you have one contractually or legally.

ttr2021 4 years ago |

I was in a very similar situation around 2 years ago. I came into a lead data engineer role at a startup-going-scaleup. I saw technical horrors, mismanagement, lack of ownership at all levels and an overarching distasteful culture. I say get out now. I stayed for 2.5 years because it was my first job out of a FAANG almost in absolute fascination at watching the train wreck in slow mo, did my absolute best to tame the chaos but I think it actually start affectubg my health and well being. Also, eventually I lost favour with my manager, and then he started bullying me to cover his ass even after I left his direct reporting line.

christophilus 4 years ago |

If you don’t have the power to turn it around (e.g. if you’re not a director), the wise thing is to bail. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll make a significant dent in improving things there, so you’re just wasting your time working there. My 2cents. Been in a similar situation twice, bailed immediately, and my career has been fine.

jimduk 4 years ago |

It's always ok to leave a company - if they can't survive without you, you are doing them a disservice.

But it's an interesting question - I've been intrigued throughout my career (5-25 person project management)

"Which 'reality disconnects' are important and need addressing, which can be left to lie, and which ones are fatal?"

Still don't really have the answer but my guidelines would go like this

- There has to be at least one part of the project (hopefully the most important) that is functional and grounded in reality to grow from. If there isn't then scrap the project/ do a new project. ( In consultancy a question to ask a new client was - Tell me about your last project that succeeded and your last project that failed - sometimes they had no successes - that was worth knowing)

- Fight the small battles all the time - How do we know what done is? Are the tests good? Is that code understandable? Are the specs and interfaces understood? Are we shipping sh*t?. You need to keep your principles here or you can't mentor and good people won't follow/ trust you

- Some of the big battles especially the political ones can only be fought in very specific contexts (changing budgets, team structure, new cultures). Put down a marker you'd like to see improvement there, but also state that now is not the time till the fundamentals are done.

- At the end of the day imagine yourself as a new hire in your team. If the new hire thinks 'My boss isn't the right person to lead the team' then think about leaving/changing roles. If they think 'Wow this is a tough job but I can see how we get there' keep on going. If they think 'I respect my boss but no-one can fix this mess' then think about re-negotiating to what can be done(either leave or help re-base things). If the 'junior you' isn't going to stay in your team, then things aren't going to work.

Strongly recommend Rands in Repose - Bits, Features, Truth

fivelessminutes 4 years ago |

Have you raised your perspective on their problems with your manager?

If they don't care, leaving is not unreasonable (although the 6 months might seem like a ding on your resume). But usually, people know. Whether they know and just want to keep turning up and take the money without rocking the boat, or want to rescue it but don't know how.

itistricky 4 years ago | |

Manager agrees on most of my points but, for various reasons, he cannot/won't change anything. All he can do is chase up people to set up a knowledge transfer meeting (when excessive meetings are just a sign of the dysfunctions of other levels).

fivelessminutes 4 years ago | | |

I would start looking...

kaetemi 4 years ago |

You sound a bit like a pedant, joining a project that's halfway, who wants everyone else to redo all their work from scratch, because it doesn't follow your own preferred academic practices, which you believe are the only right way to do things.

Did your presence in the team increase productivity, or did you primarily drain your teammates time to enforce your ideals? If the latter, then leave.

You can't force others to work the way you want things done. Nobody likes the guy on the team who believes he knows everything better.

But you could've tried to inspire them instead.

Leaving is fine.

redleader55 4 years ago |

It seems to me you are concentrating on the negatives too much - no place is perfect, otherwise they would not need you.

I would pick one small thing, try to improve it without complaining, while also delivering on your day-to-day tasks and see the feedback from your peers. The question you need to ask yourself in the end is "can I be part of the solution?", if the answer is "yes", you will gain trust, increase your salary/compensation, and have the opportunity to do what you like. In my opinion, that's what a senior is.

i_am_programmer 4 years ago |

It's weird to read this as I started a new role myself 5 weeks ago and after my first week I've had the exact question linger in my mind. I work for a finance company who have outsourced everything to Eastern Europe and now they're trying to rein everything in house but so many things are half-baked and bad practise or simply wrong, meaning everything will eventually need a rewrite. I spend so much time doing nothing because everyone is so frantic running around no one has helped me identify my work load or even assigns tickets. I don't find it possible for me to just figure out what to work on myself.

The people I interviewed with are so nice I would feel some guilt leaving, but the actual technical team I have aren't here and are hard to work with so I wouldn't feel too bad. Although, the older I get the more frequently I remind myself a companies bottom line is themselves. They don't care about you as much as you would ever think so.

I do not think you would be bad for leaving after 5 or 6 months, heck 2 or 3 wouldn't be bad either. Life is short and you legitimately don't owe your time to a company indefinitely. You won't struggle to find other jobs, people can be incredibly understanding and what you are describing isn't uncommon in the software industry IMO. As I am enjoying a similar experience unforutnately

serial_dev 4 years ago |

No, it's not unprofessional and don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

A couple of years ago, I joined an analytics / big data / data engineering shop. I joined because I was in the process of finishing my thesis in physics, they gave me an offer early, and I didn't want to keep looking as I needed to reserve time for preparing for my final exam. Also, I was interested in data engineering, as it was a good mixture of math and software engineering practices.

When I got there, the skill levels of the developers surprised me. They knew very little, when I told them we should have an easy to setup dev environment, automate deployments, write tests, they looked at me like we didn't speak the same language. They just didn't get what I was saying and many of the concepts were totally new to them. The projects were boring and the technology was outdated. Nobody had a clue about communication, agile dev, XP or anything else that I value.

I stayed 6 weeks in total. 2 weeks to realize that their culture is terrible and it would make me a second (third?) tier, unhirable dev if I stayed. 2 weeks to find a new job and get a much better offer from a much better company with amazing people. 2 weeks because that was my notice period. Didn't regret it for a second and nobody else cared about it since, either.

glassconclusion 4 years ago | |

Most things that you state are not culture related. If communication is really troublesome, I understand that you would leave such a place. Better tooling and programming guidelines are things you can introduce. Especially if it is a small team. That's maybe why they hired you in the first place.

danielrpa 4 years ago |

The company wouldn't hesitate to let you go if it found a hard-to-fix problem with you. So it's ok to leave the company now that you found a hard-to-fix problem with it.

thinkingemote 4 years ago |

It's not at all unprofessional. Do, however, consider that chaos and bad practices are the normal operation procedures for most companies in the world.

What you can choose is how you react to it. Expending energy trying to fight the chaos of an organisation is wasted energy. Waste to the org and you. Why give them free stuff?

Leaving is a valid and good choice and I've chosen this in the past a few times. Beware the grass is greener effect and be prepared to encounter similar distinction elsewhere!

itistricky 4 years ago | |

Yeah, that -together with going through all the interviews/take homes/etc again- is the biggest inhibitor. Dunno, maybe it's time to start considering a total career change. I'm fed up with the actual reality of doing SW engineering for a living.

bawolff 4 years ago |

Its a job not a slave relationship. You don't need a reason to quit (with notice) other then "I feel like it"

throwaway0a5e 4 years ago | |

Presumably his paychecks aren't bouncing.

bawolff 4 years ago | | |

This is kind of a tagent, but I think inability to quit is much more the defining characteristic of slavery than not being paid. Although obviously slaves aren't usually compensated reasonably if at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour#Payment_for_unfr...

input_sh 4 years ago | | |

They've mentioned Europe. We don't do paychecks here. Money just lands on your bank account.

cessor 4 years ago |

Does your employer pay for your technical skillset and your labor, or do they pay you for sacrificing your mental health? I don't think self-care is unprofessional, and deciding to leave is perfectly fine.

Professionalism means being able to produce convergent results given varying resources, but when the spec is unclear, your employer doesn't provide appropriate resources for you to perform or if your mental health is in danger, I think it's perfectly valid to back off. "Professional" does not mean "sorcerer". A professional photographer can't take a good picture in complete darkness, and even a good architect can't create a distributed system when the environment won't support it. It argue it's professional to know your own limits and reject a job offer.

It's difficult to make the decision to leave, especially when you have been jobhunting for a while and I can't say anything substantial on how anyone should make such a decision, but the other day I found a meme saying (something along those lines):

In a job, you should either earn or learn; either is good, both is ideal, if it's neither: leave. If the job pays ok money, but costs your sanity, I'd argue you should leave.

gregjor 4 years ago |

It's not unprofessional to quit an unfulfilling job. It's unprofessional to quit without notice (since you're a senior person), or to badmouth the company online, to recruiters, or to future prospective employers. If anyone asks why you quit you should say "I found a better opportunity." If you quit without another job lined up you may get asked in the future to explain the gap, so have an explanation that doesn't make you look unprofessional. Don't burn your bridges if you don't have to, in other words.

Since you're a senior developer you should ask yourself how you signed on to this job in the first place, and how you might discover the kind of dysfunction you describe before taking the next job. I've made the same kind of mistake, it's easy to overlook the signs and get excited and think you can make big changes.

In general employers focus a lot more on your current or last job than on jobs you had earlier, so how you handle this and frame your decision will make the most difference when getting your next job. When I have found myself in crappy jobs I found a new job before quitting, because it's much easier to get a job when you're already employed.

deanebarker 4 years ago |

What is a "vendeta-developer" in this context?

(Was that meant as dash or em-dash? Are you speaking of a noun -- "vendeta-developers" -- or did you misspell "vendetta" and are explaining that the vendetta is a set of developers in Asia?)

wfsch 4 years ago |

If you don't like the culture and work it is not wrong to leave it soon and join a better place. But you can't know if the new place will not have other type of problems. You can't find out in interviews if new company too will have dysfunctional way of working. Nobody shares such things in interviews. If you have friends in other companies then it is the best way to learn how culture is in those companies.

matsemann 4 years ago |

> So, the question is, is it unprofessional to abandon ship just 6 months in [?]

Even if the answer to this was "yes"... so what? Don't focus on how you're perceived, do what's right for you.

pacija 4 years ago |

If contract doesn't state how long one needs to stay, it is professional to leave anytime.

I had the luck to get into a company which was (to some extent is) a mess, where I had (have) so many opportunities to improve things and get paid for it.

Noone told me to improve things, many (including my bosses) told me not to poke around. I stopped asking, did it anyway, presented measurable improvements, got raises and respect from some, hatred and envy from some others. Latter ones usually got sacked in the long run, so I guess not everything is a mess, someone up there cares.

I don't think I owe company anything, or company owes me. I do stuff, I get paid. What I think I do owe is real-time feedback about state of stuff under my care, about my long-term goals and money expectations. Company owes me timely paycheck for time and money we agree upon. Debt from both sides is erased monthly, on payday.

I left some companies. I stayed at some. All's fair in love and war.

HelloNurse 4 years ago |

You don't want to be there at the end of the "slow motion train wreck", even if the situation is currently tolerable and there is no threat of financial crisis.

Leave ASAP, and as a parting gift explain to upper management what they are doing wrong and why you consider the situation hopeless; some of your advice might catch.

dudul 4 years ago |

If the environment doesn't work for you just leave. Your employer would have no problem letting you go if you weren't a "culture fit".

Maybe try to find ways to screen future employers better during the interview process. For each place you leave, you learn something about where you don't want to work.

zabil 4 years ago |

Not unprofessional at all. From your description there is an issue with your current workplace culture.

Bad work culture affects mental health and personal life. It's important to take care of yourself.

If your workplace is not willing to fix that it's perfectly fine to look for a change.

akudha 4 years ago |

Ask yourself this - if you were a mess, will the company continue to employ you? I have made the mistake of staying in boring jobs because people were nice, in shitty jobs because I hated interviewing, in good jobs because they were good. The only common denominator in all of these jobs? Not one company I worked for genuinely cared about employee happiness, growth etc. It was all theater. I still consider myself lucky, as I got to work with some nice individuals

Leaving would be my suggestion. Leave after you find another job, if you want to be safe.

"Professionalism" is something invented by the corporate world to make sure their employees behave. And it is one way traffic, at least most of the time.

notapenny 4 years ago |

It's your career, you decide, but no I wouldn't call it unprofessional. If the company doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. I've been in a similar position before but decided to wait it out until the 6 months mark, I'd say thats a fair amount of time to figure out if its temporary or not, and to what extent you're willing to take some chaos.

Just make sure you know your reasons and can articulate them because a future employer may also be curious as to why you were "only" there for six months. I've hired people though who had similar stories, as long someone gave it a shot just to confirm it wasn't for them, I've never seen it as a problem.

caseysoftware 4 years ago |

Start working on your plan B - another job, a break, contracting, whatever - and leave.

I just did it a few months ago. I worked with a company for 4+ months, figured out how much of a mess everything was, and - most importantly - found that everyone was unhappy but unwilling to change.

The secret is that MANY things are broken in MOST companies at any given moment. The things (people, processes, practices, tools, etc) that worked last week may not work this week as your team, tech, market, goals, and path change. It gets worse the more any of those things change.

The real questions to answer are:

a) do people understand things are broken? and

b) are they willing & able to change to make things better?

The answer to a) is WAY less important than the answer to b)

factorialboy 4 years ago |

Give it an honest try. You may already have.

Once you have tried, gave it everything you had, and nothing came out of it, you will have the conviction to walk away.

Move on. No shame, no guilt.

It's like losing at sports where you tried 100%. Nothing to feel bad.

Time for the next challenge.

Werewolf255 4 years ago | |

I feel this, but it just sounds like a way to suck the actual life out of employees for the lowest amount of compensation, and when called out on it, say they have an energetic work environment that only winners can handle.

oaiey 4 years ago |

It is not unprofessional to quit. It can be unprofessional how you quit and behave till your last day.

It is your life. They do not own it.

onimishra 4 years ago |

Many contracts (at least where I live, ymmv) contains a trial period, usually the first three months. Those are not just for your employers benefit. Some things, like team fit and culture, will only become apparent after a few weeks.

That being said, 6 months is a perfectly reasonable time for an employment that you’ve found unreasonable. If I’d see something like that on a resume when I was hiring, I might ask a question about the short stay during the interview process, but an answer about mis-matched culture fit would be perfectly legit for me.

jimbobimbo 4 years ago |

Do not overthink the question "why did you leave job X after 6 month". The right answer would be: the contract was over, full stop. You don't owe an explanation beyond that to anyone.

kesor 4 years ago |

I am proud of leaving messed up shops after less than six months. And I keep telling people it was a highlight of my career not sticking around in there for any longer than I could tolerate.

tharne 4 years ago |

Start looking for other jobs ASAP. There's no shame in telling an interviewer, "I accepted my current and it is not the role or company they described during the hiring process".

This has happened to practically everyone at least once. The biggest mistake I've made in my career was taking a job, seeing that it wasn't the role they originally described and sticking around anyway. I ended up languishing there for a few years and it burned me out and set my career back, not irreparably, but noticeably.

karmakaze 4 years ago |

Thanks for posting this. The mere fact that you're asking here tells me that you've already thought about this more than most would. I agree with others saying based on your details it's completely the right thing to go after 6 months and seeing no desire to change how things are done.

Normally I would say that this is a problem owned by the senior devs already there. In this new age of "Remote first company", I suspect that it has more to do with the way the company was expected to operate from the outset. The leadership didn't hire senior enough people to tell the difference between good/bad and what was going to cost them for the duration of the company. It doesn't help that the devs are doubling-down on it though--doing what they're paid to do is another way of looking at that. It sucks, leave.

A good thought experiment is if you were (one of) the first senior dev hired, would leadership be happy with how long you were taking to make good choices and do things in an efficient (in the long term) way? If the answer is "no", then the company was doomed before any devs were hired.

Another question is how do we find out before joining? "I'll sign an NDA, show me your code"? If I'm seriously considering joining I'd like to spend a half (or full) day pairing with someone senior at the company on real development in-progress.

hn_throwaway_99 4 years ago |

Leaving after 6 months is not unprofessional at all. Heck, leaving after 2 weeks can be fine as well. Sometimes you get into a situation and discover it's not what was sold to you, at all. In that case, it's better for all parties, to end it quickly instead of allowing it to drag on.

As an analogy, imagine dating someone who you initially liked, but quickly discover you are incompatible. Better to end it ASAP than to let it drag on, which will only lead to more bitterness in the end.

user234220 4 years ago |

Your job is where you spend the most of your time. Do not settle for something that you have to endure. Your mental health must be a priority.

We have a finite number of days in this life. Ten years from now, will you think back and say, "I can't believe I just kept working there!" Or will you say, "I'm so proud of myself for leaving when I saw the writing on the wall."

When it's time, it's time. The only person who will suffer in the end is you.

Get yourself another job lined up and leave.

sokoloff 4 years ago |

You are under no obligation whatsoever to slog it out for some arbitrary period of time. I think your obligation ends once you’ve made a good faith, professional effort to help them improve. Once that’s been repeatedly rebuffed (which is fine; it’s their choice), you need to choose how to invest your scarce time and mental energy on this rock.

Start looking now. When you find a place you’d rather go, submit your notice. Nothing is the least bit unprofessional there.

Damogran6 4 years ago |

It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind and are looking for validation. Not your Circus, not your Monkeys.

Sunk cost fallacies are when you’ve spent too much time/money/energy to make a change…you don’t have a lot of sunk cost here.

That said: Never quit on a friday, make sure you have a place to go if it’s not actively affecting your mental health, the best time to look for a job is while you already have one, yadda yadda.

mrthrowawayman 4 years ago |

I've been in similar situations to yours. I left immediately both times and don't regret it. The truth is in this field most employers don't care about resume gaps as long as you have a halfway decent explanation. You can even say you just wanted to take an extended vacation.

No, it's not unprofessional. Would they be unprofessional by firing you on the spot? That's essentially the answer to your question. Businesses don't have feelings, and you're not going to hurt them by handing in your resignation. Better businesses won't hold it against you that previous employment opportunities didn't work out.

Also, life's too short to work at some software chop shop. Contrary to what some here are saying, there are enough decent dev jobs out there that it's just not worth dealing with the weight an employer hasn't been carrying. If they aren't carrying their weight and you're feeling crushed under it, you're feeling that way for a reason.

mgarfias 4 years ago |

I’m in a similar position. Except it’s not chaos that’s the issue, that is fixable here.

It’s that I report to a gigantic dickbag. A migration had a couple of issues Friday night, with two customer apps not working. I only do the infra. Yet on sat, I was left a vm threatening to fire me, it was 100% psychotic.

I’ve sent it off to HR, and a side channel to the exec team. So hopefully action is taken.

eternalban 4 years ago |

> Almost every attempt of mine to change anything was met with either "yeah we know but we have to live with it for now" or a straight denial to hear me out - brushed aside as a newcomer (I'm senior and was hired as such).

A senior resource in such a mess can take action and seek consensus afterwards. The idea is to pick a problem sub-system and fixing it. Just do it and don't talk about it. Get it done with demonstrated benefits to establish credibility. Subsequent change proposals will be supported by management. It's a risky move -- you may find yourself contributing to the mess -- but you are prepared to quit anyway so failure is definitely an option.

> the project is a slow motion train wreck

Reexamine this diagnosis. Include related matter that almost certainly you are not disclosing here, including honest self-assessment in this reevaluation. IFF you determine that (a) this is a mess, and (b) I am not capable of contributing to fixing the mess, then sure, quit.

neverminder 4 years ago |

I've been in the same position in the past as every developer will eventually, except maybe the FAANG worshippers who don't work for any other companies.

Unfortunately there's nothing you can do but leave and you should. In most cases management is aware of the issues, it's just that for various reasons they can't fix them or choose not to.

danabrams 4 years ago |

Generally, the mess will be created by the structure, processes and culture of the organization. Unless you created the mess by somehow changing the process, culture or structure of the org, not only is it not professional to leave, but you should go as soon as you can, because it will never get any better. The same chaos will always reappear.

gwbas1c 4 years ago |

> Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

No. It's totally okay to run from a sinking ship if you haven't been able to develop a good sense of mutual loyalty. (Mutual, meaning the company recognizes its problems AND supports you in fixing them.)

> I'm senior and was hired as such

There's a lot of different advice in this situation. Many people say "Don't quit until you find another job," which isn't always practical, especially given that senior roles tend to take longer to find.

Given your level, another approach is to basically ask to be laid off. It won't always work, but if you believe it's easier for "your job to be finding a job," figure out how to ask for a severance package. Something like, in a 1-1 with your manager, just say something like, "Look, I'm really not happy here and I don't see a long-term career here. What's the best exit strategy?"

72deluxe 4 years ago |

Leave! I spent a long time in a car-crash of a company and it didn't do me any good.

Come to think of it, some guy actually faked his own car crash so he could leave that company....

Terrible. The "yes I know it's bad but it's what we have at the moment" attitude will never fade. You'll spend your time fighting fires and nothing will improve.

epc 4 years ago |

It’s not unprofessional, I truly regret sticking out at my first startup for nearly eight months when the red flags started being waved in my first weeks. But, no matter what hiring managers say, they will absolutely hold a short stint against you, regardless of the circumstances, so if possible arrange a new role before quitting.

mandeepj 4 years ago |

That is exactly why it's important to ask questions during your interviews. When it's my turn to ask questions when I'm on a job hunt - I start with "How do you develop software? Please explain it from requirement gathering till deployment". Afterwards, I ask few more to get the pulse of their work style.

tschmeisser 4 years ago |

You don't owe anyone anything if they aren't listening to you or letting you actively correct issues. It seems like you at least tried and I would bet even if you could make change, it would be an uphill battle not worth your time and energy. Sounds like a bad environment you should move on from.

NotAnOtter 4 years ago |

I'm in this situation so I've been asking around on Blind and what not.

My conclusion is that everyone thinks it's fine to move on. Especially if you can find a pay or title increase, then it's undeniable. I doubled my TC for a job at Amazon and am jumping ship because it's such a mess

nowherebeen 4 years ago |

No, it happens more often than you think. Just make sure you have another job offer in-hand before doing so.

GoToRO 4 years ago | |

This is good advice. Sometimes it’s harder to implement because if you are burned out you will not be able to think clearly and so the next job might be a mistake too.

itistricky 4 years ago | |

Thanks. Good to know.

MrDresden 4 years ago |

Leave if your financial situation allows for it, and you can see that other options might be found before your personal runnway ends.

If not, then start searching and leave when you have found something you'd be happy with. Having been in a burn out situation my self, I'd give my 2 cents and recommend maybe downgrading in responsibility to give yourself some time to heal (some people heal through doing a lot of very fun but hard work, so do what is right for you).

Staying on for too long, especially if it has impacts on your health is the wrong option if others exist.

If anyone asks in later interviews why you did not stick with it, simply explain that you did try to change the culture but it simply would not stick. Explain that you are a professional, and would like to work with other professionals of the same caliber.

FinanceAnon 4 years ago |

It's not unprofessional, as long as you fulfil any contract obligations. If you have a notice period, work through it and give it your best. For the future, think about what you could have asked in the interview to avoid joining a company that you wouldn't enjoy working in.

johnatwork 4 years ago |

It's not unprofessional to leave.

But I personally would love the challenge. You need to pace yourself which would be hard, but I would love to be the change that comes from within an organization. I've done this in three places and looking back and seeing the results were very satisfying.

willcipriano 4 years ago |

One thing I haven't seen mentioned, who knows what the markets are going to do over the next 6 - 12 months. Don't assume you can find a new job in the future, even if that is likely. You may end up staying longer then you anticipated if you hold back from making a move.

patrickk 4 years ago |

> ...essentially keeping on-prem 2000's philosophy and revamp it as microservices). On top of that add vendeta-developers in Asia (I'm in a small offshoot team in Europe) handing down half-baked frameworks (not-invented-here and reinventing the wheel are strong) with minimal documentation and a culture based on meetings instead of documenting things.

Ouch, this hits close to home. I can identify with this type of culture.

If you can get another job, get out ASAP and keep your sanity.

You'll slowly go mad as you realise that every best practice and "normal" way of working in software dev/IT (e.g. documentation and not just vague verbal descriptions for everything), is done exactly backwards. The cultural gap is just too big to bridge, and you cannot fix that.

comeonseriously 4 years ago |

Think of it this way; you were hired with the thought that after 6 mos they'd evaluate your progress and determine they want to keep you or not. That's how a lot of business work.

So, yeah, leave and don't feel bad about it. It's just business.

Take care of yourself first. Nobody else will.

vfistri2 4 years ago |

It is not unprofessional, at the end of the day market is hot and it is your right to capitalise on it. Also first thing you need to do is take care of yourself, there are always job tradeoffs. And sometimes in the name of money and benefits we all sometimes do a little bit of self-convincing that shit-show is not that, it might improve with time ect. At the end of the day, looking back for each one of those sel-convincing thoughts i've done i felt bad, and felt it should have followed my guts and left almost instantly. At last company i've worked at there was no code reviews, no pull requests, at first it felt wierd but later on I was 100% sure those guys are complete amateurs. Am happily employed atm at one of MAANG atm.

dwheeler 4 years ago |

You are not a slave. You can always leave your job, anyone can. It is appropriate to give them warning and a little time to prepare for that transition and start getting someone else. Where I live, the usual time is 2 weeks notice, though some extra time is reasonable.

tdrdt 4 years ago |

I once left a job after less than 8 hours.

Everything was a mess. Management, the code base, everything.

Questions you can ask yourself: do you think you can change the mess? Would you like to change it? If you can't change it, would you like to work there?

My guess is that all your answers are 'no'.

kjgkjhfkjf 4 years ago |

Given that it took a long time to find this job, I recommend that you don't leave until you've found another one. I'm sorry that you're not enjoying your new job, but the dysfunction you're describing is quite common in the real world.

lars512 4 years ago |

If your job realised they had misevaluated you once you started working for them, they would let you go (if they’re professional). You should take the same attitude to them.

If you had another offer or got close during your job hunt, consider reaching back out to those places.

AlwaysRock 4 years ago |

Its your life and your career. You don't owe anyone a second of it. If you want to leave leave. Find a way to nicely say there were a lot of issues which is why you left when interviewing. Most folks have a 6 month of less stay and this is why.

lnxg33k1 4 years ago |

I am in the same situation and I said if you have to pay market rate, then I get to work on market level quality codebases, otherwise I am never gonna sacrifice my mental health because cool guy had to bootstrap the project hiring some guy in india

samatman 4 years ago |

> So, the question is, is it unprofessional to abandon ship just 6 months in

Bottom line: absolutely not.

Your question should be, frankly, how evil the C team and funders are. If they're legitimately evil, sandbag: stop working, stop worrying about it, and cash checks for awhile. Cruise, touch up your specialty, laugh about it later.

If not, then... do the same thing but look for another job immediately and inform them promptly. If there's trust between you and anyone up your chain of command, provide feedback to one (1) person after submitting your email of resignation (not Snapchat kiddo).

But don't try and fix it. You can't and it won't work. And it isn't your fault. Good luck.

FranksTV 4 years ago |

Hey — this may be weird, but I think I may have joined the same company, though I'm with the Canadian branch.

Or at least the culture and technology sounds exactly identical.

Also looking for my own way out, but feel like I need to stick it out ~1yr just so it's not hard to explain on my resume.

I feel like leaving early will be extra hard because it'll be hard to explain why without sounding like a know-it-all or whiner.

How do you say "I left because they were doing everything wrong" politely.

For now I'm just saving snippets for the badcode subreddit, and trying to find projects that are interesting and/or will look good on my resume.

With everything being such a shitshow I have a lot of latitude to make my own work.

GianFabien 4 years ago |

From your description it looks like a most unprofessionally operating company. So leaving is your best means of maintaining your professionalism.

Since you did make several attempts at improving things, its not as if you gave up on them without trying.

GuB-42 4 years ago |

If you can't work efficiently in these conditions and can't fix anything, either because they don't let you or because you don't have the abilities, then you should leave, for yourself, for the company, and hopefully, for your next job.

I see two possible outcomes for your project: either they manage to hire (hopefully very well paid) people with the necessary skills and authority to clear that mess, or everyone competent will leave and only the most desperate will stay, and it will be terrible. If you are not a respected project savior and if you are competent and not desperate, then your place is elsewhere.

jviotti 4 years ago |

I'd argue its more unprofessional to lend your Senior-level software experience and expertise to a dysfunctional org that does not want to make an attempt to hear you out and improve things than to leave after 6 months.

joshxyz 4 years ago |

If you hate it, just leave it. You gotta understand them though, some businesses just roll out something as fast as they could and just leave them as they are as long as they are delivering the business requirements.

saaaaaam 4 years ago |

I was head-hunted to a 20 person startup in a senior (non-tech) role; I’d been sold a big vision, told the business was very well funded, loads of exciting stuff on the cards. First month in I discovered that the “significant seven figure investment” that I had been told had been made didn’t exist and that the product was such a mess it was unusable - and critically for me, unsellable.

The CTO and I met and discussed what needed to change, and it turned out that most of what I saw as product related issues were things he’d also been trying to change. We presented these to the (hyper-paranoid) founder/CEO who agreed that everything we had said was valid and needed reworking. A week as we began to roll out a plan of changes the CEO had a tantrum and accused us of conspiring against him and wanting to take over the company and kick him out.

When I discovered shortly after that a key part of the product didn’t work and was actually being manually faked I put my exit plan in place. My reputation was at stake because most of the customers I was talking to were people I’d worked with for years. I couldn’t go and try and sell them a product that I knew was fake.

Fortunately as part of my deal I’d negotiated a very favourable exit package that basically immediately vested my first year equity grant to cash and allowed me to quit and leave with six months salary on top. Actually, the fact that they had agreed that should have been a warning flag as it showed how chaotically managed the business was. There’s no way they should have agreed the terms I got.

It was THE most stressful period of my working life. I wanted the work I was doing to work, I saw how the business could succeed - but there were so many red flags that I had no choice except to walk. I think it was four months in I realised the whole thing was a disaster and about 7 months in that I actually left.

Even if I’d not had the severance package I would have left and picked up some consultancy or gone client side for a bit to tide me over.

If you can afford to leave, leave. If you can’t afford to leave, make your priority lining up something that lets you leave. Being in that sort of situation is utterly destructive to your mental health. It took me about three months to recover from the stress.

lumost 4 years ago |

Think about what you want to do, what the company allows you to do, and what the next job will give you.

Generally speaking one 6 month stint every 5-10 years won't be questioned extensively in tech. The next job you get you'll need to hold for 18-24 months to avoid the appearance of a pattern.

Be sure that you have a good reason for leaving that isn't "the tech stack was a mess" or "I didn't fit in with the culture" and find your next opportunity. If you make it to a full year no one will ask detailed questions about why you left.

laurent92 4 years ago |

Recruiters cost about 15% of your annual salary, to be paid in full if you complete the probation or the first 4-6 months. My first employer was angry when I quit at 6 months + 1 day (But the contract had a shorter leave term after 6 month, ironically).

As an employer now, I’d prefer you leave as soon as you want, after ensuring you’ve secured another position. It is in no-one’s interest to stay in an unwanted situation, even out of pure generosity for you.

As a recruiter, I wouldn’t know if someone stayed 3 months in an undesirable job, that seems normal.

igetspam 4 years ago |

You could be describing my organization. As things progress, our problems are getting worse. I have people under me and around me that I know are leaving an I'm offering them glowing recommendations because their feelings are valid. I'm distancing myself from the company too. You should leave. You've been there long enough to have given it a solid try. One six month stint on your resume isn't a problem and any associations you've made with people you like are likely to feel the same way anyway.

zabzonk 4 years ago |

I once handed in my notice after two weeks. The whole project was misguided and heading for obvious failure. The project manager more or less got down on his knees to me and pleaded for me to stay. Much against my better judgement I did, on the proviso that I could do a re-design and that half of the programming team would be sacked. None of this really solved issues, and I actually left after a year or so.

Bottom line, if you hate the job, and you can see the product is not going to be delivered in a working and timely state, get out.

gorpomon 4 years ago |

It's absolutely fine to leave. I interview people looking for roles shortly after taking a new job all the time. It's pretty common that the role they were brought on for was not as advertised or there were things like a mass exodus that materially alters their role. People understand that people want to leave bad situations. Be ready to give good reason for why you're leaving and to talk about lessons learned from the time you spent there and you'll be fine in interviews.

t-3 4 years ago |

Leaving is never unprofessional. How you leave is what can be unprofessional. Conduct yourself in a manner you can live with and make the decision for your own happiness.

tinyhouse 4 years ago |

Do what's good for you. I never understand people that put corporations before themselves. Just to make it clear, while you're employed do what's best for the company, not what you think is best for you (e.g., making a wrong decision for the company because you think it will help you get promoted). Don't hesitate to leave if it's the right thing for you (personally or career wise) and put yourself always first in such decisions.

csee 4 years ago |

Leave ASAP. Personally and for people I know, quitting quickly always turned out to be the right move. The only exception would be if your finances are really tight.

pdimitar 4 years ago |

Unprofessional? Who cares, even if it is deemed unprofessional? (Although it really is not.)

You have to take care of your health, mental and physical, and your career, and your workplace well-being. We only have our time and energy to sell and they are both precious. Spend them so they have maximum impact.

If you don't see any will for improvement, make a 1:1 with your supervisor and tell them you quit. Only state reasons if asked (most such managers won't ask).

brightball 4 years ago |

The nice thing about a situation like that is that you have been presented with a great opportunity for improvement. If you know you don’t want to stay, go to the person in charge and explain to them exactly how broken everything is, why it needs to be fixed and how you can fix it.

If they respect you enough to allow you to do it, you’ll get great experience out of it. If they won’t, move along and they’ll know exactly where they went wrong.

petval 4 years ago |

No it isn't. Just act on the information that you didn't have before. You are not obliged to waste your own time and better opportunities elsewhere.

jccalhoun 4 years ago |

You owe employers zero loyalty because they have zero loyalty for you. Do your best not to make the people mad but feel no guilt about leaving. Edited typo

edem 4 years ago |

Why would it be unprofessional? It is __rational__. By the way you can become self-employed (like myself) and do contracts and then you will no longer have to worry about a lot of these things. I usually have another contrat lined up long before my current contract terminates. Being self-employed also helps with the "job hopping" red flag. Since you're your own company, you never actually change jobs.

someonehere 4 years ago |

The way this world is now, your mental health is more important than a job you can probably find somewhere else with the satisfaction you’re looking for.

leokennis 4 years ago |

Just ask yourself: would this company go out of their way to keep me employed if it wasn't in their best interest (i.e. financial trouble, your skills are no longer needed etc.) or would they give me my two weeks notice?

As you'd probably realize, they likely give zero shits about you personally.

So don't give more than that about them. Just leave. You don't owe them anything, not even an explanation. Let alone your guilt.

FemmeAndroid 4 years ago |

I'm in a similar position but with a management team that is more inclined to listen to suggestions. I suspect they would be most persuaded by a single authoritative source for how we should be run. Is there a single book anyone would recommend about best practices for running a development team that covers things like CI/CD, Issue Tracking, Code Reviews, Documenting features, etc?

BlueSlide 4 years ago |

I quit a job of 2 months with nothing lined up this Monday, the company was full of red flags but I won’t go into it because it only raises my blood pressure.

I’ve decided to take a few weeks out to forget about them so I’m not bringing a bad vibe to an interview/new job.

I was told by friends and family not to quit until I had something lined up, but just couldn’t take it anymore, sometimes you get to your limit I guess.

jpm_sd 4 years ago |

I had a job like this once. I ended up staying for a year and it didn't do any permanent career damage. But yeah, hit that eject button.

KernelPryanic 4 years ago |

Ofcourse no, why do you even think this way? If the job burned you out in a couple of months you shouldn’t even questioning it.

giantg2 4 years ago |

"Almost every attempt of mine to change anything was met with either "yeah we know but we have to live with it for now" or a straight denial to hear me out - brushed aside as a newcomer (I'm senior and was hired as such)."

F them. I would have started looking to jump ship after just a month or two of that.

Copenjin 4 years ago |

Run. It's not your job to fix years of issues created by other people and destroy yourself in the process.

i386 4 years ago |

No, just leave. It’s not your responsibility to fix this unless you were hired to do so.

A trash fire will remain a trash fire.

HeyLaughingBoy 4 years ago |

> protect my well being and my career prospects

This must always be prioritized above the company's well-being.

excitednumber 4 years ago |

Unless you’re getting paid an exceptional amount that you couldn’t get elsewhere, I wouldn’t stick around.

czottmann 4 years ago |

> Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

No, absolutely not. Next question, please.

conductr 4 years ago |

> In short a huge draining mess where I felt burnt out just a few months after I joined and where I honestly don't want to spent another minute.

Who cares if it's professional or not, anything that makes you feel this way needs to be managed out of your life

tarkin2 4 years ago |

Leave. You’re responsible for your own actions not other people’s mistakes.

Articulate your concerns and how to fix them. If you receive nothing but hot air leave.

Rarely are you appreciated and/or properly remunerated for putting in Superheroesq effort.

sloaken 4 years ago |

Leave but line up your next job first. Write a letter explaining your perception of the problem. Email it to your boss, boss' boss etc.

This is a lesson learned in vetting the work environment before accepting an offer.

peakaboo 4 years ago |

No. A company that allows everything to be a mess is unprofessional. Not you.

zbuf 4 years ago |

What's your own level of experience? I think the answer may differ depending on this. Also to get a barometer on just how dysfunctional the company is versus realistic expectations.

itistricky 4 years ago | |

Senior dev (>10 yoe). Not the type that looks down on people and not a fanboy or an evangelist of any sort. But I regard developer experience highly. I.e. I hate to have to spend days to fix a dev sandbox before I even start doing my job.

commandlinefan 4 years ago |

Not necessarily unprofessional, but I suspect you'll find that everywhere else is basically the same. Everything's a mess everywhere and nobody knows what they're doing.

koolba 4 years ago |

If you were shit and the company didn’t think you could be improved, they’d dump you in six months as well.

It’s not personal at all. Find a new job, give whatever notice feels appropriate, and move on.

calyth2018 4 years ago |

They're not going to wonder if it's professional to lay you off if their finances turn shitty.

If you've got the means to leave and do a job search again, I think you absolutely should.

christkv 4 years ago |

If you have no ability to affect change and you cannot live with the existing mess, leave. Life is to short to spend i annoyed or angry when there are so many other opportunities.

dsq 4 years ago |

If you were hired specifically to solve the mess, or if the mess was directly your doing, then yes, it is unprofessional. In all other cases - leave with no regrets.

ldehaan 4 years ago |

It's never unprofessional to leave, it's unprofessional to talk shit after you leave. You don't belong to use company, it's just their turn. ;)

paulcole 4 years ago |

If it’s 6 months, don’t even put it on your resume. That gap on your resume? You worked on freelance projects, consulted, worked on an idea you had, traveled, etc.

wly_cdgr 4 years ago |

You would leave a relationship if that was the case. Why would you stick with something much less serious and important like a job, then?

lamontcg 4 years ago |

GTFO.

You won't be able to change the course of the ship.

I've tried before, it doesn't work.

The only people who can set the direction are the execs and VPs at the top.

rl1987 4 years ago |

What are vendetta developers?

Is it professional for the management to run a project in such a way that it happens to be a slow-motion train wreck?

snarkypixel 4 years ago |

Sonner you leave something you're not happy with the better. The longer you wait the harder it is and will cause more harm

aliswe 4 years ago |

If you have mandate to fix the situation, the stay. If you don't, try to get it, and if you don't, leave.

jb1991 4 years ago |

If they don’t like you, they will have no problem getting rid of you. So if you don’t like them, why not the same?

laumars 4 years ago |

If you’re not happy there then move on. Sometimes jumping ship sends a more vocal message than any thing else

ajoseps 4 years ago |

I was in pretty much the same boat and left after 6 months as well. Massively improved my mood/wellbeing

itomato 4 years ago |

One person's "opportunity" is another's "unacceptable dysfunction".

tluyben2 4 years ago |

I like this kind of situation to be honest: as senior you can make it better (it is your job) and become a hero as well as demanding more pay, bonus etc. Become friendly with one of the c-levels, preferably the ceo and replace the cto (who sounds bad or at least not good enough) with yourself. That is what I would do (and did a few times).

xcambar 4 years ago | |

Senior or not, in many mid-size companies and above, developers are only seen as Individual contributors, with little influence and zero authority.

I'm not saying what you claim is impossible, it totally is possible. Working your way up does not only involve hard skills or soft skills, but also the local context must somehow enable/allow this and that certainly involves a lot of internal politics.

One question though: since you did that a few times, why did you not pick a C-level position (or any high level position) directly after your first success? Why did you prefer to "reset" to developer and work all the way up?

tombatron1 4 years ago |

Would it be unprofessional of the company to fire you after six months if you were a mess?

machiaweliczny 4 years ago |

It's unprofessional to stay there if they don't listen to your expertise.

chadlavi 4 years ago |

No, but be prepared to diplomatically explain it to prospective new employers.

jmkni 4 years ago |

Now I'm just trying to work out which one of my colleagues you are...

BatteryMountain 4 years ago | |

Ha.. all of us at one point?

delta1 4 years ago |

Life is far too short to stay in a job you don’t enjoy.

Aeolun 4 years ago |

Leaving is fine if you do it once. Maybe twice, but hopefully not thrice or you’ll start having to explain yourself during interviews (that may still be fine, but ideally you don’t have to).

p0nce 4 years ago |

Leaving is the professional thing to do.

everyone 4 years ago |

No, it's your life.

anothernewdude 4 years ago |

No. Thinking of doing similar myself. Just biding my time while I line up another job.

jojobas 4 years ago |

It's unprofessional to work with idiots, and it can put a blemish on your CV.

HelloNurse 4 years ago | |

The wrong position at the wrong company is a waste of time and potential learning, which is quite worse than a blemish on the CV.

hda111 4 years ago | |

Can’t agree more. But a gap in the CV is much worse than working with idiots a few months.

lloydatkinson 4 years ago |

No, find a better job.

agentultra 4 years ago |

Leave.

Burnout is a serious illness and debilitating. It can take months-to-years to recover and you'll always carry around the scars. If all you feel is stress and you have no control over how much stress you feel, that's the recipe for burnout.

Being professional about it is handing in whatever required notification the company requires and gracefully offloading your work to the team.

From a hiring perspective I think anything less than a year is a honeymoon period. If you interview the company well it can still take 3-6 months before the organization shows its true colors.

That being said, finding the right company for you is the hard part. Some folks do actually thrive in scenarios like this and enjoy migrating a code-base to a healthy state and correcting organizational communication issues.

Not my thing anymore. The demands on developers these days is to turn us into company therapists. We're supposed to bridge communication silos, get groups talking, mentor and grow staff, train management in how to manage us, etc. And we're supposed to continue with solving technical problems, generate new ideas, and be a source of innovation. It's a bit much if you ask me.

One strategy that I think is important to finding the right place for you is to know what your values are. If you are someone who values maintainability you're going to have a hard time fitting in with a team that values velocity: they're going to move fast and change APIs all over the place and check in the first thing that works and iterate from there. It will drive you up the wall. If you know what you value most you can interview the company to find out what they value and see if the intersection is large enough to convince you that you won't be alone in what you care about.

To find out what your values are you have to think hard about what you think is important to you and write them down. Try to stick to single words like: maintainability, performance, readability, etc. Also look back on your work objectively and see if any of those characteristics come out (we like to think we value certain things but what we actually do in our work sometimes contradicts these notions). Note down any new ones and add them to your list. That list is your list of values.

It's also worth writing down your, "engineering principles." A one or two page summary of how you approach software development. I like to take the list of aphorisms and maxims that I often find myself repeating and sticking to and use those as headings. Then I explain those headings and what they mean to me. You may find some new values in here to add to your list.

Hope this helps and good luck. Sticking with it for six months and realizing this isn't the right fit for you is good! Be professional, give your notice, and start looking for a team that will better fit within your values.

johnbellone 4 years ago |

No.

throwaway0191 4 years ago |

Leave.

throwaway20371 4 years ago |

A job does not care about you. Always care for your own health and life interests above all business interests.

You should not quit immediately, and instead job-hunt so you can get an offer while still working. Hiring companies prefer to hire someone who is still working, and you don't want to burn your bridges (even a shitty company's employees are future bridges).

A lot of people in my company were smart and pivoted to working for FAANG from here, and I think they were here less than a year. In retrospect I wish I'd followed them.