Ask HN: What are the ramifications of quitting a job before finding another?

[neuroticfish]

I'm in a situation where it's nearly impossible for me to job hunt. On top of endless work (nights and weekends) and stress is intense burnout that make it difficult to even think about programming outside of work hours. I have probably 8 months of emergency funds to live off of but how much more difficult would it be to find a job without already having one?

[batmaniam]

You will be extremely lowballed at any offer you get, with the company not willing to budge. I've personally seen this happen to several colleagues of mine. Even their recruiters just shrugged and said it was all they could get for them.

Definitely start interviewing, but in order to do so you will have to stop working unpaid overtime for your company. Since you're already leaving anyway, promotions or looking to get ahead of your peers is out the window, so focus on yourself, and not your work. That's the most important step! Keep it 9-5.

[fred_is_fred]

I can offer a counter example to this - I was laid off and by choice didn't even look for a month. I had no issue negotiating offers. Part of the key is not disclosing (ever) current or previous salaries.

[batmaniam]

Nowadays, a lot of recruiters ask for salaries. And even if you don't provide one, they will base it off of known salaries of other employees of that company (or your region). So they know the baseline, even if you don't provide the recruiters with one.

Increasing, the hiring landscape is becoming more hostile to us. I guess you got lucky (congrats), but I would not count on that. Companies are always out looking for cheap employees, and the power dynamic is almost entirely in the favor of companies. So I would really encourage (for OP) to make careful plans, backup plans, rather than rely on luck itself.

Also OP, we get you're exhausted from overworking. It's also ok to take vacation before you start your interview journey. Recharge a little, it'll make a huge difference when you're going into an interview headstrong rather than tired out.

[fred_is_fred]

The job market has swung wildly in favor of the employees in the last 6 months, I know this because I'm trying to hire right now.

[muzani]

I've done it before. The process can be extremely long (months). It's longer the higher your salary expectations. At lower paying jobs, a single interview with the CTO/team managers and you land the job.

At higher paying ones, you might have to do a HR filtering interview, code test, hour long chat with an engineer, a higher level manager, a whiteboard, another code test, and then present it to a panel which consists of four engineers... and possibly get rejected somewhere along this route. Some of the people in this process are not always there and they may not put hiring at first priority, so this can drag out very long.

If you have a "runway", you'll be under pressure to perform, which ironically might make you screw up somewhere along the process as I have before. It's so much easier just to settle for the lower paying job.

And as someone who has been on the hiring side, I've seen people who we wanted to hire, but failed because of this pressure. Two people who were going through extended interviews just refused to do an hour long coding challenge properly (they lazily copied something from SO which didn't answer the question). One interviewee snapped at the interviewer during the test. The process was also quite long because we didn't really need another person, so it took about 2-3 months to get back to the second guy we interviewed, who wasn't that qualified but better than the others.

However, if you're facing intense stress and burnout, the lower paying job might be a step forward.

[LandR]

I reckon the bar is so low for software developers that if you can't geta job in eight months you are doing something very wrong. So many applicants can't even code a simple console app.

Just be somewhat proficient and you'll be fine!

My last few jobs were all left with no other job in place and i think the longest it took to find a new position was three weeks.

[brailsafe]

It's not a bad reckon, but it's often very hard to figure out what you're doing wrong. I'm now dipping into my second year of unemployment!

[PaulHoule]

I've done this and had another job in three days.

I've also done this and had another job in three years.

[gt565k]

Schedule some interviews and take a week or two of PTO to get those interviews back to back and secure a new job.

Once you get get a job offer tell them you can't start for a month. If that's ok with them, accept and put in your 2 weeks, and get 2 weeks unpaid in-between jobs to unwind before starting your new journey.

The last time I switched jobs, I even negotiated a 3-4 weeks paid leave as I had PTO I wanted to take from my previous job, but they wanted me to start earlier than 1.5 months (the date I gave them mentioning I wanted to take my vacation at my old job). They hired me and let me take 3 weeks off after working for 2 weeks and it was all on payroll not affecting my annual PTO hours.

[p0d]

I left my job with 1 year of funds. I am 18 months in and still have 1 year of funds. Remember that your funds are a moving window i.e. you can earn money doing something even if it is not the job you wil get.

I'm taking two days off at the moment. I woke up with the reality no one will contact me with an IT issue. My new life has it's pressures however I enjoy the less frantic environment.

[yokaze]

What is causing the end-less work? Have you communicated your limits to your manager, or do they simply not care? How about your colleagues, do they feel the same?

Talking from personal experience, as I am a "good worker", and tend to take up every problem I see and solve it. Which is kind of self-exploiting and not sustainable in the long-run. I have to actively remind myself that setting limits and communicating them is part of the job, as otherwise you'll end up burnt out. The difficulty here is, it may be even okay in some short-time frame, it is not black and white.

Just food for thought: Would it be an option to be also frank about it to future employers? E.g. I am currently not at the top of my skills due the current work-load. Would they be willing to re-negotiate after a certain time of working part-time to recover?

Personally, I value in a company (or team) more that they treat you humanely, than having a pay-check which is possibly three times as high as now. But that is the luxury of having a high salary.

[brailsafe]

Nothing is worse than burnout. You need the motivation to find a new job once you quit, and no matter how bad the finances get, burnout will step in and fuck you worse. I'm on my second burnout that led me to basically stop functioning and let myself be fired, and I haven't found anything in a year!

[jlund-molfese]

I don't think it's especially difficult to find a job as a developer within eight months, but you'd be giving up your current job as a fallback. You might not feel like you can walk away from an offer that's good, but not great. You'll also have a reduced ability to negotiate without a current salary, and it'll be hard to shrug off rejections.

If it is at all possible for you to take a leave of absence or reduce you workload, that would probably be a better option. You might feel burnt out now, but being unemployed adds its own type of stress.

[deathtrader666]

In India, recruiters will not even accept / process your job application unless you fill in the fields for "existing salary" and "expected salary". And if you enter 0 or some random value, you may receive a call to verify those numbers.

As part of your joining procedure, the new company's HR will necessarily ask for past 3 months payslips from the previous employer. And if the numbers don't match what was disclosed, they quickly rescind the offer.

[simplerman]

Please don't work for free. Call in sick if your company won't approve PTO. Also take a few sick days because stress is not good for your health, don't waste your vacation time on recovering from stress. My company officially consider "Mental Health" as one of the reason for calling in sick.

And definitely don't quit without finding the next job. You will be under a lot more stress and it would affect your performance.

[taurath]

I would simply just save as much as you can right now to give yourself more runway, see a therapist, maybe even take a medical leave of absence for burnout (which IS a thing and is protected, sometimes you get paid as well), and set a time you will leave.

In 8 months you can certainly find another job, but more likely you’ll want to spend a little time decompressing. Don’t worry too much about it, software developers are still in very good demand.

[slipwalker]

IMHO, you would lose leverage on your negotiation.

[yosefjaved1]

It sounds like you are already burnt out. What are you doing about that right now?

Outside of that, quitting a job before you have a new one makes it more challenging to get a new job. Recruiters and employers find those that have a job more favourable plus it gives you a negotiating advantage when it comes to salary.

[uberman]

I strongly recommend that with only 8 months of reserves you don't quit before having a signed offer.

[kiesselbach]

Why not just start slacking off hard? What are they going to do, fire you?! You want to quit anyways. I would say do not quit before having another job. Most likely you will slack off and it will go unnoticed because the need to overwork yourself is in your head.

[kiesselbach]

I want to add that being unemployed can produce unexpected shifts in your mindset. A certain desperation sets in. You become more socially isolated due to severing connections with coworkers. A lot of “friends” will subtly inch away from you because relationships are often built on what you can extract from the other person, and now you have less to offer them. Besides now you don’t want to talk to them anyways because you are ashamed. Will your girlfriend / spouse still respect you? That is to say I don’t recommend. There is a distinction between quitting a job triumphantly and in good spirits versus quitting out of desperation. The latter should be avoided.

Read my post about contract jobs if you do quit and have trouble finding something new.

[lifeplusplus]

Ive seen people do this and it's actually healthier of an option

[atat7024]

As long as you're okay with it being known that your word is worthless.

[lifeplusplus]

if a person has decided to quit a company it's a bigger reflection on the company than the person. Individuals rather not leave as moving jobs is lot physical and psychological stress. So fault must lie heavily on employer side. It's completely ok to look out for yourself. Especially if you have no financial cushion. Looking for a job while you have a job is much much better position than looking for a job while employed. It literally puts you in another category.

[probinso]

honestly, I've done this several times. if you have the money to go half a year without trouble, and your career has been good so far, you can probably do fine. It is extremely hard to juggle working while interviewing. I've only done it a couple times, but it really meant waking up at 5:00 in the morning so I could get interviews done before my day started. if you're honest about why you left a job, it doesn't seem like people really care. also you have to stay active in work while you were not employed. have a project you want to work on, or a thing you want to learn, now is the time. People love to see that

[meiraleal]

I had no issues quitting for a year and then explaining later that I was in a sabbatical period. Last time (3 years ago), I got a job offer 1.5x better than the one I quit for traveling. You only lose leverage if you need a job fast.

[logicslave]

Done it many times, never had a problem. You just need to be confident in your skill set.