[shoo]

Leaving a job is a good opportunity to re-calibrate your pay to market rates. Most companies don't give existing staff raises that are indexed to market rates. It can also be a good opportunity to set healthier boundaries - e.g. if you've ended up working a lot of unpaid overtime or carrying a pager without being paid an extra allowance for it, negotiating a new job with a new employer is a good opportunity to correct that.

I've never regretted quitting a job. The pay rises have often been surprising - the funniest one was returning as a contractor to a workplace I'd gotten bored and frustrated with as a junior/intermediate engineer, getting paid 3x what I was paid before. That was eye opening, and a lesson about negotiation and market rates I wish I'd learned years earlier.

If you are interested in switching track into management or technical leadership, and have no prior experience in those roles, it may be much easier to do this while staying within one org for a longer period of time, assuming the org has such roles to fill (growing company etc) and they are open to mentoring you.

Another aspect is that different colleagues' subjective experience of the same work situation can vary wildly. I've joined teams as a contractor in somewhat challenging corporate environments and projects and had a lot of fun, where some of my colleagues who had already been there for several years had a lot of emotional baggage, and would react to day-to-day situations with much frustration and pessimism. Even if the company is objectively a pretty good place to work, individual workers can end up completely sick of the company's particular problems / politics / failures.

If you ever find yourself obsessing over thoughts related to work, and it impacts your mental health and enjoyment of life outside of work -- that is perhaps a signal of looming burnout, and that it could be a great time to take care of yourself and find a different job. Even switching to a job that is worse on paper in some respects can be mentally like a holiday if it lets you completely refresh and clock off work each week with no mental baggage. Sometimes in larger orgs it is possible to get some of these benefits if you can jump sideways onto a different project.

[marpstar]

> I've never regretted quitting a job.

I have, once. About 10 years ago. But I ended up returning to the company I left and keeping the 20% pay raise I got when I came back. I was happier my second time at the company, after having experienced a truly toxic work environment when I had left.

I stuck around another 9 years. Just left in December. New job starts Monday. Confident I won't regret it this time.