[akhayam]

“You are not a tree. if you don’t like where you are, move.”

Happened multiple times to me and I recommend pulling the plug early. My resume has 3 jobs that lasted less than a year and 4 that have 5+ years each. People sometimes ask why that is so in interviews and my answer above always gets a chuckle and a nod.

[brntsllvn]

Makes sense. Tell me about some of the short ones. What do wish you'd known before accepting? What was different about the 5+ yr gigs?

[akhayam]

Beyond the obvious 3 (toxic people, false promises, value system misalignment), here are 3 signals that made me leave quickly (stack ranked):

#1 Your boss doesn't inspire you _every day_: I don't mean this metaphorically. In the first year, almost every day you must be like "holy molly, I am so lucky to be working with this person. I'm gonna learn so much from him/her/them."

#2: You are the smartest person in your team: I always tell people: "if you are on top of mountain then you are probably on a bunny hill. Go find a real mountain." You need people who pull you up, while you grow them in other ways. So there must be something about the people around you where you are like "I wish I had that. I must learn how he/she/they do this."

#3: Company focusing on the wrong things: Too much tactics, too much strategy, too much product, too much engineering. Most of these symptoms manifest themselves as products/features that don't align with where you think the world is headed.

Now for what I would have done differently:

For #1 and #2: I must say that I have been so fortunate to work with some really really inspiring reports, peers and supervisors. In the one odd case where it didn't pan out that way, I wish I had spent a little bit more time with the person I was gonna work and the team I was gonna work with, before I accepted the offer.

For #3: This one is easy. You can literally spend half a day reading up on the company, their products, and the general domain to figure out whether this one is worth your time or not. What's wrong internally that makes them ship the wrong things isn't important for your decision any way.

None of the above signals are a disaster in big companies as you can always look for a different team which checks these marks. But if you are going to a startup or an early stage company then it's better to rip the chord quickly.

[pinewurst]

A minor quibble (in a very good comment) from experience re #3: if you’re considering a more mature company, you can be biased favorably by long-standing reputation while not being able to see that, internally, the end of the road is coming up quickly.

[akhayam]

+1. Reputations are deceptive. One must dig below the surface

[brntsllvn]

> I wish I had spent a little bit more time with the person I was gonna work and the team I was gonna work with, before I accepted the offer

Some wisdom here. Thanks.