Leaving a job

It is not an easy decision to leave a great company. And yet, people being people, there is no way anything could be perfect: even a great company will have areas that need improvement, or where things are simply not being done right. And so the question is;
“Would you stay in an environment that makes you unhappy, or would you go searching for a new environment in the hope that the future might be better than the past?”
That’s a tough question, and an important question, and like all important questions it has no simple, one-dimensional answer.

To me, it is a matter of degree. I have worked in 6 (six) different organizations in the last 20 years. My longest service: almost 9 years. My shortest service: 1 month. In all cases, the key motivating “push” that started me looking outside was that there was no satisfaction at the end of the day when I packed up to go home. But don’t get me wrong – we all have days when we go home disappointed. We all have bad days – that’s why Daniel Powter’s song rings so true in our ears.

But we pick up the pieces, find a resolution or work-around, and things start moving again.

Sometimes, though, there is no resolution, no work-around. People want to do things in a certain way, and no amount of psychology or rationalization or cajoling from your favorite manager can make you forget that in your heart of hearts, this is wrong. Now - to quit for ONE reason seems petty. But things can start to add up, like a mountain of small boulders that finally becomes too tiresome or too stressful to scale day after day.

And so, I found one day that I was exhausted, wanting to go home, but staying in the office till 10pm putting together information that I really thought someone else should have done if they had done their jobs end-to-end and not just piecemeal. That was the day I seriously decided I would accept the next reasonable offer I got (I had already declined one job offer).

So that’s how I started looking out. How I got my new job? Well, that’s another story.