3 reasons why you might consider changing jobs

𝐻𝑖 𝐴𝑛𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑎,

𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑤. 𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦.

I meet many people, who are not happy about their current place. Obviously I am biased, because happy people with plenty of learning opportunities, who feel valued and heard are not looking for external mentors.

Anyway, I noticed that there are 3 reasons why you might consider changing jobs:

1. 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 between your responsibilities and your capabilities

Classical example in the Data field: you want to build ML models, but at your current place your responsibility is to build dashboards and fix SQL queries, which often are not even written by you. 

2. Your 𝐛𝐨𝐬𝐬 is bad

Definition of bad is rather vague. I once wrote an entire post about it. The bottom line: if your boss is bad, you know it. And also you know that it limits your growing opportunities, your safety feeling at work, etc.

3. 𝐓𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐜 people or/and culture

For creating a good company culture you need everyone supporting it. For toxic culture one-two people spreading it and others silently accepting is often enough.

The numbers in the list above is actually an urgency score for company change: higher number means it's more urgent. Sometimes you can have a combination of reasons.

Example: toxic people + misalignment between responsibility and capabilities = 3 +1 = 4 and it's definitely more urgent than misalignment alone.

Unfortunately there are no good recipes on how to change the behavior of toxic people, especially if they are a few levels above you in the hierarchy. You can start a fight with them, but most probably you will lose. For your own sake, instead of useless fights, invest this energy in looking for another place to work. 

With other two reasons you can actually try to change things. More often than you can imagine, a very simple thing works: say out loud about your frustration. Sometimes "bad boss" is just a tired guy, who knows that you are good at organizing yourself and didn't notice that it's been a while since you talked about your professional development. Also probability to apply your recently developed passion for computer vision will be exactly 0 if you never mention it to anyone. 

Before you start the very exhausting process of job search, make sure you give your current company a chance to retain you.

Speaking with someone outside the company might be very helpful. So if things 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦, don't hesitate to reach out and book a session with me. All my sessions are confidential, regardless of the topic you bring up.