Ask HN: Do you normally leave a job with another lined up or | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you normally leave a job with another lined up or

6 pointstonym94289 comments

Do you normally leave a job with another lined up or do you just quit and spend one/two months looking for work?

as some have said, job hunting while unemployed can be very stressful, increasingly so as time passes. Also, as time passes, potential employers start seeing long unemployment periods suspiciously, unless you have valid reasons for it (family care, education, time-off...), compounding the difficulty of finding a job. If you are in a hot sector and have hot skills, it may not be a problem, but the reality for the majority of roles and industries is the opposite. My opinion is that potential employers do prefer people who have a job (it provides an indirect validation of your skills). The ability to start immediately is most of the time a plus but not a game changer, given that the base assumption is that candidate will need a notice period. having a job also helps in being more relaxed during interviews and more daring in contract negotiations). Yes, it is easier to find the time to go to interviews, but today many of the initial rounds happen over the phone and skype. For senior positions it is not rare to be interviewed over dinner. Personally I would always prefer to keep my job until I have a signed contract from a new employer (unless, i guess, I hated my current job so much to be a mental health issue or I was completely burned-out)

Well, I just left one, and was expecting a few weeks of hunting, but as a contractor sometimes things turn up on literally the last day in the job. I said yes. I guess either would have worked.

A couple of notes

- a job hunt is a full time beast and waaay easier to manage when not having a full time job

- lots of people I respect say they never do the agency / CV / resume thing, they use their "network" - i clearly do this wrong as it never works for me

- I am going to start doing the network thing (actually keeping in touch with people) - my only idea so far apart from phoning people which seems rude, is http://hackermews.org

- Networking seems to be two different things - having a marketing presence, blogs, talks at conferences, self promotion etc. This is something many / most people who have successful networks seem to do

- but they also seem to have a lot of repeat business - so I suspect they are you know actually good at the job. which is a problem as far as i am concerned :/)

So the only way i find work is the traditional job through agents / ads approach. I want to expand my presence and keep in touch with people in case that works, but let's be honest - an ad on a job site is a qualified lead. A guy you worked with three years ago is just "brand awareness" (or being friendly. but who has that many friends)

Disagree with both of the other commenters here, job hunting is super stressful when you don't have a day job to fall back on. I would not normally leave a job without having another already lined up.

There was the entire idea of fuck you money back a few years ago on HN. Basically, you save up enough money so you can say, "Fuck you", to your current job and leave.

If you have FU money, then it doesn't matter so much.

Sure, FU money is great, but almost no one ever has FU money, even when they have a shit tonne of money, because the hedonic treadmill is real, and at some point you end up with people depending on your financial support.

Also, this is not necessarily advocating for staying in a shitty situation, but rather if the situation is fine not quitting before starting a job search.

Depends on your definition of "FU money". The common one is pretty close to "never have to work again", which very few people have.

On the other hand, I suspect the GP was referring to something more like a double-size rainy-day fund (enough to live on for a few months while job hunting, without worrying about depleting your emergency fund).

That isn't all that difficult to accumulate on a software developer's salary and is probably a good thing to do before taking on additional obligations like a kid or a mortgage. (I agree that it would be nearly impossible for most people to do working fast food.)

Accumulating savings for a few months of expenses is easy enough, and is definitely a good move, but it's still super stressful to watch that amount get smaller every month, and it gets smaller much quicker than it gets bigger. It's a buffer between you and moving back in with your parents, but it's not FU money in any meaningful way.

Yes, I agree it doesn't fit into the standard definition of "FU money". And how much you'd need certainly depends on the job market for your specialty and location.

But what I'm describing shouldn't be the "Lose your home" buffer. This is on top of that rainy-day fund, and saved up specifically so that you have that flexibility to be between jobs for a bit without having to snap up the first mediocre opportunity that comes your way - whether it's because you left voluntarily, you got fired/downsized, or the company you worked for just plain went under.

Yeah it's usually easier to get a full time job if you can focus full time on job hunting. Being able to start 'immediately' also gives you an edge over other applicants.

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