Ask HN: How do you deal with the morals of leaving your current job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with the morals of leaving your current job?

3 pointsnatpalmer17769 comments

How do you deal with leaving a company where you feel you play an important role in the success of ongoing operations?

To give background on my own specific situation, I am an early 20's IT professional with a beautiful 5 month old baby & a passion for scripting and process automation. I took a new job 5 months ago just as my son (first) was born. In this time, I've learned a lot and grown substantially. I've met an individual I currently consider to be my mentor who has helped me a lot in refining my scripting design and shared a lot of wisdom and experience about the software development field.

As part of my role at this company, I've spent a lot of time developing custom powershell automation scripts and solutions to repetitious tasks that otherwise would have involved a lot of man hours doing manual systems work. I have a few projects coming down the pipeline that I am positioned as a key resource for, using a scripting language that I'm the only one in the company with experience in. Additionally I have been receiving training on a vendor software suite that we're in the process of upgrading, though I can probably wrap this up in about 3-4 weeks if it came down to it.

The issue I'm dealing with morally is that I've been approached by a company via LinkedIn asking me to interview for a role that offers almost twice my current salary to do the "slice" of my job that I enjoy and want to do full time (Scripting & Automation Development) for a much much larger company.

I'm proceeding with the phone interview, and still haven't decided to take it further if the new company decides they want me. Regardless of the outcome, it has raised the moral question in my mind, what should dictate my loyalty to a company?

I guess I'd be a little shocked you're considering a jump after only five months. Future employers might be a bit hesitant if you end up with multiple short terms on your resume, because they'll have no expectation of you staying with them long term.

That being said, your obligation is to yourself, not your company. If your current company isn't meeting your needs, you are not really wrong to leave. If the roles were reversed and you were not meeting your employer's needs, they would likely have few qualms about letting you go and finding someone else. Presumably if this new employer is offering you nearly twice the salary, and you are able to secure that position, your old employer was not really providing a competitive level of compensation.

I am comfortable remaining at my company long-term because they have repeatedly demonstrated valuing me as an employee, and ensuring compensation and benefits are competitive. I probably wouldn't consider a higher offer at current, because despite an on paper increase, I don't know a new employer would continue to demonstrate the value they place in mean over time.

Depending on your new employer's rules and expectations, should you get the job, you can also potentially do a certain amount to soften the blow for your previous employer. I've generally left the open offer to reach out to me if a previous employer has any questions or issues after I left which I might be able to provide insight on. (Far too often, people leave and any knowledge they have disappears immediately, which is something I prefer to avoid with myself.)

>That being said, your obligation is to yourself, not your company. If your current company isn't meeting your needs, you are not really wrong to leave. If the roles were reversed and you were not meeting your employer's needs, they would likely have few qualms about letting you go and finding someone else.

This. One hundred times over.

Your response really echoes some of the thoughts I've already had on the matter. I'm by no means underpaid given my age and qualifications, however the market demand for my current skill-set far outstrips both of those factors.

I've considered asking, should this or any other opportunity be offered to me, whether I could be permitted a 4 day work week for the first 3 months in order to have a "soft transition" at my current job. I have no idea whether that would be a reasonable request or not.

That's the sort of transition I think would be really nice, but I would be fairly surprised if your new employer went for, even if they were saving 20% of your salary for a while. The other thing that could happen, is your old employer decides they don't really want you hanging around after you've given notice, and has no desire for you to remain a day a week.

Personally, I just would like if it was more common to have more than two weeks between accepting an offer and starting at the new job. Since giving two weeks notice is the expectation for leaving a job, new employers will give it to you, but will tend to push against giving you much more time than that, which is a shame.

I'd like more time to prep a previous employer for my departure, but you can't really notify an employer you're leaving until you've accepted the new position, unless you want to risk that job dropping you before your new job is in writing, leaving you without a paycheck.

I like to think about it from your(current)employers point of view.

On a scale of 1 - 10, how likely is it that the company you currently work for would give you the benefit of the doubt in a dispute? Are they a company that will be angry if you are 5 minutes late to work, but expect you to stay late after work? Etc.

What if you made a fairly big mistake? Will the company take the time to do a moral audit, as you are doing now? I somehow doubt it.

Also, personally, I think it is unhealthy to attach additional obligations to your job. Your current obligations are to do your job and your duties as assigned - you are not paid to worry about how the company is going to fare if you were to be fired/laid-off/quit/injured. That is for management to worry about.

If these are critical projects, and you are the only person able to complete them - again this isn't your problem and should not be your concern. This would be a management issue with a lack of planning.

You gotta do you, buddy. Especially with a little one at home. Don't get caught up in "doing right by your company". Do right by your child.

But maybe this is why I'm not some C-level exec, because I'm generally not going to put into the company more than I can take out. I don't owe my company more then what they compensate me for - and I sure as hell know they wont be doing a moral audit if they decide to lay me off. Why should I do a moral audit if I want to move on?

I guess I like to think of the company in the terms of my coworkers instead of the organization. But you're right, there would be no moral audit before letting me go if they decided I wasn't working out.

I've had this happen twice in my career. In the first one, I gave my employer the option of meeting the offer since I actually enjoyed the job. They said they can only pay within a specified range for each role, which is another way of saying there was no room for advancement. The other company clearly valued me more, so I walked. The second one, the company was being bought out, and I knew what it meant when I was asked to train the new company to do my job, so really it was a moot point, and I walked.

Your company will experience people coming and going all the time. Your responsibility is to you alone - you can't hurt a company's feelings.

If you want to advance... then advance. Otherwise some time down the road you might consider it a dead end gig and kick yourself for not moving onward and upward when the opportunities were falling into your lap.

Is company loyal to you? If not, then it should be easy to walk away. You created some scripts, and learned some new stuff. You gained something, and so did the company. There is nothing preventing you from talking to HR about a raise etc. If they say nope, its time to quit.

If the company received an offer to double their profits on the condition they let you go, they would not hesitate.

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