Ask HN: Leave my job or stick with it through recession | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Leave my job or stick with it through recession

4 pointsthrowhn23838333 comments

I've been at my job at a pretty sizeable public company doing distributed systems engineering for 8-9 months and it has not at all been what I expected. Most of my colleagues are really not great by my measure, and no one cares about what's going on.

I wasn't as interested in this company and team when I was interviewing but they absolutely crushed everyone else on compensation so went with them. Stock value has now decreased by about 80% though so it's actually gone below some of my other offers I had back then in terms of total comp but I'm still making > 270k TC all said.

I'm also the only senior (versus staff) IC reporting to a senior director which has been pretty bad for my day to day work as there is a level of information asymmetry between me and the staff engineers as well as a pretty big lack of direction from my boss. I've basically been sent to find my own work to do and to be perfectly honest I didn't sign up for that and am not really interested in hunting and then killing versus being put onto a project at someone else's behest.

I've discussed these issues with my boss and suggested solutions but nothing has really changed over the months.

I don't think this position is helping my career at all and I had planned on leaving after my stock vests in about 3 months and I put some more savings away to be fully stable financially.

Now with the recession I'm concerned about hopping to a new job at all, grass is always greener and all that.

My biggest concern is my skills will certainly be dulling here unless I spend a lot of time on my side projects especially if I'm here for another year.

My other concern is I'm at the top of my salary band for my position and given that this has been a bit of a crapshoot so far I feel like I could be on the short list for a layoff if they go there since I don't really have anyone going to bat for me.

What would you do in my shoes?

This is probably a good time to move on if you find your job less than ideal.Companies are still looking for employees and are quick to hire. But you'll need to choose wisely. A lot of companies will start to fail if they aren't able to survive without additional investments. Startup investments will slow as investment money begins to tighten. Also, you'll need to make sure that the company is in solid ground since companies might start to do layoffs as companies and people decide to spend less and profits begin to drop.

But keep in mind there is no ideal work solution. Every place you choose will have its pluses and minuses. You can't choose your co-worker so you need to learn how to work in environments you find less than great.

Sounds like a good time to cruise and work on side projects. Honestly these companies don’t give a shit about you (they’ll cut you without remorse when it’s time, it’s just business bro) so why not treat it like a money printer? If you’re feeling stuck and not progressing, either use your learning tools to level up or build a side business or projects.

Im in the same boat with a similar TC. I am burned out from working with promotion driven colleagues who suck at computer science / engineering (btw some of these people are either FANG or ex FANG) and try to incorporate some fancy way of doing something simple that ends up becoming a spaghetti nightmare. Who cares? As long as you’re in good standing with people who matter just let them hear what they want to hear.

Imo this is the most true neutral stance.

I'm on a slightly similar position and woke to a rude awakening when a few people in my company were layoff. Even though I'm not really afraid about my position in that company, that event really prompted me to look deeper into the financials of my company to try to understand why that happened.

I came to the similar conclusion that we see on NASDAQ, growth companies, i.e. dependent on debt, are struggling. But also, they seems to have been dancing all along at the edge of the blade, posting loses quarter over quarter, burning through cash and pilling on debt.

So with that on mind I decided that, not only based on the market, but on my personal concept of a healthy business, I didn't wanted to be part of such company. I have no doubt that the company I work at will get through this but I don't really want to stick around either way. So, I see the rescission more as a shaking and it has showed me things that I wasn't aware of before.

I'm currently talking to a couple of companies and the criteria is established companies that are posting profits, lean towards the "boring" side of "things are working and we just need to keep up" instead of "ready to revolutionize X industry with Y product".

The market for hiring is still really hot judging by the emails from recruiters that I've received over the past few days after my company's layoff came to light (~40-50 in a week) so is not a terrible time to explore options and find some place that you feel comfortable at

The comments in this post [0] where super helpful for me. TLDR; cash is king.

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31386994>.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com