Morning
Has anyone ever moved to a new company and then quickly regretted it?
What sorts of fhings have give you the “ick” - what sorts of things made you quickly think you might have made the wrong decision?
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Yeah, “new job remorse” has happened a couple of time myself, I did a survey for a charity group on people in tech in June and this was the most common reasons if it helps, data was around 300 people aged 21-63 across UK, US and Canada.
- workplace culture can be vastly different from what was portrayed
- environment was toxic, overly competitive, too hierarchical, that disconnect lead to quick disillusionment
- a role was sold as something different during the interview process
- lack of proper onboarding, pretty much left to fend for myself with little direction, poor communication, and no formal processes to get me up to speed
- I had no laptop/work equipment for ‘x’ months (this was shocking how many people had to use their own equipment for long periods of time
- sways of micromanagement to no guidance
- absent leadership
- lack of collaboration “made work feel isolating or like we were not making an impact”
- unrealistic expectations
- goals constantly changing “loads of us ended up burnout and frustrated”
- limited career progression
- little room for advancement
- no clear growth path, “especially when it was promised during recruitment, it made people second-guess their decision”
- inadequate learning opportunities
- “a lack of learning or upskilling opportunities can be disappointing”
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All of the above plus an unwillingness to expand testing to a full process. Simply test tickets, never improve the way test are conducted, never improving the process.
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That’s a big one for me. No agency over the processes, especially my own.
The idea that ideas shouldn’t be raised or discussed, because of process, authority or discomfort means that nobody has any agency or autonomy. We can’t improve our process, nor even improve the ideas behind them, without open and honest discussion. We need to be able to question the status quo or we stand still. Which basically means moving backwards.
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I think there even isn’t the perfect process for testing. I know that not changing anything will never be a good process. Projects vary, projects change, so should your testing.
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I’ve moved dozens of times since I started testing 1989 - inside companies, to governmental units, money companies… to managerial roles, testing roles and other roles. It’s never what you expect and its never what it was in the beginning after a year or two. Change is always confusing - but also exciting!
(Nothing compares to getting your first managerial role, meaning being the one that hires, sets salaries and most of all become a part of a management group. The dialogue in those groups is just something else…)
That point 4 - feels like this could be exacerbated in the current era of work from home.
I once dropped out during the trial period because, I had hard issues with a coworker and my boss does not helped me/us resolving the conflict. He said, that he wanted to, but did not.
On specific occurrence from that:
In your Scrum Planning the senior tester always insisted that we only can have the 3 same testing tasks per user story. Design, execute and something I don’t remember.
Me and others wanted to add more specific tasks but that senior tester always put us down.
Fixation on ISTQB. You should get X certificates and anything must match the definition of 
.
I stopped an application because of that.
When I join a new job, I ‘test’ (learn) a lot of things.
In my mind I easily highlight the negative ones as ‘bugs’ that annoy me.
It can be about lunch options, commuting time, working hours, staying overtime, flexibility of schedule, places to relax or take a walk around the office, lighting, temperature of the office, availability of the outside air, hardware available, software installed and what I can manage myself, the desk, the chair, accesses to tools platforms, integration with teams/groups, challenge of the tasks given, expectations, stability of the processes/people/product/role, restrictions and fixed mindsets, ability to debate reasonably smart subjects and goal orientation, business value focus on most things we do, reporting management style, role, responsibilities, salary, growth, training internal or external, onboarding, and more.
It takes me a couple of years to either accept that it’s a decent job, or hate it/burn-out because of it.
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