I am actually thinking a lot about changing my current job at a reasonably big fintech company.
Background: I am an intermediate developer who joined this company about 1 and a half years ago. Before that I worked at another medium sized local company for about 6 months, and before that I worked 1 and a half years at a local start-up which was my first job as a dev.
Reasons for leaving current job:
- I feel like no manager / senior engineer cares about my growth here. I have not had a 1-on-1 in 5+ months (my team finished our last project, my previous manager jumped ship even before it, and after that there was an organizational re-shuffle and the manager in my new team is soon leaving so he DGAF, with no replacement in sight). Senior engineers are too busy to even think about it. If it continues this way I am sure I'll be overlooked for promotion next review cycle (I know promo is not guaranteed but with no Manager to work with towards promo and put up my case to higher ups promo seems really difficult)
- I am absolutely NOT loving the current project (it's basically replacing old code with new, and by old I mean 20-25+ years old code which no one in the org knows how it even works).
- I do NOT like the tech stack in the new project (it's Java, a language I did not want to work with. The previous project was with JS which I was more comfortable in). Ideally I would love to work with Rust or Elixir or JS/TS.
- Despite finishing the previous project on time, my team got paltry raises and 1 promo (from a junior to mid, which is seen as auto in the company).
- I want to work hands-on on a fast-paced project and build something cool, deploy it, feel closer to the users and the product, rather than being a small cog in a huge wheel.
- I want a remote job, the company is bent on hybrid, which while not enforced strictly, I am sure they are monitoring which will come into play next performance review.
I realize my current job also has positives:
- pay & benefits are good
- work life balance is good
- no pressure most of the time
- teammates are good (it's more siloed work now in the new team where I feel some engineers hide information from others just to get the edge, but overall good teammates).
Changing jobs too frequently will also make me look bad to future prospective employers, but at this point I am just not feeling the connection to the project and to the team anymore, with no one to talk honestly to. (and coz of recent organization re-shuffle zero chance of change in project). My original plan was to leave this company, if I had to, after getting a promo, but that now feels very distant, and with me being demotivated, even more so.
Am I thinking of switching too early?
I have a System76 Lemur Pro 10, while the hardware quality is poor (poor speakers, poor quality chassis, poor trackpad), it has been pretty solid otherwise for the last 4 years, with PopOS as my daily driver which I really love.
For work, I use a 2019 MacBook which has great hardware, but I am not a fan of MacOS. Will soon ask for upgrade to an M1. (My perfect laptop would be Apple hardware running PopOS).
My next laptop will likely be a Framework laptop unless System76 rolls out their own hardware which is much much improved than their current lot. I hope my current laptop will probably last 2-3 more years, if not more. (btw I use Steam Deck for gaming needs)