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Ask HN: Confused about career, need help

2 points by roadrunnerfreak ↗ HN
I am a 23 year old Indian Engineer. I started my career in one of the best startups in India, did some great work and learnt a lot. But after 2 years, the worked seemed kind of monotonous and I saw no growth ahead. So I quit.

I had an offer from another startup which had just raised Series A. They offered a 30% raise and I was happy. Their product was something I already used to use and it had immense potential and is definitely the next big thing in fintech space.

However, things went haywire after I joined. I have no idea why they hired me. The company is already overstaffed according to my opinion. The engineers are mediocre and do not follow any best practices. The response time of their app is in the order of 2-3 seconds. They have n+1 queries and n square complexity code all over the codebase. The code isn't modularised. It doesn't even have callbacks at model level. They asked me NOT to code, even when I am extremely good at the stack they are using.

I talked about this to the engineering lead and the response was like "You're in Devops. No need to look after code. You just joined a week back, you can't criticize people here just like that. We are not fools here."

Noone here is concerned about performance. They just want to acquire new customers and show MoM growth to investors. Engineering is in a very bad shape. It is so bad that, there is no way to test this code locally. You have to make a change, push it to staging and then test. Imagine the horror!

I got fed up of this and started applying elsewhere to companies that have been around for 3-5 years with proven engineering team. I have couple of offers now. I am confused about what to do.

1. It has been only 1 month in this company. Is it ok to quit too soon? 2. What happens if the new company also has a same situation? How long will I keep running like this?

Any help is appreciated.

9 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] thread
andymoe
It's always ok to quit and write a company off if it's bad. You don't owe them anything. That said, sometimes you can learn from chaotic places as well. Look at all the exciting challenges you just laid out that could be fixed! (Especially that of leadership and eng culture!) You could start solving them (don't ask permission) and try to bring as many people along as you can. Possibly time box this experiment to six months and see how far you can go!
SherlockeHolmes
It sounds like a terrible place to work at. If I were you, I'd find a place where I'd enjoy working. I know changing jobs too often can look bad on resumes, but mediocre performance in a mediocre setting for two or three years will make it likely that you get similar offers next time you're job searching. I'd take the reins of my career now, really do some research and have an open mind while exploring the next opportunity. I'd contact employees of companies to find out about their work-culture. I'd also find out about what exactly they are doing and see some codes if possible (to get an idea about how my programming style would fit).
sharemywin
I have a problem with them complaining about honest feedback. although, a companies focus should be on growth they need a good product to keep customers.
liquidcool
First, I recommend reading Dale Carnegie and Switch for tackling cultural issues with diplomacy. You're going to need this at every company.

How is DevOps? Is there room for improvement or learning there?

If you are going to switch companies because you see no way to fix things, how did you interview those teams to ensure they don't have similar problems?

ankurdhama
Keep looking and don't think that "running like this" is a bad thing. If you don't like something then move on. I am also from India and I know how shitty the culture (engineering or other) in most companies is. In fact in most of the companies there is no culture at all. It would be best if you can figure out these kind of problems before saying YES to a company and you can ask about these things in the interview. Interview should not be a one sided affair, try to make it like a two way conversation and if that doesn't work then right away you would know that this particular interview is not worth it.
roadrunnerfreak
This was just my second interview and given that they have a great app (atleast from outside) I didnt expect any of these. I'll be more careful in the future.
afarrell
It is definitely worth asking "what is the approach to automated testing here?" in interviews.
isuckatcoding
Lol I'd kill for a job like that given my current job
TheRealmccoy
hello !

one great way of learning is to be able to adapt to different organisations and scenario.

i understand that what you are going through is uncomfortable, but trust me, what you would learn, would be invaluable.

the reason is, there is more madness in this world, than method.

so who survives, the one who has seen the most madness and managed to grow through or the one who has been always careful or lucky to choose the structured way.

its been one thing, that i have experienced personally and I had the same thoughts, like you. In fact, I told my boss also, that I am quitting.

but then I told myself, that all good things have originated from chaos.

so let it be...

i took that as a learning experience and continued there.

cheers! abhishek