Ask HN: Would You Stay at a Boring, Well Paying Job?
Context:
I'm currently working as a software architect at a very boring, slow moving software company, I spend most of my days having to wait for other people/companies or procrastinating which drives me crazy.
The thing is: I make between 2 and 3 times the salary I would have somewhere else, I have to travel to very cool places around the world to meet with clients.
This allows me to fund my projects and startup (and retirement), but at a cost: My sense of purpose is slowly but surely going away as I spend my days doing things that could be done so much more efficiently but that no one wants to improve. I have not had a real challenge at work for quite a long time now.
Questions: Have you ever been in such a situation? Have you stayed, why? How did you weigh the ups and downs?
Thanks for the answers
25 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadHonestly, it's a luxury very few people ever get in their lifetime: having enough experience and enough of a financial cushion to really connect with their sense of purpose without worrying about daily expenses. If this job gives you that, I'd highly recommend taking advantage of it if you can.
On the other end of the spectrum, staying at a job like that will eventually whittle away at your sense of purpose as you mentioned, and what's the point of having all that cash if you spend most of your waking hours feeling useless? Not to mention how quickly your skillset will become stale if you lose your desire to improve. At least that's how I looked at it :)
The good thing is, the people and labor conditions at the company are super nice. For me that is the main reason to stay, and probably I will stay at least until reaching "Senior Dev" status. But I can imagine to switch anytime, even back to research, and as soon there is some good opportunity (2 times the money would certainly do it). So I keep looking, applying, and try to persevere in the meantime.
- The company's inefficiency is an opportunity for you - you clearly have ideas on how things can be improved. Develop those into actionable items, navigate work politics if necessary, take more responsibility to improve the company. Your sense of meaning and potentially your salary (if your employer cares) will improve. If it's really a place where you can't make a difference, there's too much bureaucracy, incompetence, bad actors, ideas aren't judged on their merit etc. only then consider checking out mentally or physically. Which leads me to...
- All of the down time you have at work is an opportunity to work on other projects (work related or your own) or to learn new skills.
- If the ideas above don't work and you have an available opportunity for engaging work, only then you should consider leaving.
Peter Principle maybe... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
If this job isn't a field you're deeply passionate about, it's not a fight worth fighting.
And if it is something you're deeply passionate about, try to learn everything you can about the industry while you're in that job, try to identify an opportunity, and then leave and try to start your own business filling that need, where you can sell your solution to that same bureaucracy (amongst others). It can be a lot easier to sell them a solution from outside than within.
Also, spend part of your time planning your exit strategy. Try to leave on your terms at a time of your choosing after you've laid the groundwork for a satisfactory outcome.
Keep completely mum about wanting to leave. Say not one word about that.
Yeah, I thought that too. :)
I would ride it out for as long as you can, saving as much as you can. The Cash Cushion you'd get would then give you a lot of options...
Boredom is a factor, but it's probably less important than the other factors I mentioned. I could leave a good place because of boredom (in fact, I may do so before too long), but I'd leave a lot sooner because of bad pay, bad management, or bad co-workers.
It's also important to leave before you turn into that person who does barely anything for 10 years and are then unemployable. Unless you are okay with that. But you are asking on HN, so I'm guessing you are not okay with it.
>My sense of purpose is slowly but surely going away as I spend my days doing things that could be done so much more efficiently but that no one wants to improve. I have not had a real challenge at work for quite a long time now.
To paraphrase something posted on HN "Find a way to wind your own gears." I had a job like yours and I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of control and the number of people who actually made things worse in their effort to control things. This job came soon after a challenging/interesting but really bad job (crazy work hours, toxic boss).
I was ready to quit the new job, but I had some stuff going on in my personal life so I ended up finding a career coach to explore where I was, how I got there, and where I wanted to go. It helped me find ways to wind my own gears. Part of that was realizing how much of my own growth had some from my own initiative and learning, not only from my job. I had to find ways to be true to my values despite being in a job where I felt my values were violated in a regular basis.
For example, we had a project where we had to process a large quantity of data. What followed was 6+ months of meetings and nonsense as people chased after building a big data stack and trying to build something that could solve all the companies data problems (hint: After more than a year nothing useful was delivered, but the PowerPoints were amazing)
Partly though the project I thought about how the solution might run on my laptop and spent two weeks building it in Python. I never told anybody what I did. But I learned a lot(!!) more about handling large quantities of data that I ever would have trying to influence that nonsense big data project.
>I spend most of my days having to wait for other people/companies or procrastinating which drives me crazy.
I think the important thing is to find a way to not let it drive you crazy. Channel that frustration into something useful for yourself. Lots of people will say "You have an opportunity to improve things and show them how it's done." But sometimes doing that is useless and not worth the energy. It can be like trying to use logic to convince a toddler to change their mind - the stupid person in that situation is not the toddler!
Also, realize that the vast majority of jobs are dealing with politics, waiting for other people, etc. It's important to find a way to deal with that without driving yourself crazy.
I can relate so much, my last job was really fun and challenging, but the salary just wasn't enough (being realistic, not greedy), landed this current opportunity and I couldn't refuse at the time.
I'll probably surf until I have a nice cushion then switch full time to my/another startup.
At least I can spend a lot of time doing certifications and online classes and keep up to date.
Thanks for sharing with us
When I was really struggling with my frustrations, one helpful piece of advice was "Remember, careers are long. And they go up, down, and sideways." Taking a longer view can help make the current situation more tolerable.
Thanks for sharing this personal account of your experiences. However, the part of you creating a personal project in Python to could have potentially automate the solution to you company's project would have been neat.
Now if there's a way to automate procrastination, the politics, work stresses and etc ...sign me up!!
To be honest, sometimes organizations cannot get out of their own way. There was another situation previously where two of us solved a big problem using a low-cost non-standard (something the company did not have in their stack) solution. We presented it up the management chain and mostly just got our hands slapped because that solution was not aligned with the roadmap. It took over 12 months before they started to consider that solution, and even then they twisted it badly so it "aligned" to the larger solution architecture of the stack. So even when they added that to the stack, we couldn't use it the way we had intended because they didn't want that solution to overlap with other parts of the stack.
Obviously this wasn't a place where I was going to spend 10 years. But for a while, it was a welcome respite from the toxic job before it.
Even though you came up with your own solution, it sounds like based on how your current company operates, that there are many factors beyond your control to get to the root of solving a problem sooner and more efficiently. But instead, when they seem to get around it, an unnecessary amount of time has gone by and more work is created on top of what needed to be done in the first place.
Well hey forgive me for trying to find a silver lining in things, but this personal account can kinda serves as a small indicator as a note wherever we end up in time whether tomorrow or years from now work-wise...that we'll have hopefully put ourselves in better position or be a part of something where we're continuously progressing leading to great things. And perhaps along the way, the things like company politics, procrastination, and the like are mitigated to a larger degree where we can focus on doing good work without all the nonsense.
Maybe I sound a bit naive but it can make you appreciate the flaws of being human and not a machine in which what you are programmed to do it has to execute. At least being human you can adapt, keep life in perspective, and maybe along the way have a renewed sense of purpose that comes with the challenges which can lead one to be excited to wake up everyday to.
My apologies, for being a be long winded and going off the rails a bit. I'm not in tech as I'm currently learning programming to get to the point someday but nice to learn a little what it's like when working in a professional company environment when you have so many moving elements in play while you're trying to accomplish a goal in mind. But I guess that's the game of life. :)
Hang in there...you at least you noticed a problem then actively tried to fix it while at the same time kept in some perspective that it could've been worse when you mentioned at least it wasn't your old job before it. :)
Another skill is navigating politics of companies and getting to a point where you can make efficiency changes or being able to influence the path when the opening comes to make a change.
I think you should map out a departure plan, unless you can launch your startup on the side. In my experience, if you have a certain amount of money, then a sense of purpose becomes very valuable for personal satisfaction (whereas if you don't have much money, getting money can provide that sense).
So gold is so good you will not leave. At one company I worked for, the gold was pretty good, not great. When the layoffs came, about a third of the people said 'Oh thank GOD! I have always hated this'. For what its worth, that was not me, I loved the work, hated some politics.
I still regret it sometimes. YMMV.