Ask HN: Eight Months in and this job is unbearable

Keep working until you have a new position. That's the smart play...

Don’t suck it up if it will affect your mental health (sounds like it is).

The best option as someone else has said is lock in the new job before leaving so I’d be getting out there interviewing.

Worst case you have the savings to just leave, my issue with job searching when out of a job is self confidence.. I always interview terribly in those times

I wouldn't have lasted 8 months. Seems that the job description was deceptive.

You are most fortunate with having lots of savings.

If I were in your situation I would quit now, begin a startup doing what you most enjoy doing and then using that as your current job, seek out an ideal job. If you choose your niche well, you could even be a micro-acquihire.

Get a new job asap. I don't know how much energy the job sucks out of you for the job searching process. Yes, getting hired from a position in another might get you a better salary. But preparation and applying to jobs requires energy. Eventually it's better to have free energy to get an even better job and quit immediately when you have a plan of attack.

With that much in savings - quit now for the sake of your mental health, and your soul.

If you have that much savings you really should just leave and look for other opportunities or explore spaces you are interested in imo. Usually I hear it is best to look for other jobs while you are employed, however from my experience it is really hard to pull off looking for jobs while being simultaneously employed if you have a heavy workload.

I left my job of 5 years earlier this year because I was purely burnt out, with only around a year of savings but don't regret it at all. I've had the opportunity to explore spaces I'd never have the chance to do while working at a traditional job, and even if my individual entrepreneurial efforts don't work out, the skills I've picked up while technically unemployed are very attractive to the field that I'm actually working in. Think of it as a full stop pivot in my professional career.

But really, working a job you hate only gets worse and worse. Your productivity will start dropping and you'll start to increasingly feel like crap. Burnout is really rough, and you are almost certainly more valuable than you are being treated at a company like that.

That's what I'd do at least, but yeah your call of course.

2 or 3. I've left within 3 months with similar jobs. The longer you stay, the more it drags you down. It gets harder to interview because your confidence and energy levels have taken a beating.

If there's one advice I'd say to a younger version of myself, it's to get out faster. Most mistakes lead to building some strength later on, this isn't one of them.

The difference between quitting now and later is that being jobless puts time pressure on getting a new one, so you'll probably miss out on some less urgent companies that take months to interview, and you're more likely to take another bad deal. I think people are not quite picky enough about jobs; 90% of them are bad, same with 90% of the employee pool. So you need some room to go through the interview process and reject bad employers.

Quit. Life is too short for such horrible experience.

If you're in the United States, I would leave right now, take a few weeks off to get your head back on straight, and then look for a new job. This is one of the hottest job markets I've ever seen for software engineers, and perhaps particularly in the data science arena. I'm certain you could get another job quickly.

If you're not in the States, then I don't have a ton of advice for you, but I would certainly look around for other options. Life's too short to be miserable 40+ hours per week.

Quit and never work full time again

Also, why is "suck it up" even an option? Seems literally insane to do that

Are there some other variables that you haven't mentioned in the thread? like your Visa status, prestige of the job etc?

Because option two seems like an obvious choice with your current skill set and saving. Thus, I feel like you might have other factors in play here.

I have hired many people here in Poland leaving their prior job after 8 months or less, it’s ok if they can explain why. If you have 10 years of work experience you know what to do already, stay or leave are both reasonable options, it depends on what makes you less anxious I think. If not having a job is scary look for one before leaving it.

You're a data scientist and you can't use R or Python? Excuse my brashness, but what the fuck kind of shop is this?

Quit. You're in control, dial the pressure on that company.

Move on. Early in my career I ended up in a job that wasn't at all as marketed and it absolutely drained me. Unfortunately the economy wasn't as strong then as it is now so it took me ten months to find a new gig. In this market, you'll be fine so don't waste anymore time. I don't even know that it's a terrible thing to just say "mulligan" if you are asked in interviews why you are leaving so soon. So long as you aren't overtly negative toward your previous employer, I find it almost reassuring to hear someone say "it just hasn't worked out to be the gig I expected."

Leave. 8 month on the job is the right time to understand, that it’s not a good fit. You can’t use R/Python, Excel only – this right here is a good explanation for your prospect employers, why you aren’t satisfied with your current job. Btw, if Excel only, are you sure that you aren’t doing data analytics under name of data science? Unless your your resume is full of positions where you stayed for under a year, it should not be an issue. Seems like you have enough saving to time it well and spend some time to find a better fit.

Option 3. A 8-month tenure looks too short on your resume, even by the mercurial tech tenure standards. Filling it up to 12-month or longer will help

A. It looks better on your resume. You don't have to explain yourself every time someone asks why you left so early. Explaining yourself like this for years to come whenever you interview is a drag on its own.

B. A few more months will give you time to interview at your pace. Consequently, you will have a better pool of offers and a better gauge of what the market can fetch for you.

C. More time is good for building connections before you leave. I understand you are not learning from your day-to-day operations. However, are there coworkers that you can learn from before you leave? Do you wish to build and maintain bridges with some of these people? Abruptly quitting burns bridges, and it may be better to put conscious effort to build some connections before leaving.

Python has the ability to read and write Excel spreadsheets... so read in data, process with R or Python, write results out in desired Excel spreadsheet format. Would that work?

Seems obvious to me.

Why not to you?

Sounds like you have a lot of leverage to tell them “this isn’t what I signed up for. I’m going to start looking for new jobs now, I’ll keep getting paid etc but I’ll be doing the minimum here until I leave.”

Heads you win, tails you don’t lose.

If they change it, you win. If they don’t change it, you win because you quit. And you get less pressure while you look.

1/4: learn to stop worrying and love excel

Been there. Quit now!

Another possible option is to look for other opportunities in the same company. It is usually much easier to switch department/office/sites that to switch companies.

Of course, I am making the big assumption that he problems are you are describing is not company wide and is localised to your manager/team/department.