Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
On Quitting My Job
“What makes you think you were doing bad work?” Asks the psychologist. Not a real one, just the call-and-response in my cranium.
“Well, there’s only so many hours a workday you can spend on Ricochet when you ought to be doing other things and still think you’re a good worker. I’m not going to sit here taking their coin forever when I’m not providing commensurate services in exchange. It’s dishonest.”
“Has your boss talked to you about this?” Pretty much the first check to perform when someone talks this way. It goes this way with depression; the disease feeds and grows off of lies you tell yourself. Maybe I’m doing bad work, maybe I’m only depressed and think they’re doing bad work.
“No, last annual review the boss man said he was pretty happy with the work I’ve been providing. Frankly, that was a surprise to me. I wasn’t happy with the value I’d been adding at that point.” The hope here is obviously that I’m lying to myself about my poor job performance. If that’s a lie then as soon as I disbelieve I can stop worrying about it, be a little happier about life, and importantly, not have to quit my job. But is it a lie?
“And your coworkers? Have they noticed anything?” Gathering more evidence.
“Noticed? Can’t say that they’ve noticed. Can’t say that they haven’t, either. Hasn’t gone far enough that anyone’s said anything, at least in my hearing. Still, I’ve left them plenty to notice.” I expect people to notice a great deal more than they let on. I assume no one’s spoken up out of a certain amount of politeness or unwillingness to stir up trouble. Or maybe they haven’t noticed; people really don’t think much about other people. Not something I’d like to presume on, however.
“So if the ‘boss man’ hasn’t told you you need to shape up, and none of your coworkers have complained about the quality of your work, what makes you think you’re doing a poor job?” And that’s the meat of the question. If I’m lying to myself then quitting the job is a large scale act of self-sabotage. If I’m not then… well, as long as we’re being honest it’s not a great scenario. You want to quit a job when you’ve got another one lined up already.
“I can measure, can’t I? This isn’t a case of ‘I feel like I’m worthless.’ This is me calculating time spent on the internet versus time spent doing something productive. This is me measuring my rate of progress on projects versus similar projects a couple of years ago, and coming up short. This is me counting the times I’ve switched from working on necessary projects to working on fun projects because at least that way I might get something done. Look, one of my assets, I’ve got an extremely logical, scientific mind. I trust my own ability to objectively evaluate these things more than anyone else’s, and that’s even taking the crazy into account.” Perhaps a touch arrogant, but I’ve been measuring my mind for years.
“Let’s take it as read that you’re right about that. What makes you think about jumping ship to any other job is going to give you better results?” A fair question. If your problem is in your head you can’t walk away from it.
“Because my job is in Industrial Engineering. Nothing against the discipline, but it ain’t me.” I may hold some things against the discipline, but nothing personal.
“When you say ‘it ain’t me…” Ah yes, the old ‘repeat the last three words back to him’ school of psychoanalysis. Hmm…
“Have you ever studied economics?” Being an inhabitant of my skull I’m going to assume she has at least a passing familiarity with the subject. “F. A. Hayek: ‘It’s the curious task of economics to show man how little he knows about what he imagines he can design.’ I believe that wholeheartedly. Industrial engineering is… not that. Working on a factory to make it more efficient, yeah, that’s great. No problem there. Modeling a factory ever more accurately in order to make predictions about the future? I don’t really believe that’s possible past a certain point, and I think our department passed that point a long time ago. Centralizing decision making around product flow in order to maximize output? Practically gives me hives thinking about it. What you’re doing is you’re assuming your model is more accurate than the real world out there, and asking people to dance to it. Just a bad idea.”
“So you have philosophical objections to the work, and that’s enough for you to quit?” Might be?
“Well, that’s not all. The other thing is I like a bit of chaos in my life. Okay, more than a bit. I’m more comfortable with disruptions to a daily routine than having a daily routine in the first place. I like unusual circumstances, I appreciate having to think on my feet and having to adapt the plan. I’m all about building capability for dealing with unforeseen circumstances. All this? Anathema to the Industrial Engineering mindset. It’s inefficient. I’m not knocking that way of thinking; it’s very useful when you’re looking to maximize a factory. I’m just built wrong for it.”
“When you say you’re built wrong—“
“Not in a ‘woe is me, why did God make me broken like this?’ sense. The Good Lord built me the way I am for a purpose. That purpose doesn’t seem to be Industrial Engineering. I’m just slotted into the wrong category in the working world.” Honest truth. I try very hard to understand the different ways people’s minds work, what motivates them, what they enjoy, how they play the game. I should have a decent idea of how my motivations work by now.
“Okay, okay. You’re set on quitting your job. Why not wait a bit, find a different, a better job on the side, and only make your jump when you know you’ll stick the landing?”
“Because I have been waiting a bit. I’ve been waiting too long already. I’ve weighed and dissected the question. And the longer I stay at this job the worse I do. Job-hunting without already being employed makes that game harder. But job-hunting, while employed, is proving impossible. I’ve spent so much of my energy by the end of the workday, by the end of the workweek, that I just can’t handle the emotional Hindenburg that’s the job hunt.”
“Okay, let’s say you get another job. What does it look like?” Now there’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
Just a quick note: This is, as they say, based on a true story. I quit my job, I don’t have another one lined up yet. While the long term prospects of shiftless bumming are sour, in the meantime I’ve got plenty of seed corn to eat. I’m confident that I’ll be able to get a better job, just as soon as I figure out what that better job is. Is highwayman still a valid profession?
Published in Economics
My personal favorite is when Oracle Corporation (which is big enough to know better) *updates* patches, instead if releasing a new one.
As in:
“Have you applied patch # 6543217 to your system?”
“Yes”.
“Did you download it before or after January 12th? Because we changed it on that date.”
“uhhhh….”.
I mean, isn’t the point of numbering patches so you can tell from the number what it contains? If you’re going to *change* a patch, shouldn’t the changes be a new patch with a new number?
I mean, isn’t that *JUST FREAKIN’ BASIC***!
One of the divisions of the (more than a billion dollars in annual revenue) company where I work has a shopfloor set of applications known as “Toddware”. Because Todd wrote and supports it.
God help us if Todd ups and leaves.
Job security.
The problem is that one day the voices in Todd’s head will tell him to it is his destiny to herd goats.
HR will then write a job spec for the ages.
As long as he doesn’t meddle with the goat software…
This summer has been super busy at work for me. I often feel like I’m coding 3 scripts at once. Our team has been tasked with rebuilding a model from scratch and have it submitted to model validation by mid September. It’s a model no one has wanted to fix since the original builder left ages ago. The team that the model is for has been “using” it and just applying judgment overrides. So they’re not actually using it. I’ve only been here a year so I don’t know how long people have been pretending to not notice it. Of course now the big bosses care and cannot believe no one has done anything since this Tony person retired. #Tonyware
Time is an issue?
Congratulations and best wishes. Been there done that; I’m sure you’ll do better than I did.
I am also pushing 50.
The stats on middle aged men getting hired right now are scary, based on the people I am talking too. There is a reason so many of us are working on consulting or starting our own businesses.
But also career limiting, as it keeps Todd stuck in that position. Management can’t promote him or or move him to a different role in the company. Todd may be OK with that, but he should at least think about it.
Many politicians and lobbyists seem to think so.
<sarcasm off >
<cynicism always on >
Its like you’re inside my head.
I have been at the same job for 10 years and 2 months … 3710 days, not that Ive been counting…
I need a change so bad, Ive been considering driving for dashing dishes or door dash … just to test it out to see if I could replace my income doing that… While it might be fun to be out and about doing that in August or September… November might start to suck. February would definitely suck.
Maybe doing a gig or having several giggly type jobs would be an improvement – because at least there some variety to the monotony.
I’ll add my 2¢ regarding consulting:
Don’t do it.
Yeah, you get to charge a boatload, but hustling for work will eat up any excess. Plus, your taxes get about 75% more complicated overnight.
I did it for a decade, and it was not a fun time.
I like that. Sounds fun.
The way to make it work is to find a big corporate client that hires consultants because they don’t want to hire full time, permanent employees. Then you can keep the same gig year after year, while still charging consultant rates. My last eight years of working were for one client, and the rate I charged is why I could retire so early.
Really? I need to look this up.
Yeah, when I spent six weeks at JP Morgan back in the 90s, everyone I met there explained that they’d all been fired on a recent Friday and showed back up to their desks on Monday. With a 50% raise.
I, too, was going to suggest consulting. There was something that took you to your last job, and if you could get paid for that specific aspect…well, you are experienced in that field.
“So yeah, I bought your car, but as you’ll see in the contract, you have to drive me around while wearing a uniform with brass buttons…so, you know…drive.”
“Yes, Mr. Blofeld, we have eliminated everyone involved. The program will stay dead.”
Edit: Not that funny.
“We see from your resume that you are great with spindles, but how are you with folding and mutilating?”
You know, I understand folding and spindling, but who mutilates?
It’s just like the warning about airplane smoke detectors:
“It is against Federal law to tamper with, disable, or destroy the lavatory smoke detectors.”
One would think that “tamper with” pretty much covers all the bases.
Or find a pimp.
I was a contractor to a small consulting company. They had the salesforce, and did all the billing of the end clients. I invoiced them, and they paid me, sometimes same day. They billed the client about $7/hour more than I was billing them as their cut.
General Todd: Kneel before Todd.
I’ve done that, too. The last two screwed me over, so I’m gunshy now.
One place I worked had a “temp” that had worked there for more than 20 years.
One day he showed up for work and they wouldn’t let him in the building. They terminated his contract overnight.
That can happen to FTEs too.
I respect you for rolling the dice Rhody.
If it’s good keep us updated in the PIT.
If it’s crash and burn keep us updated in the PIT, but call it a life-affirming experience or some damn thing.
Did he burn the place down to retrieve his stapler?