15 Reasons Why People Should Change Jobs (but rarely do)

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Switching jobs, whether within a company or outside, is usually a huge life decision. Folks really struggle with these decisions, and rightly so because, in some sense, these are irreversible decisions — once you make the move, you can’t easily Ctrl-Z or Cmd-Z or ‘Amazon return’ your way back to your previous state, or recoup the time lost. Over my many years in the industry at IBM Research, Google, Facebook, and now Databricks, hundreds have shared with me reasons people switch jobs, in the following capacities:

• as hiring manager, looking for new team members;
• as manager saying goodbye to existing team members;
• as mentor, mentee, friend, colleague — basically, anyone that felt comfortable enough to share their real reason to (want to) quit.

Over the years, I’ve kept track of anonymized stats of ‘reasons to quit’. Coupled with my own reasoning for changing jobs twice in the last 4 years, I felt equipped to call out some less-obvious reasons folks should be changing jobs, but they often don’t. But let’s start with the basics. Below, I’ve grouped these reasons into roughly three buckets based on how they communicate these reasons.

Caveat: This note is heavily biased toward tech. That’s all I know.

A. The Openly Spoken Reasons for Changing Jobs

Here are the top reasons people give for quitting, and note them in public posts — namely social media and internal forums. These are safe, socially acceptable reasons, and often multiple apply all at once.

• I’ve been doing this for a while, I want to try something different.
• I lost my job to layoff or otherwise, and I needed a new one.
• I am getting a bigger scoped role. [implicit]
• I am getting a bigger title. [implicit]

B. Common but Unspoken Reasons for Changing Jobs

These are extremely common reasons for quitting, but also very polarizing. You’ll probably never discuss these reasons publicly. However, your family and close friends probably here about them from you on a daily basis. Here are some examples, I’m sure there are more:

• I have an incompatible/intolerable manager/skip who’s here to stay.
• I will be making more money in the new role.
• I have no clear path here to grow to the next level.
• My company is going through too much churn (e.g., Twitter).

C. 15 Reasons Why People Should Change Jobs (but often don’t)

And then there are these really tricky reasons, that in isolation may not be big enough reasons, but as they start to accumulate, it’s a sign that maybe you should start looking. One running theme with these is that they definitely affect your day-to-day experience at work, even though the long term ratifications may not be obvious to you. Here are key ones:

• I don’t feel respected for what I think I’m capable of or worthy of.
• I want to have a step-function change in my skills and knowledge.
• My company is working on different products and services than what I aspire to work on, what I am passionate about.
• Similarly, I don’t believe in my leadership’s vision and the long term viability of the product line or even the company as a whole.
• My company is building products I am just not supportive of.
• I want to be surrounded by folks with skills that I aspire to pick up
• I want access to foundational tech that supports rapid learning and development on top of it, so I don’t have to worry about basics.
• Conversely, I crave a chance to build foundational tech at a place where they don’t exist yet, because the learning opportunity is priceless. And if I successfully build it, I become a legend within that company.
• I want a fresh start, a chance to run away from a toxic workplace that’s impacting my mental and physical health, not have to deal with difficult people, people that I don’t get along with, and so on.
• I don’t find meaning in my daily work — perhaps I am a tiny cog in a huge wheel. Hence I want to take a break and dramatically change direction to meaningful work e.g. philanthropy, or a smaller company.
• I don’t have champions who vouch for me, celebrate my wins, coach and mentor me when I fail, and genuinely wish for my success.
• I don’t feel psychologically safe at my workplace — for example, I am scared of failing, or speaking up, or trying to change the system.
• I want to pursue my real passion. I want to try out an alternate career — travel blogging, writing, real estate, cooking, opening a restaurant, etc.
• I am not clearly on a path to financial independence and/or early retirement, so I need a growth path.
• My company forced return-to-office, but I live far away, so I am wasting X hours each day commuting.

In my mind, if folks took these reasons seriously and pushed themselves to switch jobs because of them, they’d be much happier at work (and life). But each line item not feel like enough of a catalyst individually. If you start to check off multiple of these boxes, then suddenly it starts to feel substantial.

Exercise: 

Honestly and without prejudice, how many of the above apply to you? 
If it's 2 or more, it might be seriously worth considering a change.

Assuming that you are convinced you need to move on, you are faced with another hurdle: making it happen. At this stage, I find that many people start giving excuses, which, frankly don’t hold much weight.

(Wrong) Excuses people give for not working toward change

There are many excuses, but the ones below stand out for me as often quoted but rarely convincing. Of course, wrong is a strong word, but its use is often deliberately provocative to help spark internal debate, and there are legitimate excuses. For example, your financial or personal situation may not permit taking time off for interview prep, you may have a visa situation, or you may not have the luxury of taking financial risks. However, in plenty of cases, such personal circumstances don’t apply — my note here is aimed at them.

• I find interview prep to be too much effort.
• There’s no free food, pool tables, or other perks at these other places.
• Change is risky. What if something doesn’t go exactly as planned?
• I am waiting for a promotion that’s probably years away, but my management chain keeps dangling that carrot.
• I am too comfortable at my job, I have all my friends here, etc.

Put simply, these are just different types of inertia of rest. Thus begins the fight between a desire to do something different, and a strong impulse to maintain status quo. And more often than not, the latter wins.

Exercise: 

How many of these reasons are using to defer working toward change?

Conclusion

Massive cliché but true: Life is too short to be wasting more than half of your waking hours at the wrong company, with the wrong boss, working on the wrong technology, deferring your passion, or being on the wrong career trajectory. Time is money. Time is the scarcest resource we have. And all that jazz. If you got the point, muster a bit of courage, inspire and push yourself, and get read to move on!

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