Should I stay or leave?
I'm feeling very undervalued at my current position. I've been working on my service the longest and therefore was the one that onboarded most of my team. In 2023 my manager and tech lead have largely been too busy to help. For instance, I only have 1-1s one every 2-3 weeks.
The new members we got on our team were new to the company and one in particular has relatively poor communication skills, so I have had to spend a lot of time onboarding them.
Unfortunately, in my performance reviews the main emphasis is on the work that I am delivering and there is not much emphasis on the impact I've had through the rest of the team. But the couple of months I tried focusing more on my work, I noticed the culture on the team degrading.
The hardest part for me has been that I have found my manager very unhelpful in helping me with my career and other frustrations. There have been multiple times where instead of helping I've felt as if he's blamed me. I have expressed this to them, but they have not changed.
Now I'm in late stages of interviews with 3 companies. I estimate the pay increase would be between 10-25% if I receive an offer.
Our team also just changed significantly, we swapped a mid-level engineer with a senior-engineer and got a new manager. They will be reporting to my previous manager so that manager will still be around.
I'm optimistic that the new manager and teammate will upgrade my situation but given the more than a year of frustration without improvement I'm still leaning towards leaving. Though I am having second thoughts as well.
I'd love to get any advice on how to handle my situation. Thanks so much!
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 2
8 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroThis seems like an easy "Leave" to me. Manager and tech lead have been unhelpful, teammates are probably mediocre, you're in later stages with several companies already, and leaving would net you a lot more money.
The new manager and senior engineer make it so that if you fail all your interviews, you still have a (potentially) good option by staying, but it feels like a case of "Too little, too late". Regardless, you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, so I still recommend doing your best to get along with them: [Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech
All that being said, something I tell everyone is that there is rarely a situation where it is 100% the other party's fault and there is literally nothing you could have done better. If the team culture starts degrading sooner after you switch to a more individualistic working style, that's generally a sign that you can do a better job teaching them how to fish (i.e. giving them tools to be a better engineer and do the right thing) instead of giving them fish (i.e. "Do this so your pull request isn't garbage"). I recommend going through this thread here and the connected resources: "How can I help juniors?"
- 27 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Leaving a job always sounds good in theory, but it's harder in practice (grass is greener and all that...). With that said, I think you should leave. Waiting for things to get better is usually a recipe for perpetually waiting.
This part in particular concerns me about your old manager:
There have been multiple times where instead of helping I've felt as if he's blamed me.
A few things to consider:
- Sounds like you've been on the team for a year or so? If so, I have less concern about jumping to a new company. In fact, early in career, job hopping is a good thing.
- How well do you know your new manager? I would not assume the relationship to magically be better, but it could be something to evaluate.
