Ask HN: When should you leave a company?

[__t__]

I’ve been working at a big tech company (first job out of college) for the past year and so and I’ve been considering changing jobs for several reasons I won’t get into but one of them being that I feel I could be learning so much more in a startup.

My concern with this is I don’t want to become the person that jumps from company to company that never really properly learns what they’re doing.

I’m trying to maximize for learnings, not money since I’m privileged enough to not have to worry about it.

[togaen]

You want to leave so you can maximize for learnings, but you’re worried you will leave before properly learning what you are doing? Those are conflicting ideas.

Sounds like you’re chasing something, but you don’t really know how to recognize you’ve gotten it. Figure that out. The rest will follow.

[__t__]

I didn’t explain myself correctly. I know what I’m doing but I’m aware that I’m not an expert by any means. The skills I’m learning are essential to any startup that wants to grow IMO so I’d imagine I’d get better exposure in those environments.

You’re spot on about chasing something tho, and I am indeed not sure how to recognize if I have it

[bgoldste]

If you're asking this question, you may already have an answer.

I do think people tend to slightly overstate the learnings that you can get in a startup, and vice versa.

After 1 year, you're ok to leave at this point though a little longer is probably more ideal.

[__t__]

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on overstating what you can learn in a startup. From my (potentially naive) pov, you get more hands on experience and less problems are abstracted away whether it is through infrastructure, processes or whatever and also the work (might?) be more important for the company to remain alive so I’d imagine you’d have to get a better understanding faster in order to keep up?

[ozten]

Prior to the pandemic and big tech layoffs, I think the average tenure was 18 - 24 months for software developers.