Shortest time you've stayed at an IT job?

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Beneficial_Skin8638@reddit

2 weeks. Started a job working for a federal prison. Title was systems administrator. After doing training my first task was replacing aboit 250 monitors and mice. The mice were cheap and had to serialized and write down every single one. After doing this task I sent an email that I was not returning and left all everything on my desk and never went back.

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No-Butterscotch-8510@reddit

Month and a half. It was an open office plan and they expected me to keep my earbuds out so I could hear them any time they had a question or comment from me… so basically they didn’t care if I could concentrate at any part of my day. Also, their “senior IT person” was some 19 year old that reddited his way through his job role. The guy told me user education would be too hard and pointless. The owner once said “HIPAA is just documentation”.

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bernhardertl@reddit

Half a day, in reality they didn’t have the money to hire someone. I got told when I reported for work on my first day. Since I got a proper notice and letter for unemployment from the manager I just had to sit around a couple of hours.

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pc_load_letter_in_SD@reddit

I worked for Unisys here in San Diego when they had a server manufacturing division here. Pretty much just did burn in testing.

Lasted about a week.

Yes, I contacted a lawyer, and yes, I got compensated.

When I asked what the plan was for training and support in their absence I was laughed at.

8 months.
My boss was mentally tearing me down.

He was a dick for no reason.

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Vindaloo6_9@reddit

Fuck him

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NanobugGG@reddit

Yup. He was also the type that knew everything about the setup, because he made it at first, and he was the first IT employee, so he automatically became the boss.

So when I heard he was on sick leave with stress, I was like:
What. A .Shame...
But not for him, but for his co-workers.

I still got a friend there, so I know they hired in a consultant for 6 months to take over his job. That sounds expensive AF.

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Accomplished_Sir_660@reddit

Half day. Mercury luggage doing the same thing to each luggage that passed by. Left on 1st break and didn't even ask for my pay check for the couple hours worked. Turns out I an office guy not a floor guy.

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Accomplished_Sir_660@reddit

Sorry u said IT job. My bad.

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Nik_Tesla@reddit

he didn’t even need to worry about paying me because I’m sure his company is in a worse financial situation than I was personally.

Good thing they're in talks with hospitals after that burn.

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Stonewalled9999@reddit

can I some work for you I like the idea of bonus and stock options.

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ML00k3r@reddit

One day.

Plenty of red flags but the nail in the coffin was you needed your supervisors permission to leave your cubicle to go to the washroom through....Skype.

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AdolfKoopaTroopa@reddit

Any jobs where I need permission to go take a piss are no nos.

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RoomyRoots@reddit

Is that even legal? Even in China and the USA?

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Frothyleet@reddit

Could vary by state but generally speaking your employer can regulate your breaks and is very limited in what they have to provide you.

This made me laugh harder than it should have.

winter_roth@reddit

Two weeks. Got access on Monday, realized it was a glorified printer support role by Friday. Ghosted Monday. They still email me system alerts.

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ManyNarrow4383@reddit

Two weeks. Manager ghosted me for the first five days, then got mad I wasn’t delivering anything. I realized it was gonna be like that every week and dipped.

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technos@reddit

A single afternoon. After a a half a dozen telephone meetings we'd boiled down hours, equipment, and rates and signed a contract.

And when I arrive I find out most of what they'd told me was aspirational, probably cribbed from some vendor's case study in a business magazine.

Like, their 'Win2K' file server was actually unpatched Windows NT with the old 3.1 interface. Their 'network closet' had a broom and a dustpan in it, the actual networking consisted of daisy-chained hubs under desks and some dial-up modems.

Oh, and all the software was OEM or pirated.

I gathered all the photographic evidence I could (in case they sued me) and advised them not to lie to the next guy on my way out the door.

Didn't even bother to bill them and it was the last time I bid a job without an on-site inspection.

A friend of mine had it worse. He was hired to 'beef up' their Help Desk. The guy talked a good game, even showed him around the office and introduced him to some of his future 'coworkers'.

Came in the first day to find his coworkers weren't, he was the entire help desk, and there were hundreds of tickets already assigned to him, all reassigned from his boss the night before.

He was still trying to figure out a plan of action to divide and conquer when the man tried sneaking out with a set of golf clubs on his shoulder.

He went to HR, told them not to bother printing him an ID badge, and to send the check for his hour fifteen to his home address.

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PanicAdmin@reddit

1 week.
I was in a small consulting firm, and my boss moves me on a contract inside the SOC of a major TLC company.
I had already worked there, and i knew all the pros (very few) and the cons (metric tons) of it.
Even before he moved me, i was already contacting people in other companies to secure another job.
After 5 working days, i moved.

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Techguyeric1@reddit

8 months, I was with an insurance company for 10 years, and they were bought up by a huge conglomerate insurance company with their own IT people out of state, so my boss let me look for other jobs because he knew that I wasn't going to keep my job for much longer. My last day was October 31st

I started at a dairy AG company on January 2nd (cool having 2 months off got to see my oldest daughters first steps), I got a call saying that the HR person wasn't going to be in office her flight got delayed and to start the next day and I'd be paid for that day. I should have listened to my guy feelings.

The Head of IT lived 3 hours away, and was moving everything to AWS, wouldn't let me have an admin login to Office 365, had to add every new computer to Azure AD before I could join computers to the domain.

It was a shit show, I quit 8 months later after not being able to take it anymore. No ticketing system, dairy farmers dropping their computers off randomly and when I told them I couldn't fix it because it didn't have a power cable (this was a laptop), he told my boss that I refused to help him, and I got my ass chewed out.

6 months. My wife had our daughter so I took the full 8 weeks of paternity leave because my wife developed a blood clot in her lungs. I was at home with a 7 year old and a newborn shuffling back and forth between the house and a hospital to collect breast milk and getting essentially an hour of sleep a day.

The literal day I’m back, they let me go under the guise of “before you left you did this thing, but you did it wrong, yes we know you got the write off from 2 other people that it was right, but it was still wrong, so due to that, (and definitely not because you had a newborn with a medical emergency and took the whole 8 weeks of paternity that you were allotted) we gotta let you go.

Good riddance, because they were getting ready to IPO and that failed harder than a windows 95 machine being hooked up to the net without SP3 and the manager was clueless about IT in general.

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DriveGeneral9269@reddit

Hired as an 'I.T Specialist' (first red flag)
Realised about 2 weeks in that I was going to be a receptionist / order shipper (lol)

Constantly expected to stick to broken processes, doing huge builds of between 500-1000 raspberry pi flashes, while the phone is ringing every 5 minutes and no one else in the office dares to touch the phone. Don't forget the 'NPS' calls (cold calls) I had to make to RETAIL stores (yes. our ceo wanted us to call retail staff, working in retail stores, with customers, during the busiest times of day, to ask how we're 'performing' and do a survey)

Yeah I lasted 1.5 years before my boss thought it was "mutually beneficial" to part ways (I was the most sour person there as I was carrying the entire infrastructure of the business on my back - this is important later)

I had suggested hiring another 1 or 2 support people part-time, but no!

Why would we need extra people when I'm getting it all done right?

After I left they constantly messaged me for documents, passwords, all the stuff i had handed over, which I did not acknowledge, and subsequently hired 4 people to replace me.

Now I'm working a dream job where I'm not pulling my hair out every day

Some people are just fried in the head.

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theblitheringidiot@reddit

Like 2-3 weeks, I can’t recall exactly, I think they hired the wrong person by mistake. My hiring manger looked visibly shocked when I shook his hand. He seemed caught off guard and looking every which way and shooed me into the kitchen. That felt alarming but I just took it something had come up and certainly it wasn’t about me. It was about me, they let me go after a few weeks.

They also grilled me about my political affiliation which i had none, I wasn’t even registered but they said it sounded like something someone on the left would say and then a few coworkers stopped talking to me like week one. It was a hot ass mess.

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DriveGeneral9269@reddit

You should have looked into discriminatory dismissal, sounds like it to me

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xHusky7@reddit

First 2 years of my career at my first job and I was basically just a cable monkey.

But nobody else had any idea what they were doing either especially the management. When I came into the office they were not even using a private range for their office subnet.

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redfester@reddit

1 morning. turned out my whole job would actually be excel monkey for an inept finance dept. girl bye

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blizardX@reddit

What was the job description and what the wanted you to actually do?

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redfester@reddit

business systems administrator or something like that. i have been in my current job for almost 15 years now so it was a long time ago. i recall being tasked with converting thousands upon thousands of lotus documents to ms office which would have been fine. all kit at the time had to run on 32bit windows and office for their informix data sources/links to work properly. the majority of tickets were related to that and their queries failing due to missing links. it was my primary objecting to get my head around that mess (not mentioned during interview). i didn’t have the mindset i do now to just crack on and figure things out. i was young and had zero commitments so just bailed at lunch time 😳

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ComicOzzy@reddit

I had zero other interviews. None. And then I got one right at Thanksgiving, when I was sure I would get none at all until the new year...

The job was to open Access, type in a state and county name as a filter, run the query and paste it into excel to send it off to another company... and I would be doing this up to twice a day.

I was about to bail but the boss was like "do you have any other offers? We need you. You need us."

I said OK... I'll give you 3 months, but no promises after that.

Fo sure!

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Binky390@reddit

so just bailed at lunch time

HA. I've never had one of these experiences, but at my old job, the "enterprise apps" group hired a guy. I can't remember what his exact title was but this was a group of guys I'd known for years because we were a university IT dept and I had graduated from the university and worked there when I was a student. A lot of them had been there for years and were alums themselves. It was just a tight knit group.

Anyway, the guy stayed for about a week and that Friday he was the last to leave and left his ID, keys and laptop on the desk. They came in Monday and realized he had quietly quit. They were pissed but I thought it was a little amusing.

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sole-it@reddit

yeah, i would do the same if i am young too. But if it's now, i probably will bail and come back with a LLC and a proposal to help them handle the whole transition.

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Unhappy_Clue701@reddit

Never done it myself, but followed someone in who had done just that. Turned up on day 1, worked the morning, ‘went for lunch’ and never came back to his desk. The job itself wasn’t too bad tbh, I stayed for three months as it was a short term contract. So not really sure why the previous guy did that.

My own record is four months. Two of which were working out my notice period. Doing IT at a recruitment agency (I was in IT), absolutely loathed it. Felt sick every Sunday, knowing I’d have to go back in to work the next morning. 😞

geolectric@reddit

Ahh so they actually needed a programmer...

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redfester@reddit

i don’t think so they had a dev fella who maintained the tables and data but he was too precious to investigate lowly excel/odbc problems (so was i by quitting of course). it was probably an easy job once you got familiar with how his brain worked. i think the role just came at the wrong time for me. i wanted to tinker with hardware and learn useful things back then

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ClassicTBCSucks93@reddit

It’s surprisingly common how many people lack the fundamental knowledge of basic Excel use even know their job requires them to spend most if not their entire workday in it or referencing it.

yep, hell, I thought that myself but that was based on what I was told and I clearly didn't ask the right questions.

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Starfireaw11@reddit

3 weeks, working for HP. Interviewed for an application support role for a particular client, turned up for my first day, and was put in infrastructure support for a completely different one. It wasn't a bad job, just not what I wanted to be doing.

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SayNoToStim@reddit

5 months. It was one of those "IT support" roles, I was the knly IT person. Pay was awful, 24/7 on call. The previous guy kept insisting "everything was documented." Most of the documentation consisted of stuff like "the computer is back behind where Mary used to sit." They wouldnt buy premade patch cables, I had to make my own. Most of the licenses we had were trials, I just had to figure out how to go change registry entries to reset the trial period. I was expected to travel to sites hours away multiple times a month.

I used it as a learning experience because I had all of thr keys to the kingdom and then quit without notice.

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xsam_nzx@reddit

Making own patch cables is all you had to say. Yes I can make a patch cable but I would never choose to make one.

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BobFTS@reddit

10 months. New VP got hired 9 months in. He was a psycho said we are going on mandatory 60 hour weeks with no extra pay. I said nah, I’m going to work my regular hours 40-45 hours a week and no weekends without the extra pay that was offered when I got hired. All the younglings were too scared to say no and worked every weekend. I found a new gig with higher pay. Everyone on my team left within a year. Except one guy who was super green.

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karlsmission@reddit

1 year. My wife was pregnant and had medial complications. daughter had some complications after birth. Stayed long enough to 1) know she would be OK, and 2) find a job that gave me benefits day 1. if she hadn't been pregnant, I would have quit within the first week or two.

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PersonBehindAScreen@reddit

9 months. Which I guess isn’t short when putting up with a bad place. Junior sysadmin job during Covid.

Constantly functioning as tier 2 helpdesk although I was formally part of and reporting to the “engineering” team.

I was in office next to the helpdesk inside the cubicle farm with the rest of the company so I’d get the walk ups too. No leadership support to direct them to creating proper tickets so I never got my own work done

Worst was being the “home for everything without a home”. I was maintenance, pseudo-HR, facilities, etc.

I left for a junior cloud consultant job. Stayed for a year and then jumped into Microsoft as a “SRE” though I’d really say I’m more a general cloud engineer.

I don’t plan on leaving but given the climate, the homelab is back up now. Working on Linux and some other things so I can stay ready in case I’m back on the market again

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-TheManWithNoHat-@reddit

2 weeks. I left because I didn't think I would be able to survive. Not the job, but the whole "living in another city among coworkers all double my age."

It's not that i was afraid, I already experienced living independently in another country during college. It was stressful then and I wasn't looking forward to repeating it. My pay wasn't good enough to keep me from stressing about finances (which is more of a personal issue)

It didn't help that the company didn't seem all too interested in giving me accomodation... or even my contract. They only got back to me about Accomodation when I told them "hey so I don't feel like working here anymore..."

Actually, reading some of the comments here made me feel a bit better. Cuz not a day goes by where I don't regret leaving while I hopelessly apply to more jobs. The pay was awful but it was atleast something.

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The_Frame@reddit

My very first IT job right after high school. Worked for a company I later learned was basically a ponzi scheme. I stayed 89 days and was let go with about half the company to cut costs.

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Jayhawker_Pilot@reddit

Second day, my manager started screaming at me about running out to get lunch. I never came back from lunch.

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c4ctus@reddit

Uh, nineteen years.

And counting.

I think it's Stockholm syndrome at this point.

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rdoloto@reddit

1 day

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modernknight87@reddit

I am on my 2nd professional position (I don’t count my internship as it was through the college I went to school at). My first was 8.5 years (Sept 2014 to Feb 2023) and now my current I have been at for a bit over 2 years (Feb 2023 - Current). So I would say 2 years and 5 months so far :)

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shaun2312@reddit

2 months, it was a very religeous company, and they asked me to shave my beard because they thought that i was hiding something

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Three days. Reasons given:

At orientation I followed too far behind while being led through the office, making it difficult for the person to talk to me.
I burped without saying "excuse me".
I sneezed on someone.

One year.

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Ivy1974@reddit

Week if that. The other was a month and after doing the math figured it out I was making more collecting unemployment than commuting to a job that I had to pay for my own parking.

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Jazzlike_Clue8413@reddit

A couple years, if you leave much quicker then that your resume will be full of red flags. Employers want to hire someone who will be around for 10+ years.

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Grower_munk@reddit

I held that opinion for a while but found it had very little impact and behaving the opposite (job skipping) is the best way to rapidly increase salary.

Nothing wild - 18 months-2 years, not saying skip every 6 months.

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Jazzlike_Clue8413@reddit

yeah that's not far off what I said, a couple years is about right. If I left after a month I suppose I just wouldn't put it on my resume, even at 6 months I'd probably hide it haha. My salary went from 50k - 65k - 95k. I stayed at the middle job for just shy of 2 years, so I essentially doubled my salary in 2 years. I am not sure how much more I can reasonably expect to make as a sys admin and I love my current job so I am not likely to go anywhere else anytime soon.

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Karbonatom@reddit

3 months the company got sold so I had to find a new job.

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Tilt23Degrees@reddit

yea, 1 day.
left after the manager told me we had mandatory 9 hour per day meetings where we had to have our cameras on all day.

guy didn't even care that i was leaving, didn't even blink about it.

About half a year. Small under-the-table family business place where people bring computers in to get it fixed. I needed a job after I left home and was still in college. Dear god...

they make web pages. I think PHP Nuke was the big thing that one of those people loved. So I spent some time making templates.
They tried to go from an in-house repair shop to allowing you to drive over to the customer and fix up their stuff. With your own car and no expenses.

I love the people there but no. It was a lot of stuff to do for under minimum wage.

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NohPhD@reddit

Less than an hour.

I’ve had two 48 hour gigs in 25 years.

1- hired to be senior admin for a id verification company linked to TSA and other gov agencies. Within 2 hours of closing up with HR, I’m told that we’re moving equipment to opposing ends of the colo this weekend. Ok. Also, two Russians are the admins today and their last day is Friday. They speak very little English but we need you to knowledge transfer with them before Friday as they won’t be available during the move. We’re also replacing the web proxy in your SaaS delivery stack as part of the move, the current unit belongs to the Colo and you don’t have access to the configs. So here’s a 14” Pentium Dual Core laptop with 1GB RAM and no monitors. Girl bye 2- DBA consultant for a big 3 consultancy agency. 500+ database servers, my knowledgeable resource is moving to another department in a week. They’re a raging bitch and having not met you, don’t like you and don’t appreciate you taking over their domain. Here’s 3 different email systems to catch requests from, 2 ticket systems, and a change control policy over 200 pages long to get up to speed. Also, our FTEs WTH 3 days per week and it’s 2016 so zoom doesn’t exist yet. Setup a Skype meeting!

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a_wisp@reddit

Exactly 4 hours, they didn't have a laptop prepared for me even if they had 3 weeks before my arrival so I just left a message on the desk and left.

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headcrap@reddit

Nine months. Next job after acquisition finished up by 2021. Global manufacturer, local plant where they'd laid off half the shop floor in 2020 apparently. Desktop guy was leaving the country, felt odd that they are filling in another city. Tipped me off that they are giving up on the plant.. got me busy applying. Sure enough, plant shutdown was announced. Noped right out.

8 months. Was hired in as L2 TAC for a datacenter that offered managed servers. That place was a shit show.

I left after I got an offer for literally double the pay and didn't even think twice about it.

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linniex@reddit

Six months. During the interview they told me the service desk i would be managing had 5 employees and handled 200 desktops. My first discovery found 1400 desktops. In the 3 weeks since I was offered the job they ordered and installed two pcs in each hospital room so they nurses could scan meds. They didnt lock down the pcs at all and the first month was a clusterfuck of chasing viruses all over the place. Left for a job with the ServiceDesk Software vendor because I was on the phone with them constantly and realized I could be doing their job. SO i quit. F that place.

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KofOaks@reddit

2 weeks

It was a porn / spam / penis enlargement spam company.

It was weird to walk to my desk seeing the graphic team working on massive shlongs, and the CEO was a stained white wifebeater wearing low class scumbag.

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2 weeks. It was a little MSP in the north bay area. This place was fucked. No standardization, no documentation. Boss was always out on a smoke break while the "workplace culture" discouraged regular employees from taking their breaks. I noped out of there pretty quick.

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ObiLAN-@reddit

About a month. Was doing system refresh for a bank via the contractor that hired me for it.Was an overnight system swap with return in the morning to verify. I was mainly out in small towns.

Anyways, so I'm out in a small town, the contractor books me a hotel 3 hours away in a different town because "The one there didn't have online booking"... so I get back to the hotel and it's already 2am. Then my phone starts exploding with messages and calls 3 hours before i needed to leave the hotel. Asking why I wasn't back at site.

I hop on the slack chat with the coordinators and ask "Do you not fucking understand how time zones work?". Dumbasses didnt know there was a time difference from oneside if Canada vs the complete otherside apparently or didn't care enough to see where the site was located before spam messaging and calling.

Quit on the spot and went home, was not about to put up with that sort of incompetence.

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NetSuccessful5849@reddit

Eight months, I think? First IT job out of college.

Commute was an hour and a half for $20/hour to do IT for a law firm, which unfortunately fit every bill for stories you hear about lawyers. Demanding a glasstop table and refusing to use a mousepad, asking us to falsify dates on when files were edited, insisting on using their own personal methods (like deleting emails to mark them as 'read'), onprem on a 10 year old version of Office only...

It was bizarre; we had one direct manager who was the network admin (who refused to let us even try to solve any network problems), then the CIO who was never onsite. Abuse came from users, CIO, and from the network admin, so the techs trauma bonded pretty well. I still reach out to my old coworkers sometimes.

The T1 department was basically a revolving door of techs who showed up, saw how bad the practices were, then left. Between when I started and when I left I became the senior IT guy because the last senior guy quit after he got reamed by the CIO for doing something the way the network admin told him to do it, and was threatened with dropping his pay back to where he started (Except, he never got a pay raise).

The CIO started coming in after management complained to him and he would regularly shift between ranting about how he was abusing Amazon returns because he was smart and ranting at us about how terrible we were. I was really stressed out at that job and would leave stress-crying. I got pretty fed up one day and found a new role much closer to home, which allowed me to spread out and improve myself a lot more.

I'm pretty sure they hired people right out of college only because they didn't know better.

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Saprobie@reddit

smalj1990@reddit

2 years

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Pockaden@reddit

9 days. it was my first job. I got hired at a SBC Global dsl support desk and i was still in training and lucked into a role with a giant tech company. I went from 9.50 an hour to 15 an hour.

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PrettyAdagio4210@reddit

3 days

Job description and interviews: systems administrator, server guy, helpdesk every now and then if we get backed up. Alrighty.

Reality: On ladders all day hanging APs and cable. Not once brought up in interview. No admin or even help desk work, we already have guys for that.

Peace out.

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Ziegelphilie@reddit

Roughly 3 hours, that's when I found out that HR was ran by the bosses wife and sister AND they brought in their two huge labradors that immediately jumped on my lap without warning. The day I had my interview they weren't in and I thought the sniffle that evening off was hayfever.

I'm super allergic and spent the rest of the week in bed, then came in just to officially quit. Got a week's worth of pay I guess.

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ThrowingPokeballs@reddit

Prolly a year and a half, I built their entire infrastructure and cloud deployments, AI servers, networking, devops and their security and got them soc2 type 2 certified as well for HIPAA.

I was an in-home tech for Geek Squad for 9 months while I was a senior in college. I worked full time while also going to school full time, which meant that my only 2 off days were tues and thurs and that's when I attended classes. I didn't mind the in home work but being at the store was horrible, and my manager was a COMPLETE DICK. I was expected to meet sales and upsell goals, and for some stupid reason we had mandatory, all-staff meetings at 6am on Sundays. So while the work I was actually hired to do was fine, I wound up hating the job pretty quickly. I did use the hell out of my employee discount though.

To keep from going crazy I would take one unpaid weekend off each month to just have a break and usually also go home to see my parents, but since I didn't have any vacation or sick time to take, my average hours worked was always below 40 and that was apparently a problem for management. They used that excuse to put me on "part time," which actually wound up meaning that I could only work when I had in-home jobs to go do. Which could have been anywhere from 2 to 15 hours of work for an entire week. They would also have me be "on call" which meant if I'd gone home for the day they would call me back in to go to a job, but they of course refused to pay me to be "on call." I was young and didn't know any better and went along with it.

This went on for about a month, and they were somehow, surprisingly, genuinely shocked when I put in my notice. What is even dumber is this was a newly opened best buy, I started working there a few short months after they opened, and they'd been looking for 5+ months for someone who could pass the qualification test to do in-home work.

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1BreadBoi@reddit

4 weeks. Put in a notice at 2 weeks.

A background investigation for another job cleared and they made me an offer as a sys admin instead of helpdesk like I was doing so I took it

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rdldr1@reddit

Three months. Shitty IT call center job. As bad as it sounds.

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dickydotexe@reddit

3 days, it was the strangest positive was suppose to be a helpdesk job and the desciption would be what you would think a helpdesk job would be. Then come to find out it was resetting passwords for finacial banking accounts and thats it. Everyone on the team got duped. When I asked the manager what was going on etc.. he told me if I did not like it I could leave. (only time ive ever done this in my life) . I said sounds good fuck off.

I left, went outside had a mini panic attack and had another new job 2 weeks later and turned into a great stepping stone for a good career in IT.

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NapBear@reddit

8 months. MSP. Was the absolute worse 8 months of my career.

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First-Structure-2407@reddit

6 months due to redundancy

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DasJester@reddit

I stayed for four weeks at my very first IT job before putting in my notice. It was contact for two state prisons that were next to each other one was the Men's and the other was a woman's. This was back in 2006, zo the job market was super crappy in my aera after finishing tech school.

The drive was super long, so crappy commute every day and I had to be there by 630am. As contact, I was the extra body for both prisons amd basically did any BS work the others didn't feel like doing.

The final straw was when I got my first paycheck and the hourly rate that I was told by the owner was a lie, like $4/hr difference. Since it was my first job, I Ave my notice and dropped it. The gas along cost me enough so the lower was not even cutting it.

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Longjumping_Law133@reddit

6 weeks. I had been out of work for a while and had a lot of resumes out. Took a job that looked promising. They ended up wanting more of a field tech, and then suddenly they were hesitant on paying OT, wanted me to pay for everything (including gas for the company vehicle) and get reimbursed, which was significant for how much travel there was. They were slow to pay back my money, wishy washy on many details, and the boss was kind of a man child who immediately asked me to "report on the behavior" of his long time employees.

Another job called me for an interview after my first few weeks and I ended up really connecting with them, and jumping ship once the offer\acceptance came in. I am still with the second company, and the SAME position at the first company is listed.

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mtetrode@reddit

Two weeks.

Nothing was as they said it would be during the interview.

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LoornenTings@reddit

A week.

It was a temp position from RH to cover for another temp who was out on medical leave. It seemed like an easy gig, but I got an offer for a better paying temp gig with better tech exposure. Left my badge and BB on the desk at EoD on Friday. Called RH to let them know. The RH rep was furious... "This is unprofessional, you're supposed to give 2 weeks, RH will never work with you again!" But RH is a recruiter mill and a month later his replacement was calling me with offers.

The next gig was BH contracting me to CGI who contracted me to what is now a F500 company. I was there for 2 weeks when I put in my 2 weeks to take a FT role at another place where I ended up staying for 7 years. CGI offered to take me on under them and match the salary but I was trying to get in at that other place for a year because I wanted FT and they seemed like a better offer in other ways. I felt bad for my recruiters at BH, because they did right by me, staying in touch every day, getting my resume out to lots of companies, being just great in general. They're the first people I reach out to now if I'm looking for a role for myself or looking to hire someone.

4 months. It was on year 2000 and the company I worked for before this was sold/merged and it went to shit so I started looking. A guy I know needed a network guy for the company he had started and then sold, so I went there. It was pretty soon clear that the next round of VC financing wasn't going to happen and the burn rate was so high that the money they had wouldn't last long. So the day before my trial period was ending I told everyone that after tomorrow I won't be around any longer. Less than 3 months later the whole company was shuttered and everyone was laid off.

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skeetgw2@reddit

9 months at an MSP post covid. I needed to get back into the work force but it should have never lasted that long. Left on good terms I guess but terrible experience overall.

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shinra528@reddit

About 10 months. I wasn’t planning to move to the other side of the country 10 months later when I started there.

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Dull_Woodpecker6766@reddit

1:

I got the job for an American Corp. I signed the contract.

First day, I meet the team and about an hour in HR comes by to tell me I got some meetings (trainings) to attend to in the first week.

I get told to go to a room where other people are already waiting.

The "training" begins and it's one of these "How to behave in an office space" training..... Ok fine I'll attend my mom raised me right but what the hell.

Then it gets out of hand and it's not a training session anymore but a circle jerk of "men are swine, men are evil, men are predators/ perpetrators" type of thing .

No one dared to speak. No questions allowed. The motto was: "listen and swallow you fool of a manchild"

I quit right then and there. I don't need my employer to be my new parent. I don't like being spoken to as if I am a child.

2:

The second job I quit was because everyone in the whole office was heavily smoking indoors ....opening windows wasn't allowed!

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PersonalCitron2328@reddit

1 week as a Helpdesk Manager. They didn't want to invest in a proper helpdesk system, and they were using something so ancient it had no email communications functions so they had hired a 1st line engineer to scim through the helpdesk mailbox and convert emails to tickets.

When I set up a POC for Zendesk, and calculated that it only cost 30% of the amount they paid for the poor lad to make his living by mindlessly trawling through an Inbox, I was told "we don't have it in scope for the budget this year".

When I submitted my resignation on the Friday (1 week notice), they let me come in on the Monday and made a whole deal about "Escorting me out of the building".

They went into administration a couple of years later.

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Hoosier_Farmer_@reddit

Less than a minute.

Me, early 20's, on-site PC repair consultant-for-hire (one man geeksquad type thing) in the bible belt. Got turned away from a call because of my pink floyd t-shirt and smelling like 'the devils lettuce' (yes, they called in to complain to my 'manager', who fired them as a customer)

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Kwantem@reddit

I'm still at my first and only IT hired position, though I did freelance work before that. 20 years.

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songokussm@reddit

Four hours. It was an MSP, and I was hired as a project manager. I was very familiar with their stack and finished the onboarding in two hours, so they handed me a list of cold-call prospects.

Nope.

Owner came in to smooth things over and when i pointed out that sales wasn’t in the job description and that I had explicitly said in the interview I don’t do sales. He looked stunned and replied, “Well, we all wear many hats around here.”

Double nope.

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Krigen89@reddit

5 Days. I knew 7 hours in this wasn't the place for me.

Probably knew 2 hours in actually. Remote job, met the director at 8h30, he introduced me to my "mentor".

Mentor said "here are links to our documentation, let's talk again at 15h".

Spoke 15 minutes then.

Then again on the Wednesday.

Quit on the Friday.

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_araqiel@reddit

MSP run by a psycho. 10 weeks, no notice given.

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pbyyc@reddit

Early in my career i had a job i quit in 1 week. My desk was inside the server room and all servers were custom made with off the shelf parts. I learnt after that to ask for a full tour when interviewing

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actualtumor@reddit

11 months. Just put in my resignation. I'm changing careers and going to grad school in europe for climate science. No more soulless IT work for me.

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Yea, this is a story seriously in need of just a few details to feed our burning curiosity!

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CornBredThuggin@reddit

My first IT job was working for an ISP. I hated getting yelled at because people's internet went down and it would take weeks for us to get out there to fix it. Our training was a joke. The dude spent more time sniffing markers then actually training us. Once we got out on the floor, we found that we were missing vital information that made us look like idiots.

My manager was not a good guy. I got in trouble for going to the restroom too much during my shift. I was having stomach issues, came in anyway which was stupid. The guy was a jerk about it. One of our on-site techs screwed up. He wanted me to call to apologize to the customer since I was the one that took the initial call. I refused and he dropped it.

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Lekanswanson@reddit

Hoping to move for it support to cyber security position soon. Most of of interesting stuff at current place has been taken over by 3rd party contractor so I'm stuck doing windows/desktop admin and database administrator.

Also haven't got a raise in almost 2 years and I had to ask for one and apparently I'll get one soon but at this point im kind of mentally checked out so hopefully i get an offer in the new job.

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SchizoidRainbow@reddit

Two days.

Stock traders crammed into a basement together. AC blasting so patches were cold, but computers and coked up yuppies generate lots of BTU's. One wondered why they bothered keeping the tie on when it was pulled loose so slack that you could get another head in there, and every single one of them wore it this way. You had to squint to see the screen through the cigarette smoke. They were all sweating profusely due to stress and cocaine and it smelled like a prison. The occasional tang of piss in the air suggested some of them had been glued to their screens beyond bladder limits.

They hovered, biting nails, pacing, having hurried hushed conversations. Then a dam would burst and they would desperately taptaptap and scream one of two things:

YESSSSSSSSSS! or NNNOOOOOOOO!

If a computer began having issues, they went nuclear. Frantic beyond anything I've ever seen, and I've seen someone trapped in a burning car. YOU HAVE TO GET THIS WORKING. Really the only thing stopping them from grabbing you and shaking you to make you understand, was the anti-pressure of stopping you from working on it for even a second. They would yell horrific profanity and curses upon your entire ethnic branch to spur you on, despite this interfering more than helping. They were losing ridiculous sums, $100,000 a second were bleeding out on the floor while you reconnected them.

Nevermind that 99% of their injuries were self inflicted. Their haste made waste. Their smoking gave their computers cancer and they'd just spark and spit smoke on the reg, they had a whole closet full of spares. They'd roll over network cables and fray them, they'd get angry and smack the computer and it would die, they'd spill their expensive cognac into the keyboard. One guy had literally unplugged everything and plugged it back in wrong before I could get to him, adding further troubleshooting time. Popping pills to keep going, popping other pills to keep their heart from exploding from the strain, popping pills for the nausea these caused, popping pills to pretend to be men rather than a vast wiggling spaghetti pile of anxiety in the approximate shape of a man.

I only came back the second day because I wanted my check and I had to be sure I just didn't see a bad day. The second day was worse. When I quit one guy started screaming that he'd sue me for not continuing to support him. I said he'd have to step away from that console for more than five minutes to accomplish that, which seemed unlikely. The money was awful tempting, but they wanted my soul and my hair color and about half of my life, I'd die at 40 working this job. I was so dazed and exhausted from the first day that it did not even occur to me to quit until 3 hours after I got home.

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TheLegendaryBeard@reddit

2 days

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SnooCauliflowers370@reddit

Just over a year, the final straw was being put on a performance review for going to the toilet 3 times in a day💀

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NerdtasticPro418@reddit

6 Months I was IT Director and under the CFO who was such a micro managing asshole wed have teams meetings where he'd basically write my emails for projects to a group. He literally said I was the chatty warm personality so he did small talk with me because I like that, but that he cant stand it as hes a "get to it guy" liuke A+ level accountant robot dick of a dude. That the day I knew I was getting fired we had one of those meetings where he wants to watch me type an email and change every word 1/2 hour before a meeting with HR. So when he joined the meeting and wanted to "screens hare just to see the email" I had just kept typing "Todd is a fucking mirco managing asshole", about 20x until the screen re-draw caught up. Sent the email, told him he was an insufferable little man, and to get fucked and stay fucked, hung up, grabbed my shit and walked out, screaming "Im free" through the office.

It was the best thing Ive ever done

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juicewrld22@reddit

4 months here. Got conned into leaving a good company to accept a system engineer role at an ass backwards dental firm. Happy I got out of there.

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SaasyJnr@reddit

3 days. I was absolutely desperate for work early in my career and landed a job at a "gaming" company. I didn't realise how gross and seedy working for a gambling platform would make me feel, but I had to get out.

It was a pre-smartphone company that allowed people to make bets via WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) on their phones.

I was involved in QA testing/internal tech support. It was shit. I left.

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Anonymo123@reddit

my very 1st IT job in the late 90s. Got hired to do phone\tech support. I started the Monday and that Friday they had an all hands about a bankruptcy\restructure lol

Sorry, I deleted my comment as I realized I was repeating myself.

If I was bored, I'd still go back and work there. Nothing like working past 10:00pm, drinking a few beers, and slinging tacos.

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dude_himself@reddit

364 days.

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francseuro@reddit

Just talked to a colleague about this here.. I did 4 days (Service Desk) at a big Canadian bank before quitting. 1. I hated going downtown and 2. They made you buy a dozen donuts every time you're late. 3. They lowered the wage the day I started. (only a dollar but that's penny pinching in my eyes)

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dr_groo@reddit

1 week…bait and switch for a small (now defunct) IT shop. Day 1, no training I’m told I’m the only person and the other guys dad died and he’ll be back in 2 weeks. No documentation, no direction, a horribly hand written notepad with some account info, and a huge backlog of customer tickets and phones ringing off the hook.

I did 1 week, and then said I’d give them 2 weeks to help cover while they find someone else, but they let me go then and there. Then they tried not paying me!

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Fattswindstorm@reddit

2 weeks. Moved to a new city with the gf for her job. Took this “systems admin” job. It was really just going to old peoples homes. Looking at their computer. Updating their 20 year old computer and running a virus/anti malware scan. And trying to sell them a huge desktop. Like if I made commission it would have been one thing. But it was like 1/2 of what I previously made. Quickly force a real sysadmin job and quit the next day.

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Strassi007@reddit

3 weeks. I started in a 2nd level IT department. Our company was a service provider inside of the company we worked for. When i arrived on my first day our Team lead told me he already quit some time ago and will have his last day in that week. 3 others left with him and one more a week after that. So i was the "most experienced" employee just after two weeks.

The company tried to give me the team lead position. I was completely fresh in IT, had no clue about anything yet. I didn't know what i had to do, or how the company worked. I declined and took the other job i was offered.

The service contract with the company was terminated early since there was no personel left. Three years later one of my former colleagues called me and told me she took the team lead job a year later, when they reinstated the department. They searched for people and she wanted me to come back. I happily declined and wished her the best.

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Delta31_Heavy@reddit

A year unfortunately. Was my second stint with that company too. The IT manager really wanted me back after many years away and I go back and it’s my dream job and then my wife loses her job but finds one out of state so we had to relocate. She makes more than me so her option was the better option. Sucks but I’m in a good spot now. One more day closer to retirement

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frygod@reddit

4 years. It was a student position and I graduated.

My next IT job was also about 4 years. That time the company was the 49% in a 51/49 merger and I managed to get picked up by one of my customers before I had to experience any corporate culture degradation.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

This was decades ago, but I was hired for 1 hour as a sales rep for a "plumbing company." We were all supposed to wear suits and ties and show up for orientation. Turned out it was a door to door MLM company selling bathtub inserts.

I got up and walked out in the middle of some douchebags speech and a few others followed me.

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Annh1234@reddit

3h, was hired to add PCI DSS to SAAS product.

Saw the code base, saw the servers next to the coffee machine, told the owner what needs to be done to even start thinking about it, he pretty much fainted, impossible to do in 10x their budget.

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shaolinmaru@reddit

Would be two months, stayed for one additional to finish a task that was assigned (migrate to the new ERP/CRM).

Week 1 - sit in bullpen area waiting for managing directors to schedule meetings.

Week 2 - sit in meetings discussing project participants and requirements.

Week 3 - independently meet with designated participants and start asking questions based on the meetings.

Learn there was a data center in Delaware that has an entire project team operating for a year that made NYC's effort superfluous.

So many silos, so little conversation. Left quickly and quietly.

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malikto44@reddit

Three weeks.

They missed the first payment cycle, the day I was hired. They missed two more. I then left.

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Ams197624@reddit

Three months. I was close to a bore-out since I literally had nothing to do (except a paper jam or user reset once every few days). They did not understand why I was leaving, even offered me more money, but I just couldn't do it anymore...

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ledow@reddit

I have to explain to bosses that for myself and for others... sure, I could get a job twiddling my thumbs. But I would be gone quickly. You could replace me with a managed service provider and keep me around "just in case". And I'll be gone.

Myself and anyone who I choose to work with/under me need stimulation, they need to tinker, they need to run off on their own pet projects, they need to be able to do things and change stuff and suggest things they've researched. I explicitly tell employers that. Don't let them get bored. Not by piling on fake and unnecessary work. Let them run with their little projects.

I don't work as, with, for or above people who just follow a tedious routine. I don't understand why any company would employ people to do such things.

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g2g079@reddit

2 weeks at a small ISP. It was my first IT job and I really didn't care for how the company treated their customers. I was only working part time and decided I was better off sticking to my primary job at Taco Bell. I now manage a large data center for a fortune 500 company.

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I've done this job.

I was on a third story with a ladder in a super bad storm, the guy holding the ladder was an addict with one arm.

Left that day lol.

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Voriana@reddit

r/oddlyspecific

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BBO1007@reddit

17 years. 24 total at that company.

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TotallyNotIT@reddit

4 months. Joined a new consulting team and sales didn't know how to deal with it so we didn't get work. I bailed because a consultant not billing isn't going to be a consultant for long.

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jonblackgg@reddit

1 month, it was for an open banking compliance startup.

And honest to God there were two reasons why: - The CEO called our clients "retards" - This company was so slow moving that the whole month I was reading the same slim confluence documentation, waiting for them to give me approval to do anything.

Longest so far is 8 years. Shortest is about a year.

I would happily walk on day one if it ever came to it, but I wouldn't ever get that far without realising that it wasn't a job I should accept.

As I get older, I'm getting better at that, so the periods are getting longer. That, and I "hold more weight" with all the experience so I tend to be listened to more, etc.

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pandy_fackler_@reddit

Bout 2-3 months at an MSP. 99% of the job was listening to the owner bitch about everything. Sent me to a job with a car that had a known bad tire. Had to change a flat on the side of the highway in the rain. Next day the owner said I had a bad work ethic. Starting job hunting immediately after that. Worked out love my current job.

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_Frank-Lucas_@reddit

Like 4 days. Got hired in at a non profit as a specialist. Ended up doing 24/7 on call helpdesk over the phone only support for $16/hr. I needed a job at the time so I took it but it was terrible.

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First job in IT field. Almost a month, company completely lied to us. Got hired a as desktop and told will work shifts. First week no training sitting around. Second / third week start training on car tracker software. Was told we need to test the software and help the trackers. Fourth week we start doing shifts and needed to answer calls if people phone the tracking company. Waited for payday and never went back.

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