What is the shortest amount of time you've ever spent in a job and why?
Posted by JumpySpecial9834@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 197 comments
I have approximately five years and four months worth of experience. The five years were in one job. The four months have been in my second. I have never been more stressed or miserable than in this second job. I was really excited at first because it came with a huge salary bump from my old job (where I was comfortable, but way, way below what people typically expect when it comes to software engineer salaries), but it quickly became apparent that it's not an environment I care for at all. The stacked rankings and performance assessments are just terrifying, and it just doesn't feel conducive to a healthy working environment. Just being here is doing awful things to my anxiety.
Even though it's only been a few months and leaving would mean paying back the signing bonus, I've started looking for other jobs. My fear is that having a stint of just a few months will be considered a big red flag. I've heard that people are only concerned if there's a broader pattern, but I was hoping to get some thoughts on how long other people have typically spent at a job and when they knew it was time to jump ship in a job they weren't happy with.
theamazingrand0@reddit
3 weeks. They fired me, telling me the velocity wasn't what they were expecting from a senior engineer. This was while visiting their HQ in a Central European city (I live in Denver) that they'd flown me out to. I figured I'd spend the time getting to know the team, how they work, since our working timezones didn't overlap at all. Apparently they wanted me to just sit there heads down and focus on PRs.
Also in my first few weeks at a job, I like to ask lots of questions. I'd ask "how do you want me to do this?", and the response was always, "You're a senior engineer, we expect you to know this." Like, knowing how isn't the problem for me, I can think of 5 different ways, I'm asking which is how we do it here.
It wasn't so much that they weren't clear in their expectations, its that the expectations they told me were different from their actual expectations.
But hey, I got a fully-paid two-week trip to a beautiful city I'd never been to, so I wasn't even that mad.
Objective_Gene9503@reddit
I don’t like painting in broad strokes but on average, but the culture you’ve described seems common in central/eastern European and East Asian-heavy teams/companies.
theamazingrand0@reddit
Yeah, it felt like it might be mostly a cultural issue.
They hired me as their first US-based full-time-employee. While their product is known and used in Europe, nobody really knows about it in the US, and I think they hired me hoping to broaden that market. But they didn't actually want to hear my thoughts on the matter. They said they did, but when they asked and I gave them some simple suggestions (based on my only being there a week at that point), I got the same "we expected more from a senior engineer" line.
Objective_Gene9503@reddit
A lot of Americans talk bad about their own country but nothing better than travel to make one feel a little bit more patriotic.
theamazingrand0@reddit
Traveling to other countries makes me much more aware of how terrible things are in the US by comparison. Public transportation, healthcare, quality of food, work/life balance... We could have it so much better, but too many people are brainwashed by the Epstein Class for that to happen without a fight.
manlycoffee@reddit
6 weeks.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
I assume you mean IT job, not regular job. For the latter, my shortest stint would be one week at Shoney's restaurant in 1994. Those losers stiffed my on my paycheck, too. I worked for 40 hours and they paid me for only 20.
For IT job, to put it in perspective, I got my first development job in August 1999. My absolute shortest stint was 2 months at Mr. Cooper in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, Cyprus Waters location out in Coppell. Oh my god, where to begin? I could point out a few things that were absolutely pants on head WTF about that place, but the mods would probably delete my comment. So I'll just stick to the stuff that won't get me deleted.
In 2 months, I wrote exactly one line of code. I'm serious. The rest of the time was requesting the umpteen thousand individual accesses I would need. Sometimes they would be approved in a few days, sometimes they would be inexplicably denied, other times the requests would just go into the void with no response.
My lead was a total a-hole who couldn't be bothered with me. So, I had only the thinnest of onboarding. I joined around the Thanksgiving holidays, and the company basically shut down with everyone off during the second half of December. So I was on my own about half the time there. I had nothing to do, so I'd just sit around twiddling my thumbs.
The contractor they hired after me had it worse. He went three weeks without a laptop. They didn't submit your laptop request until you physically started, so that was another WTF. Normally, a place should get your access and laptop requests rolling BEFORE you start. They knew for three weeks that I was coming. Why they got nothing started before my first day is a mystery.
The management still wanted to give the appearance of onboarding for the second contractor. I did not have physical building access (we worked from home), and there were rarely any team members at the building that could escort me in, so I found myself meeting this dude at a Starbucks to show him code running on my laptop (which was a ridiculously dated MacBook with a slow processor a little memory). It was all surreal.
I found a way better gig during the Christmas holidays. To put it in perspective, when I accepted my offer, my Microsoft 365 account was created THAT DAY. It was a total night and day experience. I still work at that place today.
DollarPenguin@reddit
Feel free to expand on the insanity as a reply to my comment, I'm interested, and you have my condolences...
Your comment reminded me that my worst job ever, a job that brought me to tears, started with my boss telling me on day one that he "didn't want to cramp my style" got up, and left for the entire day, except my team was entirely remote and I didn't have a laptop...access to systems was like russian roulette, one day they were accessible, next day they weren't...it took 3 whole months to get license key for the IDE the team used.
Honestly it was such a nightmarish experience, it permanently damaged my confidence and almost killed me...I've been thinking about posting my story because the more I think about it, the more batshit it really was.
Anyways, thank you for sharing your slice of nightmare, honestly I appreciate everyone's stories here, people get turned off about posts like this claiming it's just to vent or rant, but it's also incredibly validating to people like me who were made to feel like they were the problem and not realizing how hideously gaslit they actually were.
siammang@reddit
Just 3 months or so. Great team, great people, workable tech stacks, but we got sucker punched by VCs backed out from runway money funding last minute
potatolicious@reddit
Less than 60 days. The startup I worked for ran out of runway, and we were "acquihired" (barely qualifies for the term IMO) into a much larger company as a last-ditch way to get everyone jobs.
We didn't know it at the time, but the big corp was busy piling people into a failing project to try and right the ship, and we were just the latest warm bodies for cannon fodder. The big corp had acquired a local startup with high hopes and given them a long leash - which the people from the startup proceeded to totally squander. By the time the big corp mothership checked in on them the project was on in dire straits.
Even though the sign on the door was Big Corp, in reality the whole thing was a disastrous fiefdom of guys from the initial startup. We worked out of a tiny office sized for ~40 people but had 80+ people by the time I left. At one point we had 3 people to a desk. The management was psychotic and enjoyed screaming at people (especially the newcomers) and they couldn't even get stable WiFi. There was a permanent line in front of the 2 toilets - which by the way opened directly to the open seating area, so everyone could hear you take that loud shit you lined up a half hour for.
A few weeks into this total meltdown, we found out that management had overstayed the office lease, and we were all now illegally squatting. The landlord had already rented the space to another company, which then proceeded to sue. The company settled by carving off about half the space so that the new tenants can begin renovations immediately. So now we had ~80 people squeezed into about ~2,000 sq ft of space, with construction tarping up everywhere, and literal carpenters doing construction on the other side of the tarp. All day.
Returning the signing bonus was the most glorious feeling.
josh_in_boston@reddit
Now that's a shitshow.
margnal@reddit
no clue if this is real or not, but I don’t care cuz I fucking died reading it. thanks for the laugh, and sorry you had to endure that
hyrumwhite@reddit
About a year. The CEO was an egomaniac, and ai made him literally unhinged.
I had to take my material 3 inspired ui and sloppify it. We’re talking 9px fonts, garish colors, god awful contrast, no a11y considerations, add to that a company wide all hands every morning that was just him verbally pleasuring himself and I was just done.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
3 months.
They were watching my every move, my every minute on the job, and cared more about my time spent than they cared about the quality of the job. I drove an hour each way for an 8-5 after being lied to multiple times.
They denied my PTO the first day of my trip after agreeing to it every step of the interview.
Onboarding was non-existent and when I asked for help from leads they acted like it was a massive inconvenience.
All to make the least Ive ever made with no equity, bonus, or tangible benefits.
airhart28@reddit
I left a job at lunch on the first day. It was clearly very toxic and mismanaged. They were working out of a co-working space on an expired guest pass and didn't seem to have any clients.
y2cwr2005@reddit
2 weeks! Arrived in the office on day one and the hiring manager admitted to my face that they FORGOT that I was starting that day, despite me being on a call with HR the week before.
They had no laptop available to give me, then after scrambling proceeded to give me a locked down laptop with no software at all on it.
Got to the end of week one with no progress from the IT team on installing software and handed in my week's notice and called it a day.
reboog711@reddit
This is fairly common in big corporate conglomerates, FWIW! Especially during times of change and reorgs (Which only happens every 6 months).
It's a bonus if I can have my new reports with a working computer and all dev software installed by the end of week 2.
DJKaotica@reddit
For a while I worked a gig where I was IT ~50% of the time initially (and maybe < 10% of the time after ramping up), and Software the rest of the time.
Insurance company, 80-90 or so employees, 50 at the main office, with a few satellite offices of 5 - 10 each. The tech-side was: 1 Senior Software Developer (contract, but basically that just meant he set his own hours), 1 Senior IT guy (full time). IT guy was going on course for ~30 days a couple months after I was hired so part of me ramping up was covering for him the entire time he was gone (and any future vacations).
Anyways, the number of times someone would be hired and IT had no notice until the day they showed up was probably > 75%.
We had a process to build out new machines with all the software employees would need, but even if we kept a couple set aside ready to go, we still had to set up the new employees accounts in Active Directory and any CALs, etc.
We eventually moved to thin clients which helped a lot with the machine build out but it still meant IT had to set up accounts last minute.
No_Barnacles@reddit
I moved from Austin to SF for a job. New manager forgot I was starting and had a dentist appointment my first day of onboarding. I navigated my way to onboarding sessions on another floor. Everyone else had a manager come to pick them up, take them to lunch, and then show them their desk. I got stuck on the wrong floor for an hour, and then they told me to call some girl who'd started working remotely to see if I could take her desk.
I went on to see my team shuffled to 5 different managers in the course of a year (seriously), until I just decided to cut my losses and leave.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Bad onboarding can lead to short stints. So many companies don't realize this.
reboog711@reddit
It was a contract not a traditional W2 employment opportunity.
I was hired to write an iTunes extension. 3 days into it; I realized the company did not have a relationship with Apple and wanted me to hack iTunes, and I terminated the contract.
qghw47QHwG72@reddit
> My fear is that having a stint of just a few months will be considered a big red flag
Last time I was involved in hiring we had a "things we don't care about" list. Short tenures was one thing we did not care about.
We've all had experiences of bad bosses, places that weren't a good fit for us or companies that did layoffs.
A short tenure isn't a useful signal for someone being a good/bad hire!
ElectronicCat8568@reddit
Like 5 months. The lead dev was one of those guys who sank to the back and masterminded everything, but it was all gawky abstractions only a mother could love, and I was supposed to be using that. It went poorly.
unrebigulator@reddit
3 hours. I was a teenager though.
travislaborde@reddit
1 day.
The office was one room with three developers including me. One in each corner. The fourth corner was where the door to the bathroom was.
It was silent. SO silent. You could hear every keypress. Every step. I'm one of those guys who often enough makes "machine gun sounds" while pooping, you know? There's no way I was going to make use of that bathroom.
WaitingForTheClouds@reddit
2 days. I was to join as a second developer on a internal support project at a company. The guy I was supposed to be working closely with decided that the best way to break ice would be to tell me a funny story about how he beats his girlfriend and how she likes it and he said it in front of our manager who just uncomfortably laughed. Anyways after getting over the initial shock, I went straight to HR the next day to report it and hand in my resignation. Couldn't imagine sitting next to that creature much less working with him. I knew they weren't going to fire the guy, he was the only one who knew the project and it was pretty important for smooth operation. The funny thing is that the company prided itself on being owned and directed by a woman...
KharamelMM@reddit
2 months. I was unhappy with the corporate culture, unhappy with the salary and unhappy with the coding standards. I wasn't able to see myself in this job for several years so I search for an another job. It was a really difficult decision to me and felt guilty for leaving for such ""poor reasons"" but right now I feel like it was the best decision I made.
Depends on your ambitions to take your own decision. Just don't trash talk on your precedent job.
beauzero@reddit
Don't leave before you find another job. Just start interviewing again. It will give you an emotional outlet and you will find it picks up steam. Also time will pass at your current job and you may find that things are not as scary as you are interpreting them right now. Just take some action you will feel better. Quitting and stewing on past decisions is not learning from them, its just making another non optimal decision.
...you will survive this. 30+ years and yes, this happens to all of us at some point.
ryanheartswingovers@reddit
Two weeks. The devs were inept, program years behind schedule, and I was fostering a puppy. Decided to prioritize the puppy.
03263@reddit
1 day, I thought it was supposed to be $25 an hour and they said no it's $25,000 a year so I never went back
According-Essay-4973@reddit
1 hour. I got offered a better job on the morning I started. I resigned that morning. Was a painful experience.
Hirschdigga@reddit
2 months. Got hired as software developer, but the actual job was to copy XML files and write scripts for windows VMs. Like an admin job with 0 proper software development involved, and totally different to what we spoke about in interviews. Very weird.
Anconia436@reddit
2 months. Only after I joined did they tell me I was expected to work late every day and weekends as needed. Funny though, nearly every job since has had some variation of the same thing happen. I prioritize protecting my time so this bugs me.
RandyHoward@reddit
Two months. The place was the biggest shit show I’ve ever seen. First I was told, “ there’s a library across the street if you want to use a better computer.” Do you know how shit your equipment is if the library computer is better?
Then there was the utility companies showing up to shut off service for unpaid bills. Yeah that makes me feel real good about your ability to make payroll.
But the worst part was the owner himself. You’d walk out back and see used condoms all over the ground. The other employees told me they were from the owner meeting gay men out back at night. I didn’t believe it at first, but then I was asked to fix his email. So many email subject lines from men about sex. The best part was that the owners wife and son worked there too.
I got out of there as fast as I possibly could.
SwimmerQuick1500@reddit
Outside of the shit equipment and utility bills part, I wish any of my jobs had that kind of tea holy shit.
Every place I've worked has been so boring and without gossip. People don't even drink at the work outings it's so boring 😭😭.
pipipopop@reddit
I feel you bro! Every tech team I’ve ever worked in is so ethical. They just focus on work and nothing else. Damn boring. I often have to chat with the sales and marketing for the drama. But they don’t want to spill the tea obviously they view me as a boring person too.
rebelliousturian@reddit
This is so real, the amount of times I’ve been on a work night out and my team are ONLY discussing work and personal projects is insane. I’ve started finding an excuse to leave the conversation so I can go hang out with the sales guys and actually talk about something fun! I think it’s happened enough times now that they’ve adopted me as one of their own and know I’m not coming over to override the conversation with chat about the latest Claude update or something lol
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Not drinking on work outings, I assume you're talking about lunch and those "mandatory fun" days, is fairly common.
I haven't had a company that would do the three martini lunch thing since the Dotcom I worked for back in 99-2000. The early Dotcom culture was just more relaxed. I miss it.
Though back in 2019 I was working a consulting gig for Christus Health, the Catholic health conglomerate. They took us out to Top Golf one day and paid for the entire bar tab. Everyone was putting them down and doing golf. It was fun!
lunacraz@reddit
was there really no sign of any of this when you interviewed there? this is like my biggest fear if i were to switch jobs but it feels like there would be signs?
RandyHoward@reddit
Not much that I noticed at the time. I guess the first sign could've been that the owner interviewed me himself at the very end of the business day when all of his employees had left already. It was a small place, I think there was 6 of us total working there. The problems became apparent very quickly once I started though.
lunacraz@reddit
ha - the one place i interviewed at way early in my career EVERYONE looked tired, and when i countered when they lowballed my offer the CEO acted VERY offended i asked for more money, even though they ended up giving it to me (i did not accept)
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Oh wow! I smile and laugh because I too have seen WTFs on this level. How much were they paying you? It was probably enough that they could afford to go down to freaking Best Buy and buy you a modern laptop.
From what it sounds like, the library was probably a better work environment anyway.
RandyHoward@reddit
I don't recall my pay, this was quite a long time ago. It was probably around $40k-$50k at the time.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
I was making $50k at my very first web development job in 1999, so it must've been a while back.
Still....the public library???? I can't even fathom.
RandyHoward@reddit
Looks like it was around 2011 based on the dates on my resume. I don’t include that job on my resume at all, but I started the job after that in 2011
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
I’m glad you left quickly. I don’t think many developers would stick around long at a place like that.
Exirel@reddit
Less than 4 months. Harassment from manager. Nope!
Mesmeryze@reddit
are you at meta? feeling the same
TempleDank@reddit
3 days haha. I was lied on the location of the job during interviews, ended up having to commute 2hours to get there so on the third day I quitted
drnullpointer@reddit
Two weeks. My manager was saying he is best developer in the world. I thought it was some kind of joke, but at some point I figured out he believes it.
On my first week there was a production outage of the application he wrote all by himself. It failed because, as he said, our partner changed the communication protocols without agreement. I looked into the issue, they changed the XML message they are sending from a pretty-printed to a single line. The code my manager wrote was not using any XML parsing and instead was just doing operations like "go to line 6, column 5, take characters until next < sign".
On my second week there was another production outage. My manager told the management that I was responsible for it. I haven't committed any code yet.
That was a clear sign we are not going to get along, so I packed my stuff, left the office and let them know *after* I left the office that I am not coming back.
Temporary_Reason3341@reddit
What an awesome example of the Hyrum's law!
cabindirt@reddit
He probably wrote that XML “parser” and thought “damn I’m pretty slick”
Few-Impact3986@reddit
Well it was 10x faster when it worked.
Teh_Original@reddit
That's what I figured. Generic parsers are slow compared to if you know exactly where to look in the file.
Few-Impact3986@reddit
Yeah. I would expect this also if they use llms.
shadowndacorner@reddit
jesus christ...
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
I don't blame you one bit. The job I left back in January 2025 that I'd been at for two months, I left on a Friday after sending my "Dear John" email, blocked messages from everyone, dropped the laptop off at the security desk, and then started my next job on Monday morning. No regrets at all.
ziteq@reddit
damn
UnmannedConflict@reddit
2 months. It was my first ever job, an internship as L1/L2 support. They hired 5 interns to help the existing 3 and wanted to make us into a 25/7 monitoring team. Then, on April 1st, we all got called into a meeting saying that all of us have been let go because management killed the project.
I was smiling through the meeting as it was April 1st. By 13:00 I was on the street in front of the office with my backpack.
bootwrx@reddit
5 months because two of my seniors who I loved to work with quit because they themselves were unhappy with where the company was going (I was very happy myself)
Ended up joining a stressful startup that dangled PIPs constantly in our faces. Meanwhile my old team members are still with the same company to this day. Grass isn’t always greener.
Stamboolie@reddit
An hour or so, turned up at the job they wanted me to sign all this crazy nda stuff - you know the usual they'll get to keep my kidneys etc. I got another offer within an hour of starting, said yah, nah and left. I'm not going to say it wasn't fun, cause it was.
annoying_cyclist@reddit
About a year. My failing startup was acquihired into a FAANGalike. Not a company I would have personally wanted to work for, and I knew by about the third week that it wasn't going to be a good fit. I talked myself into sticking it out for a month or two, stayed for a few months more after getting releveled trying to make it work (came with a raise + equity refresher that was harder to walk away from), and by that time was close enough to the year mark that I figured I should just stay and vest my new hire grant. Gave notice the day after the RSUs hit my brokerage. In retrospect, I regret not just leaving after a month or two. The money wasn't worth the stress and irritation of grinding at a job I didn't like.
I wouldn't worry about one shorter tenure, especially if you're coming from a job you held for 5 years. As you note, a pattern of <= 1 year tenures is where you more commonly start to see interviewers asking questions. If you aren't already, I would make sure you have a strong reverse interview question bank for the interviews you're doing now. Your next job is ideally one you stay at for a couple years, so you have a history of long tenures (multiple) with one short outlier (this current job). That's not entirely in your control unfortunately, but you do want to do everything you can to screen out companies/roles with cultures that don't work for you so you're maximizing the chances of a long tenure.
(everything you wrote makes me think you're right to want to leave, btw. I could have written that about the job I wanted to leave after 3 weeks, and none of it really got better after a year)
core_tech@reddit
Bigger salary loses its charm really fast when your mental health starts taking a hit. Been there. No paycheck feels worth constant stress and dread
ktl2dev@reddit
3 semanas. Entre el primer día a resolver unos problemas de ui que tenían en un frontend. Lo resolvía y encontraban detalles, corregía esos detalles y encontraban otros. Luego me decían que en realidad no necesitaban eso. Y así estuve las 3 semanas, encontraron todo malo. Todo lo que hice para ellas estaba pésimo, era un agencia digital solo de mujeres. Me hicieron la vida imposible desde el primer día :(
Diezelboy78@reddit
One week was my shortest tenure. Literally on my first day I asked someone in the car park if it was okay to park here and he asked why I was there. I said I'm starting a new job in IT, and his exact words were "mate get back in your car and go beg for your old job back, you don't want work work here". During my HR induction I heard the HR manger tell other new starters during a tour that everyone was taking bets on how long I'd last.
On my first day my new manager told me that she noticed I was overly helpful and I needed to understand that we're here to help but not that much.
Next day I fixed a problem with a system that had been going down daily for 6 months and was costing the business hundreds of thousands a week. The production director asked me how I did it so I told him.
About an hour later I get called into my managera office and get accused of deliberately making her look like a fool, insisting she already knew what this issue was but it was policy not to discuss those types of things with users. She then informed that going forward she would provide me with a script of what I'm allowed to say. And that was just day 2.
Honesty a shame as the team were great but she was the worst manage I've ever had.
techie2200@reddit
I started looking for a job at the end of my probation (90 days).
The company culture was bad, I got bait and switched onto a team with a manager I hadn't interviewed with (I interviewed with 2 possible managers and they stated I'd be working on one of their teams, but ended up getting sent over to a completely different team doing different work under a different manager), the architect on my team was incompetent and I had to keep bringing ideas to the rest of the architects to ensure we did things securely (this was fintech and he was too lazy to build out fine-grained permissions so was trying to build the system way too permissively for our requirements/compliance needs).
The rest of the team were pretty okay, and even the manager wasn't bad, but she quit just as my probation was ending. One talk with my new new manager and I knew his style did not work for me. He's your typical LinkedIn "influencer" constantly licking the boot of the company.
I was out of there and into a much better role ~5 months in.
foonek@reddit
4 days in a lab without any safety measures. Wasn't planning on getting cancer that month.
Stubbby@reddit
We hired a dev for backend at a startup, kid straight after college, drove up in Mercedes S class, at lunch he was complaining that he can't rent any nice place because he has no credit history even though he is willing to pay full rent up front.
At the end of the day he said, he changed his mind and he's quitting.
magpie882@reddit
Nine months. Started in September one year and left by the end of April the following year. I started looking for a new job after two months in the role. Took the remaining seven months to find a new position.
I went from corporate to a ~12 person "startup". I couldn't handle the depression that came from unlocking the building at 10 AM and then sittiny on an empty floor until noon plus general underestimation from the work and people around me. People like to say start-ups have more energy but my experience was the exact opposite.
StronglyHeldOpinions@reddit
One day. The other engineers were dicks about a former project I’d worked on.
miniversal@reddit
I spent less than a month at the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind. I got help writing for grant money new computers for their lab. The director flipped his lid when the computers arrived. Screaming at me saying that money should have been used for other things. I pointed out how using grant money for things other than what the grant was written for is called fraud. Woohoo did he lose it after that. So yeah, I walked out.
EddieJones6@reddit
You get to gage the impact in real time during your current job search. You’ll be fine - it looks odd on your resume sometimes but just prepare a good positive answer as to why you’re looking.
Dont fall into the trap I did, though, of “the grass is always greener”. I left a solid job for a FAANG, chasing money. Left that for a unique aerospace opportunity, which became awful due to a revoked hybrid agreement. Then had to scramble for a short term gig while looking for the job I really could be happy at. My resume for that year is horrible - I will leave at least one or two of the jobs off of it in the future.
But - my lesson learned: REALLY ask questions to find out about culture, turnover, how your life balance fits with the expected schedule, will it be a product you enjoy spending years staring at, etc. If you can manage to keep a job while undergoing a thorough job search for the right role, it’s a luxury. I jumped at the first opportunity too many times.
PCchampion@reddit
Don't put your latest job on your resume if it's only been a few months. Problem solved.
ivanovyordan@reddit
2 weeks.
The job wasn't challenging, there was no perspective for growth, and the culture was extremely toxic.
purpuric@reddit
Roughly a year.
Towards the end of my tenure there, while praising me about the “extraordinary quality” and “high value high impact” nature of my work (because I was totally burned out trying to prove myself) they nonchalantly mentioned how I had defied everyone’s expectations and my “shady reputation” earlier that year which everyone was talking about super casually.
That “shady reputation” was basically me getting a panic attack because of something happening at home which I had confided in my manager and only my manager.
That one “congratulatory” meeting just confirmed all my fears and suspicions: that everybody knew what had happened and everybody was talking about me behind my back while I was working myself to the bone.
The moment that call was done, I resigned.
Then I ghosted everyone, spoke only to HR.
The whole experience was so dehumanising and legitimately heartbreaking because I sincerely believed that my manager had stood up for me and protected me when I was going through a difficult time and I was working so so hard to show him he had made the right move by standing by me.
Fuck that shit, man.
I was always good enough, my manager always knew my “worth” so to speak. My body of work for so many years even before I joined the org was enough to demonstrate my work ethic and my value.
He wasn’t doing me any personal favours whatsoever.
I did learn a lot, though, about corporate relationships.
Nobody cares about you, pick up Machiavelli and Marcus Aurelius and commit everything to memory, that’s how you prevent yourself from getting played.
IHaveThreeBedrooms@reddit
Two months. Worked to create API for some scientific desktop software, manager never used it and didn't know the patterns. He insisted we use the latest and greatest UI technology which wasn't compatible with the program we were interfacing with. Then after I went through and organized a plan for the team and our tickets, he reverted and said to do it the way he imagined.
In two months we didn't ship a single thing and so he decided to outsource us. I left, others stayed, then they were laid off, then the 3rd party company failed and others were hired back. 4 months later that division was sold to another company and they were laid off again.
Abadabadon@reddit
9 months. Was lied to in the interview. Realized it 6 months in. Spent 3 months interviewing for a new job.
notreallymetho@reddit
6 months (DoD contractor layoff), and frankly while being laid off was horrific. I hate defense and won’t touch it again.
Before that I was at my company for almost 12 years and I left for a like 45% increase.
The job I’m at now retained the pay and is objectively much nicer.
410_clientGone@reddit
yes currently going thought it. 12 months in. i checked out 6 months ago and wouldn't give a shit if they laid me off. quiet quit until you land a better job
uber_neutrino@reddit
One day, it turned out to be a scam telemarketing job. I was about 14.
Infectedinfested@reddit
1 day. The company wasn't disclosed, but recruiter said they were hosting video games and needed someone to maintain them.
Turns out it was all gambling, i was young and naïve.
ImpossibleEbb6862@reddit
1 day was my shortest too. The company wasn't even that bad. It was just a typical crappy finance job. I didn't want to take the offer that bad, but it was my first job out of school, HR was pressuring me, and I was worried about being unemployed.
My first disappointment was realizing I wasn't getting a laptop, they were using Windows, and I would have to do all work through a locked down Citrix client. Halfway through the workday I got an offer from another company. My second disappointment was getting ready to go at 6 pm and seeing my coworker sit down with a cup of coffee, getting ready to work for the evening.
I left that day, accepted the offer, and sent an email to their HR department saying I wasn't coming back. I remember sleeping in the next morning, feeling very relieved.
revolutionPanda@reddit
2 months. CEO was calling individual devs screaming demands to get stuff done. Got accused of doing drugs because I wasn't performing - because, you know - taking all those phone calls. Ghosted them
YareSekiro@reddit
6 months, it was very clear in my second month I don’t like the work nor do I like my skip manager who is very pushy and micromanagy while my manager has 0 political power, and the company’s culture was destroyed when the new CTO replaced the old one a year ago. So I started taking recruiter calls and 4 months later I got a level bump and more interesting work.
antonioanthony923@reddit
Having 5 years at your first company in tech already makes you a unicorn, don't worry at all.
Make them fight for the signing bonus. My experience was they asked once, I ignored it, and never heard from them again. Don't feel guilty, you've earned it in sweat. (Of course your mileage may vary so keep it in savings in case they sick the dogs on you)
paxmlank@reddit
Something tells me you may be at Capital One :')
zazzersmel@reddit
3 months, fired; “we had expected you to have completed more tickets by now” 🤷♂️
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
Half a day
Years ago I got an offer from a place I wasn't really interested in but they offered enough pay to ignore that.
Made it about half-way through my first day before I decided I was jumping onto a sinking ship where everyone was throwing poo at each other instead of bailing water. It was a complete mess. They didn't have my laptop ready and the people I was supposed to be shadowing were downright nasty.
I accepted another (lower paying) offer I had on my drive home.
Looks like that company was bought out about a year after I left. No idea what happened to the staff.
darngottem@reddit
3 months because I got an offer for nearly twice as much on a team with a more interesting tech stack. The company I left laid off half the engineers a year later.
PeaceCandle69@reddit
\~2 hours doing door-to-door sales in college. Next up was one shift as a busser at a fancy French restaurant, also in college. I spent about four hours of this shift hand polishing crystal, got frustrated that they hadn't invested in some sort of automation to do this, and quit the next day. I'm a firm believer in quitting when the vibe ain't right, would do again.
Ein_Bear@reddit
Shortest for me was 2 weeks. The hiring manager didn't actually have approval for the headcount and was hoping their boss would just roll with it when I started.
bit_shuffle@reddit
I did a few months at one company that hired me to do manually what should have been done with software. As an engineer, that's just not my thing. Human factors in test reduce quality. Failing to automate reduces quality. I felt I wasn't really informed about what the job entailed.
Best thing I ever did. Pay went up, valuable experience with high end systems at the next job.
Some places don't want to look forward. This is the 21st century, and places like that just need to go extinct.
Close out what you're working on, and move on. Just start the job hunt, and plug along where you're at until the next thing materializes. If you get let go before you find the next thing, that's good because you're now free to job hunt full time. Be polite on your exit. Ask the next place how tasking and employee evaluation is handled before you say yes.
Watchful1@reddit
Just a reminder for anyone finding this thread from r/popular, this is a developer subreddit. Please don't comment your non-programmer job experience.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
I’ve done multiple single and multi-month jobs
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
Apparently people are really trigger-happy to fire me, despite accepting all of the work that I submit during that short amount of time
clearasatear@reddit
Did it ever occur to you that racing to thousands of lines of codes in PRs in the first few months might be not the batch of honor you assume it is?
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
The PRs are getting reviewed, scrutinized, and merged, over tens of them for completely separate functionality. You already seem to have settled your bad opinion of me in your head though, for some unknow reason.
zazzersmel@reddit
"nearly ten of them" what?
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
PRs? What else. Anyway it seems like ppl over here are upset to hear about my story so whatever
LovingHugs@reddit
About half a day.
Was hired at a small web dev shop 20 years ago. Something like 4 or 5 employees, I believe mostly serving local businesses.
Showed up in khakis & shirt. Owner sent me home furious, I needed a collared shirt and needed it today. Went to buy one as all I had was hand me downs which were ... not great, I was poor and my family not well off.
Returning I was given an assignment. A non trivial programming request was given and a strict 2 hours "or else" type emphasis was given. After 30 minutes he returned to check on my progress and was displeased, sending me home again.
african_or_european@reddit
One day. I was in college and told them I could only work around my class schedule. They said sure, no problem. Went in for my first day, no problems, everything looks good! Then they called and asked if I could come in during one of my classes and I told them no. They said they'd call me when they needed me to come in next... and just never did. No one ever told me I was fired but I did only get paid for that first day, so I didn't get a chance to turn into Milton, no matter how much I like red Swingline staplers.
Few-Impact3986@reddit
I think lasted 6 weeks on a contract job. The manager was crazy and had no interest in doing anything correctly, just fast. Was all about closing tickets. Close a ticket and open 3 more for the issues you made.
dryiceboy@reddit
1 month. Also have another 3 month stint.
First one was just a culture mismatch, absolutely hated the cubicle lifestyle there. Second one, the family wanted to move out of the city so just circumstance.
EasyPain6771@reddit
3 months because the CTO was an inexperienced asshole and the CEO told me “out of office is not a concept here.”
munificent@reddit
4 hours.
Back in college, I was hired by the university to do Mac tech support for staff. Just a basic college kid job, but I had been using Macs for years, so could handle it.
My very first morning, my new manager said "We don't have any Mac tickets today. So, instead, I want you to start working your way through the faculty phone directory. Call every one and walk through this script to get them to figure out the IP address of their computer."
I have a lot of social anxiety and really hate talking on the phone. I went to lunch and never came back.
coolshoeshine@reddit
3 months at Target as a Senior Systems Engineer in one of their warehouses. Target is no place for engineers. I dont think they actually wanted me there, but were contractually obligated to have an engineer on call. My only responsibility was to be eyes and ears for the external system integrator that sold them all the machines.
Funny enough, I also spent 3 months at Target as a teenager stocking shelves. That time I left just cus I was an irresponsible kid lol.
slapstick_software@reddit
About 9 months, the company was a dumpster fire, and I was a brand new developer. They had no processes and barely understood how their own services work. They ended up firing me just out of the blue one day, no pip, no prior mentions of me having any issues. I hadn't even ever had a 1v1 with my boss the entire time I was there. Worked out though, I got a way better job after that.
UncheckedMoonrise@reddit
3 months.
The company was dysfunctional. The CEO was a narcissist who came to the IT daily, stretching it to 60-90 minutes each day, frequently steamrolled over and dismissed his wife, who was a co-founder and executive, in front of everyone on the weekly all-hands (very cringe), and also had no consistency company strategy in mind.
I had friction with him, which we tried to talk out, to which he eventually said, “ah, you are more senior than others and have boundaries”, which I was to understand as causing him inconvenience.
Glad I was out.
exscalliber@reddit
2 months.
Got hired as a junior to mid-level dev after a recommendation from an old colleague i used to work with. After the 5 weeks, i was starting to feel a lot more comfortable and taking on projects working with nationwide companies. On the day of a pretty major rollout of our internal software (and also on my partners birthday), the company announced redundancies. The team was told that we could stay on for a lot longer than most other people because our part of the business was critical but most people left after a few weeks anyway. The funny part was, we were one of the few profitable parts of the business and a lot of our clients were major shareholders of the company. The shareholders were NOT happy with the decision to cut our team specifically and did not know that redundancies were happening.
The day of the major rollout also resulted in most of the team going home that day instead of the rollout so the rollout got pushed back a week, which disrupted the entire organization. I managed to pick up a job within a week or two after the announcement and most of the team got roles in a few weeks to a month after me so it "all worked out" for everyone on the team.
LeftMicrosoftEarly@reddit
3 months at Microsoft. It's not on my resume or LinkedIn.
jdeath@reddit
one week. my second job as a manager, which was at a body building website. the director that hired me had quit right before i started, i found out why on the third day... layoffs! i had other offers and jumped ship immediately. back to IC mainly since then
ursasmar@reddit
3 days. I was interviewed at an actual office, hired, and given an address to report for work the following Monday. Turns out the "office" was a guest house and no one mentioned that. Since it was a residential street, and you needed a permit to park on the street, I had to park a few blocks away.
When I finally found the place, thanks to the helpful lady who lived in the main house, none of the 3 other people working there knew that I had been hired. The owner of the company that interviewed and hired me was apparently out of country for the next 3 weeks. My computer looked like it was bought at Goodwill. Case falling off, discolored, scratched up. One of the other guys literally had to hit the machine to get it to boot.
When I finally got my computer running, which was sitting on a hallway table, so when anyone had to walk to the bathroom I had to stand up and move my chair out of the way, I didn't have any instructions. Since the other devs didn't know I was hired, they had nothing for me to do, but they also weren't happy to have to deal with me. Everyone seemed annoyed that I was there. But they also seemed annoyed at each other.
There was no way to reach the owner of the company, at least none that anyone knew about. So I spent the first day just trying to get a dev env set up, and get the site up and running. My second day was more of me sitting in the way with nothing to do. Third day, I accidentally parked on a street on a day I wasn't supposed to, and my car was towed.
That was when I decided I was done. I didn't have an email address for the owner, or a way to contact him, so I just never went back. About a month later the owner called me and asked what happened, and I explained it all to him. And he said, "Yeah, that makes sense. Good luck!" And that was the last I heard from him.
_dotdashdashdash@reddit
A job that wasn't a short term contract or small project would probably be 3 months. I left because of management. They weren't just bad managers but terrible people. Some highlights include misogyny, the CEO refusing to pay the few thousand he owed to a kid just out of school that he got to detail is Lamborghini and BMW each week, and general incompetence. They assumed that because they had money (one built a real estate agency and the other sold a business for a few hundred million), that everyone should listen to them and that everything they do turns to gold.
The kicker for me was when they flew someone out to speak at an event, but the person had expressed views online that they didn't agree with, so they told her, mid-flight, that she was no longer needed. It's not like it was some controversial or offensive take on things either - it was about just generally being a decent human being. So, I left and within a few months the whole tech team left. The business burned millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.
felfott@reddit
one day
Loose-Wheels@reddit
4 months, but only because an offer from my dream company came in and I couldn’t turn it down. was very bittersweet though because I loved the company and team I was at. They took the news really well and understood why I made the decision, and I left on good terms!
Developer2022@reddit
One month because they lied about the project on interview talks plus they were unfixable incompetent.
Appropriate_Mix_4307@reddit
2 months+ because the team esp. the lead was an a-hole. The CTO was great to me but the lead which was their superstar was just flatout bossy. He creates tickets and you follow them to the line, then once the PR is up, he will reject them and log on the ticket stuff like 'this should not be here...there...blah2' even though he never gave any clear specifications, I had suspected he does that because the CTO was in the tickets as well and he saves face by making it look like he's guiding me properly.
That was not gonna change so I decided to resign.
brainrotbro@reddit
9 months because I waited for bonus time
ice_dagger@reddit
Less than 6 months. Because the people were absolute nightmare to work with. Brilliant as they may be in some areas. I knew I had to get out before the probation ended (EU has long notice periods otherwise).
ProbablyBsPlzIgnore@reddit
Software developer for a health insurance company. After my 6 month contract was up, I refused an extension. Before that, the shortest I've ever stayed at a company was about 4 years.
I worked in Europe most of my career, with years of experience in health care, so I thought this would be a good fit. It turns out that health insurance is a very different industry here in the US.
The product was meant to automate approval or denial of cancer treatments. It was a terrible code base, the company and the product had grown too fast and slowing down was not an option. They tried to address the quality issues with more red tape and process.
You can sacrifice quality for speed if you're making a social media app or an app to organize your pokemon figurines, what's the worst that could happen, right? But if your software is a matter of life or death, that's just not something I can be part of.
Deranged40@reddit
11 months. And it was my dream job before I got it (It wasn't a FAANG company, but it was a company most people in the US have heard of). Turned out it wasn't the right job for me at all. I didn't like the management style, Managers were actually not technical at all, and were first and foremost a member of HR, and secondly a member of the engineering department.
BadgeCatcher@reddit
2 days. Code base was a disaster. And management seemed to think the bad bits were actually good. Luckily had another offer to go to.
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
10 months. Joined as the CTOs right hand. Instantly developed a rapport with all the ICs, local and remote. Realized the company has an insane technology profile for a B2C that makes all their money for the year on 2 days. Started trying to find ways to justify the investments by month 3, then bam — RIF number one liquidated a whole team and most of the apparatus around them. 4 months later, RIF 2. 3 months later, RIF #3 included me.
Best group I’d ever had the pleasure of working with. Still buy the company’s products. Poor fuckers just don’t know how to run a business.
Which-Meat-3388@reddit
8mo but I knew within 2 weeks it wouldn’t work out. I tried to make it work, give them the benefit of doubt, try to commit to the team or the work. It just wasn’t happening. Process was terrible, org was bloated and slow, cash was decent but options worthless, extreme on-call that was not previously disclosed. The app I worked on was probably 10yr old and had a dozen owners that came and went. It was a mess with no opportunity to right the ship, so that on-call was popping off frequently.
I technically also had one at 6mo but that ended in acquisition, and I stayed at that company 3wk. I don’t really count those though.
So yeah, lots of small stints peppered in there but I also have several in the 3-6yr range to balance it out. No one has held it against me because it’s not a pattern.
Better_Lift_Cliff@reddit
Six months because I got divorced and would have had to switch from a spouse visa to a work visa.
I was going back and forth about staying in the country and getting my job to sponsor me versus moving back to the US. Then our CEO passed away under mysterious circumstances and a bunch of people left. I felt that my situation would have been extremely unstable if I had stayed, so I made the decision to move back to the US.
Ultimately it was the right move because my career and wealth have grown considerably, and staying would have been a struggle both personally and financially. But man do I miss living abroad.
Material_Policy6327@reddit
3 months. Left my job at a tech adjacent healthcare company to go to an NLP startup. Hired for one role but got put into an R&D team which I didn’t interview for since they saw I had ML experience. Manager had no say in me joining and they proceeded to make my life hell and threw me under the bus. Rage quit after 3 months and went back to my old company for a better role.
kevinambrosia@reddit
3 months and I left for a few reasons.
I was lead on about the product (heavy overselling) and it turns out their core product was selling smut for ad views to primarily women.
Their core team was heavily Christian men and there was something that felt a bit hypocritical and exploitative about the whole setup.
I tried to do some thoughtful engineering work by identifying needs, designing solutions writing project proposals and cultivating agreement on work to be done and everyone seemed on board except my direct manager who seemed weirdly competitive about it. Putting down my proposals in public meetings (without reading any of the threads or documents). Like it was such a weird response when all the actual engineers loved the work I was doing.
Anyway, best decision I ever made. The company is still going nowhere fast and I got a better job at a better company a few months later. I kept it on my resume because it gives me an opportunity to talk about how I like to work and the type of engineering culture I like to work in. My manager didn’t want me to think through the problem or cultivate agreement around the solution, they wanted me to pound out work quickly without questioning. In this light, a short employment period can look really good to companies that value real engineering work. It might hurt me in a startup-environment interview, but it looks waaaay better at larger companies with harder problems or positions that expect engineer agency in finding and fixing problems.
So long as you don’t frame the short tenure as a failure you didn’t learn from or something that was entirely stupid on your part or just trash talk the company you worked for, I think short work experiences can be fine.
PayLegitimate7167@reddit
Well I nearly walked out after 6 months but was convinced to stay 😄
Key-Alternative5387@reddit
I had one for about a month. My boss was both a bit of a code Nazi and seemed new as a manager.
I suggested trying to stack 2 small PRs and he demanded it in one PR. I asked him to wait a few hours and I'll show him what I'm going for and why it makes sense here. He fired me.
mackstann@reddit
A few months, 3 or 4. I was used to working in fun startups and I landed in a medium-sized older company. It was an absolute snoozefest, apathetic, low standards, quiet, boring, frustrating. And there was a lead engineer who was a know-it-all and could not be reasoned with. He was a control freak yet was unavailable for long periods of time.
I called up a startup that had previously offered me a position and took them up on it and I'm still there now 5+ years later, still loving it.
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
yeah, I wouldn’t think anything of it. It is one thing for someone to have 6 one year stints on their resume. Those resumes, I pass on. But seeing that you stuck around in your first job, I wouldn’t think much of you trying to leave in a matter of months.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Remember that people who do a lot of contracting will move from project to project, so those six one year stints might not indicate a job hopper or a flight risk.
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
sure, but in my experience, people who do contract work point that out in the resume. Regardless, I have to make assumptions while sorting/narrowing down resumes.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
That’s why it is good to notate if it is a contract on your résumé
Turbulent-Week1136@reddit
"I joined this company, but it's not working out the way I hoped it would so that's why I'm looking for another job."
General-Jaguar-8164@reddit
3 weeks
No standing desk
Remote via my own laptop doing RDP to the desktop machine in the office
ElGuarmo@reddit
6 weeks because the commute ended up being so much worse than I thought. After needing to stop at a rest stop to go to the bathroom I realized I needed a change. Ended up going to the company I turned down when I took the bad commute job.
latchkeylessons@reddit
Worked a pretty good job actually when I was young. It was great, but six months in I got a recruiter offering 30% more. I asked if my current place could counter it and they just shrugged, with my manager saying, "go for it." So I left. Maybe unsurprisingly the new place was toxic but paid very well, whereas the first place was very cool and I made some friends quickly while not paying as much. Go figure.
drew_eckhardt2@reddit
Less than six months because I was extremely unhappy after selling my home and moving cross country to work on a project which was cancelled with a tech lead who was leaving the country.
It only came up a couple of times during the interview process over the following 20 years.
xXxdethl0rdxXx@reddit
I’m living through this exact scenario. Sold home, moved across country…six months in, total complete reorg and things are miserable. Trying to make it to the one-year mark but not sure how long I’ll last.
webbed_feets@reddit
Did it make you reconsider moving for a job in the future? With how common layoffs are now, and how quickly your job experience can change with new management, it seems really risky to me to move for a job.
drew_eckhardt2@reddit
Except for relocating to Colorado where I have family I won't move out of Silicon Valley for a job.
ShoePillow@reddit
I was in a similar position and stuck it out for 2 years. It also gave me exposure to international opportunities (directly or indirectly). And I did learn a tiny bit about how to handle chaos and politics and conflicting stakeholders.
I don't think I'll do it again though
Groove-Theory@reddit
Shortest for me was 3 months. It's so small that it's not even on my resume or LinkedIn
Exapno@reddit
2 weeks. I had a better offer come through that I was expecting to fail so I took another inferior offer, then it turned out I got the job!
Void-kun@reddit
6 months, lied to me about my role and responsibilities and just kept giving me 'training'.
Finally gave me the work they were withholding when I handed in my notice.
Stupidly waited till I passed probation.
bcameron1231@reddit
5 days.
Sometimes you just know.
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
11 months. I was the only engineer at a company and they hired a cto for then proceeded to sexually harass me for 3 months. Weirdly that wasn’t enough (I was trying to get to a year). He started screaming at me and cursed me out in front of the entire company I don’t remember why something dumb. I emailed a recruiter I knew that day and told them if they could get me an offer within a week I would take it. They did.
Outside engineering 1 day. I almost accidentally joined an MLM. On the first day of training I quit because I didn’t understand why I had to sell things to my family.
Bemteb@reddit
1 month.
Got hired as a backend dev, but they asked me on day one to find a company in China to produce hardware for them, because that was important and backend and hardware are close, right? The only other backend guy was a senior, in the sense that he was over 70 years old and rapidly declining in health. When I tried initiating a knowledge transfer, because of course nothing was documented, I was told not to bother him because he will leave soon (no shit, guy was almost blind and really needed to retire) and he should finish his projects first.
In the end, they fired me after a month because I didn't find someone in China who would promise the impossible and I dared telling them that what they wanted was not really feasible.
I was devastated, it was the first time I got fired, only a few years out of university. But now, quite a few years later, I can only laugh about these guys and be happy that I left. I don't even mention that job on my CV or LinkedIn anymore.
A few years later, I checked out the public records of the company: After over 10 years, they haven't once turned a profit and only stay alive by the founders putting more money in each year. Startups, man, you only ever hear about the successful ones, but there's so much stupid shit out there...
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Don't feel bad. You landed on your feet and can look back now and laugh, as you said.
I recently was laid off from a job I'd been at for 4.5 years. The first 3.5 years were great, but I had depression and mental health issues that affected my performance that last year, plus my wife was battling cancer.
I was placed on an informal PIP, which involved weekly 1-1's with my lead just telling me how badly I sucked.
The job I went to directly after only last 2 months. It was a massively dysfunctional organization. After six weeks or so, I realized that I would not succeed there. Rather than being let go for being a low performer, I found another job where I've excelled. Sometimes it's all about finding that right environment.
ephemeral_resource@reddit
I spent two 7 month stints at two different places back to back. First was chasing that I wanted to shift my career from generic devops (mostly ansible) to "more cloudy" so I landed my shot as an "entry level cloud consultant" and did well.
I left not long after chasing much better pay (though I declined a great counter) and a bit more interesting work (most of their team was placed at various large corporations struggling profoundly with cloud adoption). I only lasted 7 months there due to not liking my manager. It bothered me
Nothing bad happened except some shame related feelings I had. After 3 years at my current I don't feel that way. I have had a pretty decent experience with most of my employers and I'd even include the first one of these two as decent. I really didn't like my time at the second but it was mostly "weird" stress.
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Legally? One day, I quit the first day of orientation because someone else gave me a verbal promise of a job.
Guess what happened? That verbal promise fell through and then I had no job at all. That was the day I learned to ignore verbal promises.
boring_pants@reddit
If someone offers you a job then clearly they don't care. And then you'll have a new job where you can stay for a long time and so the problem will resolve itself.
Alternatively, if this bothers them, then they won't offer you a job and then you'll naturally stay at your current job longer. So the problem will resolve itself.
A short stint at one job is fine. If it becomes a pattern then prospective employers may start to get wary, but once is not uncommon.
dajuniordev@reddit
Eight months because a guy I could learn a lot from got hired by Grafana. I was super stoked to learn from this guy, so I looked for other places with senior profiles.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
Oh, one four month stint with a five year job before that won't wreck you. Trust me, I'd wager a majority of us have kissed a few frogs. My view is that it's way better to nope out of a place like that sooner rather than later. In fact, I wish it was only a month or two that you'd been there. In that case, it's easy to just leave those off your resume altogether. If you were to hand in your resignation tomorrow, you'd still have to account for four months. Four months is enough that you need to be able to account for the gap, but that's easy. Just say you took a short sabbatical to take care of things, or that you did independent consulting.
Back in the 2000s, I did have a time around middle of the decade where I had a few short term jobs (under one year). It came up a few times in job interviews, but was never a deal breaker.
KandevDev@reddit
three months at a 'fast-growing' startup. signed because the offer letter said i'd be tech lead on a new platform team. day one i found out the platform team was me, a contractor in a different timezone, and the CEO who had Strong Opinions and ignored everything we said anyway.
quit when i realized i was about to get blamed for a launch i had no authority over. nobody in my next interview cared, and the few who asked got the truthful one-sentence version. one short stint isn't a pattern, it's a story you tell once and move on.
KandevDev@reddit
three months. joined a fintech that had been described as "fast-paced" in the interview, which in retrospect was the warning. day three was already a fire, day 30 i was on-call without ever having seen the runbook, day 60 i realized the "senior" engineers were actually doing zero senior work because they were also drowning. the kicker was the offer letter had a clawback clause for the signing bonus if you left within 12 months. i ate the clawback. cheapest tuition i have ever paid.
szansky@reddit
One day in the building. Omg it was terrible. The job not bad but people there were toxic
unicyclegamer@reddit
Started on Monday and got laid off on Friday morning haha. But they paid out my signing bonus, gave two months severance, six months of health insurance, and they let me keep my work laptop, M1 MBP.
try-catch-finally@reddit
a few minutes shy the 90 days 'at will' - 1993
Was in need of a fulltime gig - but had my own product line growing at a good clip - but not quite livable -
I had interviewed at a big company, and they basically had said "we’ll hire you, but you must cease & desist all side gig work" - That wasn’t possible - the side gig was funding other employees - just not me yet.
One of the devs from the interview had invited me to an after work get together - so i went - I ran into the CEO of another small company - the guy was very well known - an ardent contributor to the niche industry back in the day - pre Internet, so there were a few journals that he contributed many helpful 'how to' articles, along with publishing a lot of share-ware utilities that were widely used.
He said 'if you want a job, let me know' - So one interview later - i started to work -
Turns out he is the most main-character - narcissistic- ego centric - anointed by god - ugly american - no thought outside of his brain is legitimate - after 9 or so instances of him just - i was hired because his very big clients had grown hesitant that he was the only engineer.
I had fixed a dozen or so of HIS bug, respectfully pointed out issues / optimizations, never got credit, got constantly rebuked, and on top of that - kept the office HEATED to 85°, and was claiming it was 65° (F)
He kept telling me "you know, this is at will, i can fire you for any reason before 90 days".
So on day 89, i put in my resignation, and never looked back.
thelochteedge@reddit
About 11mo and like 14 days or something, which is crazy. I spent almost nine years at the same place, which went through Covid. When they forced us back into office, I jumped to another place, who promised we would be WFH permanently. Then six months in they shuffled us back in. Shocked I was able to jump again so quickly but yeah found fully remote and have been there almost two years. Made more in those 12 months jumping twice in salary increase than I did in nine years from raises... which was never my motivator for leaving either.
boboshoes@reddit
1 week.
Came on and immediately everything was on fire. Some exec needed a Tableau report and I had to set up the whole backend with a full data pipeline, deployment etc. by the end of the week. this was on day 1. I was on calls all day with business folks who were just laying on more requirements with no push back from my manager and completely unrealistic timelines. Like everything can be done in 1 or 2 days. Got another offer the next week and left.
Careful_Ad_9077@reddit
2 days.
Just the second day the manager expected me to skip lunch to work on a nothing burger. It was literally a coding exercise with l business value, much less a dead line, but she wanted to flex.
So I went out to have lunch, came back to the office, she was fuming and I quit.
Zealousideal_Cup4896@reddit
5 years is not at all too soon to leave a job. That’s an excellent resume. My only advice is to start looking for work while you’re still working. Nobody seems to do that anymore and I’m old school but a lot of people agree it’s easier to find a new job while you still have an old job.
For me the shortest time i stayed at a job was 4 hours :) interviewed for a position converting a bunch of really aging NT servers to Linux (not running any MS specific stuff everything would transfer) got the job. Passed the drug test. Showed up for orientation got my name tag and security stuff done went to go see my new manager before lunch and he told me that they decided to just keep the NT servers and I was now an NT administrator. Not only was I not certified for any such thing (which they knew) but I had a somewhat negative reaction to the whole situation and said thank you very much for the lovely morning but this is not what I signed up for. Paid me for half a day taking out social security and everything :)
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
People need to get over the guilt that comes from leaving a job after a short time. Actually, it is better to leave sooner than later if you know it won't work out, like in your case. I'll bet you never listed that job on your resume, so it does not hurt you one bit.
valbaca@reddit
Less than a month. Got in an realized they lied about what they wanted me for. They didn’t want a staff developer, they had outsourced all the development and wanted a US manager to manage them. Then I found out they had a data breach and didn’t disclose it. Fucking noped out of that and don’t put it on my resume. Thankfully I had had two offers in hand and the other company brought me in with no problem.
Melodic_Crow_3409@reddit
I've been there. The role you were in absolutely sucks. I don't blame you for leaving.
ItsRainingTendies@reddit
3 1/2 hours. Was doing construction, just wheelbarrowing dirt all over the place. Didn’t get a smoke break, so just ditched the wheelbarrow and walked off - never went back
Lord_Skellig@reddit
I just joined a company and was made redundant 6 weeks later.
My job before that had a 3 month notice period, so I spent twice as much time preparing to move as I did in the job itself.
mysteryihs@reddit
2 weeks, it was sweatshop/churn & burn company at the height of covid where the boss sat behind everybody so he could watch them work. Caught me on youtube and when I came back from lunch I couldn't clock in.
brazzy42@reddit
Two years, because they never gave me the role I was hired for, though everything else was fine.
keptfrozen@reddit
4 hours — manager kept cursing and yelling while they were training me. I was a teen; I called after the shift and said I quit, then they tried to beg me to stay. Turns out I was the 4th person they went through because the manager didn’t know how to respect new hires.
Strutching_Claws@reddit
1 week, it was my first job and it was in a call centre. In the first week we did training.
It was about 20 years ago now but I remember it like it was yesterday. I finished doing a practice call and the man comes to give me feedback, he says that I did really well and he was impressed but he didn't like the fact I said "yeah" instead of "yes".
When he said that internally I had already resigned, I figured I could never work for someone so anal and controlling, the next day I resigned.
YahenP@reddit
Three or four days. Nothing special. I just didn't like it there. I realized there were zero prospects, both in terms of salary and interesting work, and I just left.
ceirbus@reddit
6 months, QA button masher got promoted to PM and the leadership was WEAK af - I was the new TL, PM hated that I didn’t bend the knee
Sunstorm84@reddit
Six weeks. I decided to start freelance work and got offered double my salary,
ExitingTheDonut@reddit
I lasted just under a week at a satellite office for a corporation, which was barely getting off the ground. My only coworker was my boss, who also did the interview, and we shared the office as a co-working space with a few other businesses, but it was mostly empty. Rather depressing to be there honestly. The second day a huge blizzard hit us. Buses were delayed and I phoned to let my boss know I'll be in an hour late. Didn't want to skip a day because I just started, but I really couldn't get used to the very isolated, very small team setup.
I'd be happy to be wrong about satellite offices, but this one felt like I was getting a watered down version of the actual company experience. Plus it was low paid too.
druidgaymer@reddit
Shortest at a software job: 2.5 years. Found another job that paid more so I pivoted.
Shortest at a non software job: 1 shift at a retail gig. Management didn't like me and didn't put me on the schedule after my first shift. Don't know why.
horror-pangolin-123@reddit
Around six months because the lead engineer of three teams and the whole project was actually mentally unwel. Pulling random people into late night work for no reason, working on random tickets outside of sprint until they're half done, refactoring key modules of the app while it's wasay behind schedule, lying, blaming random people for random issues etc. Somehow being really tight with the owner of the company, they were untouchable. That is, untill the deadline passed without a working MVP and penalties had to be paid. I left before that happened, along with some other senior engineers when I got tired of looking a deranged person lashing out all over the place.
FourSparta@reddit
3 months because 8 senior people allegedly defrauded AWS and the company lost partnership status. All employees and contractors lost their jobs with no pay for the last 3 weeks. Founder committed suicide, and the CEO is currently CEO of 2 non-profits and 3 other companies.
not-hydroxide@reddit
I spent 3 weeks at a place about 6 months ago, then rejoined my previous company. They didn't lie about the stage they were at, but they very much stretched the truth and I wasn't happy and I knew I'd be miserable. It was awkward leaving them rejoining but didn't have any real issues
DollarsInCents@reddit
1 year
I was working 9-9-6 damn near. I also was one of two onshore workers and the only non-indian. On top of that it was a fin tech and the business side had no respect for the tech side. Felt like I had to kiss ass to get basic requirement feedback. Damn near begging the bankers to ping me back or respond to meeting invites. I also had to do change management stuff and got into a argument with some random dude in eastern europe because I submitted a change wrong (no training or documentation provided)
failsafe-author@reddit
Sixth months. I took the job because it was close to home specifically asking if they were moving. They said no, then announced a week after I started that they were moving 45 minutes away. I was upset, but they offered me 10K more to be an EM, so I thought it try it out. I HATED being an EM, and quit at the sixth month mark.
Addendum: one of the developers who worked under me while I was an EM ended up become a director of engineering at a startup that was very successful, and begged me to come work for him. After a few years of him asking, I finally said yes, but said I wouldn’t be an EM. He made me a principal engineer instead, and that’s how I got my current job. So, it all worked out in the end.
Robodobdob@reddit
Six months. Death march project for a large IT consultancy. Fellow colleague got a job at a startup and headhunted me. Best decision ever.
SpinachFlashy2542@reddit
5 weeks (3 weeks I've worked + 2 PTO weeks)
My first job (a little over 1 year) ended abruptly (the company went bankrupt), and I was scared because I had savings for only \~2 months. In the first month, I tried to find something on the same stack (it was a stack not so popular in my city/country), but then I decided to accept anything to have an income. Swapped to a junior role, where I was earning the absolute minimum income. I knew that I wouldn't stay in that company for too long, so I invented that I had a planned vacation just to be able to go to more interviews (back then, the interviews were held face-to-face). I found a company that had an opening for the tech stack I've worked with. In \~3 days, we moved from meeting with HR (at a coffee shop on Wednesday), having an interview (at their office on Thursday), and getting the offer (mid-day Friday, so I had time to give my resignation). Monday, I was at the new job, for a salary \~5 times higher.
However, I don't mention it in my LinkedIn/resume.
ithinkilefttheovenon@reddit
2 weeks. The hiring manager was subbing us out to a subsidiary and lying about our experience. It all unraveled when the subsidiary manager kept telling us we should know how to do things they had not trained us for - because the hiring manager had told him we were not new hires. The crazy part is that the subsidiary was overseas and I was traveling out of the country for this job.
psaux_grep@reddit
Four years.
LuckyWriter1292@reddit
3 weeks - boss was awful, it was low paid and they expected staff to work 30 minutes unpaid overtime every day.
It was a well known furniture retailer - they were so shady.
rdcae@reddit
Definitely cut yourself some slack.
As long as the reason for leaving is sound (which it sounds like it is) then you've got nothing to worry about. A small minority of recruiters may flag it, but they can gft.
Affectionate_Link175@reddit
4 months, I was sold a lie and found a job that aligned with my skills and interests.
Extension_Canary3717@reddit
Two weeks
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
This stint won't matter in the long run. I had a stint like this of maybe 6 months? I got a job after that that I stayed at for 2 years, and then never mentioned it in a resume or interview again. Technically there is a gap on my resume but no one has ever asked me about it. I had done some consulting work around that time so in conversations I just focus on that.
GoodishCoder@reddit
My last job I stayed for 2 months because the role wasn't as described.
HoratioWobble@reddit
3 months because they were incompetent.
At the end when I didn't want to renew, they refused to pay me. Said I hadn't done any work - when I'd built a good chunk of the platform.
So I blasted them on LinkedIn and their CEO paid me a week later and the engineering manager who thought he was the top dog got a dressing down
chikamakaleyley@reddit
6 months and i was let go from a pretty well known fintech
i still put it on my resume
that experience from that company is very aligned with what i do at my current job
cabindirt@reddit
Your sanity is more important than what looks good on a resume.
tortilla_mia@reddit
The usual advice is to weigh having a short employment vs a gap on you resume.
4 months seems like an okay amount of time to just leave as a gap. And going into the future your CV will just say 2026 ended job 1 and 2026 started job 3. Don't mention job 2 at all.