4 YOE and currently have 8 months at my current company (second job). I had no initial plans to leave my current company. However, a former coworker reached out about a higher paying role (\~20% base bump + RSUs for the first time in my career), referred me, and I just got the offer. I’m most likely going to take it, but I feel really guilty about leaving my current company after only less than a year. I’d like to stay 2-3 years typically, but this opportunity was too good to pass up for me.

I like my current coworkers and my project manager, but I see that the seeds of mismanagement are starting to be planted for our current project. Internal software is a new concept to this company and upper management sees us as a cost center. This alone isn’t abnormal, but it’s to the point that they’re already complaining about the project budget and one of the ways my PM considered reducing it is by cutting engineering hours spent on the project. The project is less than a year old. Also, upper management just dictates what we work on next despite no experience with software engineering management while my PM does. The issue with this is that we’re constantly having to shift focus onto superfluous stuff (mainly UI enhancements but it sometimes involves updates across the full stack) that makes them happy instead of focusing on building a solid foundation before working on this stuff. My manager has tried to work with them, but it’s proved futile so far. Long term, I have my doubts about the project success if this continues and so does my PM.

Despite all of this, I want to ensure that it’s still a smooth process for them before I leave. Current strategy is to write as much documentation as I can for what I’ve worked on, set my start date to a week after our initial release of the application (already did this), and offer a potential backfill for my role. Would love to hear some other strategies to consider as I’m going to break the news later this week. Would prefer not to burn the bridge but I wouldn’t be surprised if I do.