Should I change my Job?

# Pro current job
- extremly convinient in terms of family compatibility
- low stress
- awesome boss
- I worked on this software for years and can see it gaining maturity
- can not complain about salary

# Contra current job
- always the same boring tech stack, little development as programmer and none beyond that
- I can't see any greater good or social added value in what I do!
- small team and very little opportunities to meat new poeple from other departements or what
- colleagues are okay but conservative and boring, also they do a lot of wfh (take in consideration i am rather extrovert so this is an issue)
- no work trips (see above)

I'm in a similar situation.

I continue to develop and grow my skills outside of work.

Sometimes I even get to bring what I've learned to work to show the team how we can improve and build new projects and services.

Ask yourself two questions:

- are you happy?
- is your position safe?

My rule is if I answered yes to both, don't change anything.

@sariel hm while the secons question is easy, a 95% yes, the first is hard to answer. I don't know. If i where happy with this Job, I wouldn't question it constantly but i am not unhappy enough to just quit as did before with other jobs.

@horus happiness is not the same as being content.

Look deep into yourself and define what makes you happy.

@horus sounds like you are in a good position to look and just be relaxed. Turn down anything that isn’t a absolute win on all fronts. Be sure to get interviews with the actual team you’ll be working with, and really dig deep in their processes.

@sariel i think whatever makes me happy wouldn't pay the bills...

@jeeper this what i am doing for a year now but it feels not as good as you picture it. It feels like i am not really commited to my my Job nor to the gibt for anew one. Actually i had an interview today.

I don't think "extrovert" means that you feel bad alone or something like that.

Work is not the place for socializing! Work is for work. It pays the bills. If it's chill with a stack you know, you get energy left on your free time to spend with your family and maybe even do some hobby projects & socializing.

Maybe a more hectic environment would make the work part of your days nice but then it also sucks your energy pretty fast.

Buut, you're the one who knows what works for you. You'll most likely not find it on first try changing so be prepared for that.

Trim your hours and start a side business. Best of both.

If you want trips, socialization and new content, look up tech conferences around you. True, travel expenses and possible admission won't be covered by the company. But if the salary is good, just cover it yourself. Question is how much admission free/community events are in your area, but even in our small country it's 4 large admission free conferences per year + plenty of smaller community events, covering essentially any IT related topics.

@horus you are probably thinking your job expects more commitment from you than they do. If you are getting your work done, you are committed enough. The interviewers probably expect you to be less flexible with your scheduling than you are being. It’s probably fine it just is weird at first but that’s how everybody is doing it these days and how companies have been doing it forever. Ever notice how companies have jobs available even right after layoffs or jobs posted for full positions? Always looking to the next best thing that may or may not come through.

@Iankku Why should work Hof also be for socializing. In my previous jobs i met a lot of interessting poeple, made friends and even relationships while in this one it's always the same three poeple which i see mostly online. In those previous Jobs the job part was terrible so it's now the other way round, but i still hooe for something thats both.

@qwwerty actually, it's not said that they wonf pay for attending such events if they are work related enough. Now that the lockdown is over and events exist again maybe I just should Show some Initiative in this direction!

@jeeper you are absolutly right. I am the one who feels the urge for commitment way more than they. It's not so easy to overcome this i suppose but thank you for pointing it out.

@horus that's even better and I encourage you to do it. Me and my colleague did the same - justified how attending the conference is going to improve our skills and what will be the benefits for company and our manager agreed to cover some of our expenses (in a bit of unofficial way, because corporate bureaucracy, but we got the money).

It will definitelly help you meet interesting people, discover new tech, etc..

Tomorrow I will have the talk with my boss. I told my boss that i am not so sure anymore if i really want to quit and He wwnts me stay naturally. Tomorrow we will talk about how it could continue. Maybe He have some incentives for me to stay.

I have no idea what to want or expect.
Any recommendations @sariel, @qwwerty, @jeeper.

@horus go into that meeting knowing you hold all the cards to YOUR success.

It's up to you on what that success looks like.

Write it down if it helps, but you need to know what it's going to take to keep you there. Is it more money? More autonomy? Do you want a completely different job/title?

From what I gathered from your complaints in your original post you might want to ask for a more evangelist role. You're the technical guy that sits between sales, product owner, developer, and the customers. You would be writing less code, but it sounds like that's not challenging enough for you so not the end of the world if you do less to take on an active product assistive role instead.

Key is, you need to know what you want to be successful at. If you had a crystal ball and could see 8-12 months in the future, what would you be doing that would make you feel happy and fulfilled?

Good luck!

@sariel He proposed the exact thing. If i stayed i could become Code owner for the thing i am coding since three years on of i want to and will more be the decision maker on it than the realizer. Or I could switch to a more experimental and scientific part of the project. Or both.

@horus if any of that excites you take him up on it.

If it doesn't 🤷