What caused you to change your job

[Zorco]

An interest of mine at the moment...

Among fellow Brewers (and lurkers), what has been a reason or two for you to decide changing jobs?

Was it ever because of a tiny thing and the market was booming; or how much did you put yourself through before finally making the choice.

Did the new job come to you at the wrong or right time, or did you hunt for months to find the next one?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Forced redundancy

 

[razz]

I've changed jobs twice in 37 years and it has always been for improved pay and conditions.

 

[Mardoo]

To come to Australia. To start a business. To go travelling. For a new beginning. The BoD destroyed the arts organisation I helped run. To go to Uni and never finish. Those are all separate jobs I left.

 

[Dave70]

Sydney's traffic congestion.

 

[sp0rk]

My wife had a scholarship for her Special Ed teaching degree, so when she finished up she got a 3 year permanent position
We first got allocated to Brighton Le Sands, but I said no way I was moving to Sydney, despite being able to transfer to another Telstra data centre (I was an application developer/SQL script monkey/IT Tech) in Burwood
Our second spot was Muswellbrook, so we had to take that or pay the Education Department back $15,000
The mrs moved down Term 3 last year and I stayed in Coffs until I found a job here.
I got a couple of days a week cash in hand work at a Mister Minit style place at the end of November so I finally moved down.
It wasn't until early March that I actually found a full time job (a 10 month maternity leave contract) as an Admin Officer/IT tech in an Equine Hospital

Moving here made me really realise it's ALL about who you know
I applied for so many entry level IT positions, data entry positions, etc, stuff that I'd done daily over my 7 years with Telstra
I have some really excellent references from people fairly high up in Telstra, but I only had maybe 3 interviews over 8 months of applying for 5+ jobs every day

 

[Zorco]

Forced redundancy

Yep, felt this a few years ago.

 

[manticle]

So I could work with a fat annoying idiot who makes simple things difficult.

Also interstate move for a life change which has been wonderful for the most part, obese, obnoxious morons aside.

 

[Wardcliff]

PTSD, major depression disorder, fuckwits running the show.

 

[Camo6]

Money...and fuckwits.

 

[Zorco]

Appreciate the whole cross section gents. You've helped me get a clearer feel on my situation.

I've had an offer and I've accepted it just now. For me I have not been on my career path for most of my time here and there is about 4 things that have all come together for me to make the move.

It has been a long time to get to this and most certainly I can aim at the Fuckwits that are in my neck of the woods. They don't help at all. (Why don't we have a fuckwit whirflock and coagulate them together and piss them off to Jerk Island) *Courtney Taylor Taylor

Career boost
+1 Money
+1 Conditions
hopefully -3 Fuckwits.

I'm going to have some time off and brew beer between jobs. Disconnect a bit.

Thanks again for sharing.

 

[Lemon]

I have heard a saying that people don't leave companies, they leave managers.
That is certainly true for me.
Although I have also moved jobs to continue a great environment with good leaders.
While money was important in most of those moves, I made the decision based on leadership.

Lemon

 

[TheWiggman]

I've skipped a few jobs but surprisingly have taken a pay cut many times. I've been fortunate to work with good people/managers in mining (though the industry has some very trying and entitled personalities) and moved based on life circumstances. For my wife and I, we were both born at Corowa on the NSW/Vic border and for us this is home.
I managed to score a job in mining at age 23 and our plan was to work 3-5 years up there, save as much cash as possible, then move back to reality. I was happy up there with my succession plan and living circumstances but with twins on the way and being 2.5h from the nearest hospital, we couldn't take the risk as there may be 3 fatalities on the roadside come labour. At this time I fortunately got a job in Orange in the same line of work - though metalliferous mining - and was settled well enough there as well. An opportunity came up in Albury which was a career progression and enabled us to move back home, so I bit the bullet and moved.

I agree Lemon with the phrase 'people don't leave companies, they leave managers' but I believe it's misconstrued by a lot of people to imply that people only leave companies because of a bad manager. There are a lot of bad employees out there. An angry, difficult and incompetent employee could walk out the door in self destruction and say "my manager was a f^ckhead so I'm out of this shithole" carrying the 'leaving managers not company' mantra. The concept works both ways - if you leave a company, you also leave the manager. This could mean you're leaving because you don't like your boss (plenty of that in the real world) but conversely if you like your boss, by leaving the 'company' behind you're leaving good leadership.

 

[mckenry]

I know no-one's arguing about it, but there are so many more shit employees than there are managers. Usually, good leaders climb the ladder. The grand-fathering, entitlement days based on length of service are over. Cream rises.
Thats why whenever I interview people and they give the reason for leaving their previous job (or wanting to) as their 'previous manager was -----' it always raises an eyebrow for me. Sometimes you'll find they've done this more than once, blaming their bosses each time.
I need to be careful in these instances, because I have left a role (not the company) because I didn't like my manager. He was a micro-manager, trusted no-one to do the right thing, yet he was the biggest cheat and hypocrite in the office. We caught him out many times.
So, its a valid reason, just not watertight in every case.

 

[CheekyPanda]

I'm a couple of months into 1 year parental leave at the moment. I've worked in mining since leaving Uni, nearly 10 years and so has my partner.

I'm loving the break and it's probably been one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's giving a whole new perspective on work. It's not so much where you work but who you work with. We chased the dollars for a while and no doubt it set us up but I look back and there are some people that I know exist in this world that make me sad. To say people leave managers isn't telling the whole story, it could be because of the camp cleaner being a complete tool.

 

[Airgead]

Cream rises.

I work as a management consultant. I'm not sure about that. In most large companies I tend to find its less Iike milk where the cream rises and more like a big septic tank where the biggest lumps of %&((* rise to the top...

Because management is self selecting, what tends to happen is that the people who are most like the current management become managers so it becomes very insular and prone to groupthink. Not great if you want to shake things up.

 

[Dave70]

When told by the headmaster only the 'cream' attended this school, he said, 'yes I know what you mean, rich and thick'.

W.H. Auden.

 

[warra48]

Got tired of the trip into the office each day, feeling more buggered from the commute in daily traffic than my usual day fighting lawyers and other dickheads, and with the feeling as I was about to enter my office "I just don't want to do this anymore".

So, we checked our finances, and decided with my super and even more in shares through the management structure staff share scheme, we had no financial reason for me to continue to kill myself.

6 months long service leave on full pay and benefits, then retirement at age 59.

Bought my 3 year old company vehicle off lease for about half retail value, and moved the hell out of Sydney.

Best move we ever made was to Port Stephens. I can recommend it!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

As they say, most people are promoted to their level of incompetence......seen that happen A LOT over the years, not only with who I worked for, but also seeing it in other businesses/bodies ( seems very prevalent in government jobs )

I have had the pleasure of working with true assholes, I do I mean assholes, and whilst they thought they where the ducks nuts, come time for a DCM they where the first ones to get one

Being a manager/boss/team leader is not easy, especially when your job is to get the crew to get things done. You get one fuckwitt in the crew and it makes life very hard.

Some employees just dont value their job and think they can do what they like

 

[Black Devil Dog]

Had a good job at a radio station as a 'Sales Executive' about 20 years ago.

It was great until I was given the opportunity to take over the position of a senior sales member. Problem was, he stayed, was given a newly created position and kept all his big spending clients. I still had to meet/exceed sales budgets based on his previous years figures. This was in an area where there was no new business starting.

The Sales Manager (his surfing mate) and I, frequently had 'animated discussions' about the way things had been set up. Eventually I realised that I wasn't part of the clique, didn't want to be part of it, and there was only so much shafting I was prepared to take.

I've been pretty much self employed ever since.