Should you stick out a job you hate?
A case for loyalty (it’s not what you think)
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I recently went to a UX meetup here in Boston, MA. It’s the first in-person meetup I’ve been to since 2019, and it was pretty trippy. Somewhere along the way, in the time void of Covid, I got more experience as a product designer. So I found myself in the unexpected position of being asked for advice.
One of the questions I was asked by multiple early-career designers (or at least earlier than me) had to do with loyalty to a company.
I really don’t like my job but should I stick it out for two years?
No
If you had asked me in 2018, I would have said, “I would, it’ll look better on your résumé.” In fact, from 2019 to 2021, I did exactly that — stuck with a job for two years for the sake of making it to two years (although I loved that job and my peers, the pay was very low.)
Post-covid, I find myself saying a very emphatic “no!”
Corporate loyalty
In the early stages of covid, I was laid off from a startup. I went into work one morning, and was told if I had a meeting on my calendar at noon, I was being let go. I was given 4 weeks of severance. This company did not stop and say, “should we at least wait until Aaron gets to 2 years?” It was a simple, analytical decision for them. We have need X and so we must do outcome Y.
If you have needs that are not being met by a company, start looking for a new job!
Will recruiters care?
For a long time, the popular opinion was that recruiters preferred seeing that a person would commit to a company for 2+ years. However, covid came along and people got tossed around all over the place. So now, very talented people have broken résumés with weird gaps, jobs that only lasted 2 months, etc. Because…
