Wednesday, October 05, 2005

When to bail out of your job

I got this link from slashdot to Christopher Wilson's blog entry about when to quit your job. It got me to thinking about what I would consider to be work place red flags, things that would make me sweat and start updating my resume. So, here is a list:
  1. Employee Appreciation Programs are of the Devil The only time a company needs an Employee Appreciation Program is when the culture is so anti-employee that they need to come up with some way to disguise it. EAP=OUT.
  2. Metrics Uber Alles Scenario: You are in a phone support position and helping someone out. The call is going long, do you A) get this customer off the phone in the next 20 seconds even though the problem isn't really fixed and that person will call back again even more frustrated and we might lose the customer altogether. OR B) fix the problem in another 3 minutes so that the customer is satisfied, but I go over the 4 minute talk time limit. If you are in a company that would prefer the 'A' solution, run away. When you are paying more attention to metrics than to how real people are interacting with your company, then that company will not last.
  3. What's that Sucking sound? If you go into work every day young, full of energy, happy, and leave with a slightly empty and rung-out feeling? Your company could very well be sucking out your soul and piping it to the executive management offices where they feed vampirically on your life force. If you can imagine this scenario occuring in your work place and it makes a strange kind of sense to you, find another job.
Well, that's only three. There are a few more in my head, but the clock is ticking on the job I have now, which I enjoy very much.

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