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Reasons you've left a job

Red Cat said:
I've found it hard to plan a career too. It's made me feel really shit about myself, because I am very able.

I've just left my NHS job but now have to market myself as a private practitioner. Basically saying I'm an expert. Which makes me cringe.
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Are you neurodivergent by any chance?

Because I think lack of career progression, or sideways or even backwards moves, job-hopping, and changing career and starting over is a bit of a theme amongst ND folk, for a few reasons:

  • we don't easily tolerate bullshit
  • we have a strong sense of social justice so are likely to put our heads above the parapet and speak out about wrongdoing/unethical stuff/poor work practices, where NTs would just keep their heads down and get on with it
  • we get pissed off easily, eg someone else mentioned not getting a promotion and it going to an external candidate. Something similar happened to me, in that I was recruited to an entry level role. My boss told me that when they next recruited two people to the same role, after I trained them, I would move up. He then leapfrogged both of them over me, and came up with the same bullshit, when we recruit again, you'll move up next time. I was pissed off and arranged a move to a different department, because I couldn't stand that my boss had lied to me, and so why would I believe him again, he might pull the same stunt next time. (I subsequently asked a more senior colleague who I'd worked with closely why they thought I'd not been promoted, and they told me that I was the best [role X] they'd had, so the reason I wasn't promoted was that I was basically too good at my job.)
  • we get bored easily
  • we're not very good at office politics - some people are able to schmooze their way up the greasy pole, but we're more likely to slide down it - and I often say that it's like some people have super advanced level office politics skills, like they have a PhD in office politics or something, the calculating Machiavellian types, and then most people are like regular level good at office politics, which to neurodivergent folk seems like advanced level, because I'm autistic and I feel like I'm in the remedial class when it comes to office politics, I suck at it.
  • we're often misunderstood/misinterpreted, because being more likely to be very honest and straightforward, blunt even - as opposed to all the hinting and read-between-the-lines-ing style of NT communication skills - we're more likely to inadvertently wind people up and get people's backs up.
  • we don't do the workplace friendship/socialising thing as well as NTs. I've found that workplace friendships that have seemed genuine at the time and have perhaps even extended to socialising outside work haven't been 'sticky' in that they've not often persisted after I've left, whereas NT folk seem to make and keep work friends more easily that then translate into real-life outside work friendships that last for years even after one or both have left that place of employment.
 
Job was completely unlike the job advertised. They hired two of us, and the other guy left 2 weeks after I did. Unfortunately for both of us, it took until after the probation period to find new jobs and the 3-month notice kicked in. Honestly have a hard time thinking of a more pointless 3 months that I've spent at anything. Place rhymes with Hetero-Wank.
 
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AnnO'Neemus said:
Are you neurodivergent by any chance?

Because I think lack of career progression, or sideways or even backwards moves, job-hopping, and changing career and starting over is a bit of a theme amongst ND folk, for a few reasons:

  • we don't easily tolerate bullshit
  • we have a strong sense of social justice so are likely to put our heads above the parapet and speak out about wrongdoing/unethical stuff/poor work practices, where NTs would just keep their heads down and get on with it
  • we get pissed off easily, eg someone else mentioned not getting a promotion and it going to an external candidate. Something similar happened to me, in that I was recruited to an entry level role. My boss told me that when they next recruited two people to the same role, after I trained them, I would move up. He then leapfrogged both of them over me, and came up with the same bullshit, when we recruit again, you'll move up next time. I was pissed off and arranged a move to a different department, because I couldn't stand that my boss had lied to me, and so why would I believe him again, he might pull the same stunt next time. (I subsequently asked a more senior colleague who I'd worked with closely why they thought I'd not been promoted, and they told me that I was the best [role X] they'd had, so the reason I wasn't promoted was that I was basically too good at my job.)
  • we get bored easily
  • we're not very good at office politics - some people are able to schmooze their way up the greasy pole, but we're more likely to slide down it - and I often say that it's like some people have super advanced level office politics skills, like they have a PhD in office politics or something, the calculating Machiavellian types, and then most people are like regular level good at office politics, which to neurodivergent folk seems like advanced level, because I'm autistic and I feel like I'm in the remedial class when it comes to office politics, I suck at it.
  • we're often misunderstood/misinterpreted, because being more likely to be very honest and straightforward, blunt even - as opposed to all the hinting and read-between-the-lines-ing style of NT communication skills - we're more likely to inadvertently wind people up and get people's backs up.
  • we don't do the workplace friendship/socialising thing as well as NTs. I've found that workplace friendships that have seemed genuine at the time and have perhaps even extended to socialising outside work haven't been 'sticky' in that they've not often persisted after I've left, whereas NT folk seem to make and keep work friends more easily that then translate into real-life outside work friendships that last for years even after one or both have left that place of employment.
Click to expand...

Yes I'm autistic. And all those reasons (and others) where what led me to that.

My exec function is also not great, so planning and imagining a path and making decisions re.myself is hard. I'm the typical does well in a crisis kind of person, so I survive.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
oh heck...

1 resigned. bloody awful environment, heavily racist and just generally shitty
2 place went bust the first week i was there. i am confident this was a coincidence.
3 resigned. crap money.
4 got the push, allegedly redundancy / them wanting someone who could drive a van
5 resigned - needed to get out of parents' home and couldn't afford to stay in london
6 short term thing but it had accommodation included
7 various temporary / casual things, then got offered something on fixed term rather than casual
8 series of fixed term contracts at same place ended
9 resigned - job security wasn't great (council on the brink of 'bankruptcy') and wanted to move in with partner rather than do weekend commute thing
10 eventually resigned after spending too long fighting to stay where i wasn't wanted
11 TUPE transfer out when outsourcing contract re-tendered (although company wanted rid of anyone over 40 / in the old pension scheme)
12 voluntary redundancy from firm i got TUPEd to
13 (overlapped with 14) - wasn't a full time job
14 temporary thing pending closure of an office
15 resigned - pissed off with commuting to london and new job was more local
16 resigned - had decided to move back to london
17 resigned - london job was a mistake, and organisational issues there meant job security was limited
18 still there at the moment. not entirely sure it will survive the coming round of tory government cuts.

with 4, 8 and 10 i can't prove it but fairly sure there was management homophobia involved.


career - to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way. e.g. "the coach careered across the road and went through a hedge"
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That's quite a list what's the longest you've stayed in one job?
 
In the last 10 years:
Redundancy after 21 years. Due to restructuring.
Temp role, left after restructuring of department.
Redundancy. Company went into administration after id been there 3 months. Could have had role in new company but involved large pay cut.
Contract ended.
Contract ended.
Redundancy (2 weeks ago after almost 5 years). Due to more fucking restructuring.
 
MickiQ said:
That's quite a list what's the longest you've stayed in one job?
Click to expand...

10 was not far short of 10 years

11 was 8 years (got a 'long service' award at 5 years though - it was the sort of place where you either joined on the graduate scheme and got fast-tracked, or joined at a particular level and had to go somewhere else to move upwards)

15 was 5 years
 
These are my grown up jobs in reverse order:

1. Laid off while I was on maternity leave and the company was "restructured". (It wasn't. But the boss was a massive misogynist twat who was going through a horrible and self-inflicted divorce so it was no loss.)
2. Laid off when the company went bust.
3. Working in a pub was becoming, er, problematic. So I got a job elsewhere. Looking back, I was going through a sort of breakdown at this point.
4. A big contract left, I got TUPEd, but there wasn't really enough work and I was bored. I think they laid me off in the end out of pity. I just used to look at Urban all day.
5. I loved my job and colleagues but there was no prospect of any sort of promotion because it was a small company so I reluctantly left. Still miss it.
 
AnnO'Neemus said:
Are you neurodivergent by any chance?

Because I think lack of career progression, or sideways or even backwards moves, job-hopping, and changing career and starting over is a bit of a theme amongst ND folk, for a few reasons:

  • we don't easily tolerate bullshit
  • we have a strong sense of social justice so are likely to put our heads above the parapet and speak out about wrongdoing/unethical stuff/poor work practices, where NTs would just keep their heads down and get on with it
  • we get pissed off easily, eg someone else mentioned not getting a promotion and it going to an external candidate. Something similar happened to me, in that I was recruited to an entry level role. My boss told me that when they next recruited two people to the same role, after I trained them, I would move up. He then leapfrogged both of them over me, and came up with the same bullshit, when we recruit again, you'll move up next time. I was pissed off and arranged a move to a different department, because I couldn't stand that my boss had lied to me, and so why would I believe him again, he might pull the same stunt next time. (I subsequently asked a more senior colleague who I'd worked with closely why they thought I'd not been promoted, and they told me that I was the best [role X] they'd had, so the reason I wasn't promoted was that I was basically too good at my job.)
  • we get bored easily
  • we're not very good at office politics - some people are able to schmooze their way up the greasy pole, but we're more likely to slide down it - and I often say that it's like some people have super advanced level office politics skills, like they have a PhD in office politics or something, the calculating Machiavellian types, and then most people are like regular level good at office politics, which to neurodivergent folk seems like advanced level, because I'm autistic and I feel like I'm in the remedial class when it comes to office politics, I suck at it.
  • we're often misunderstood/misinterpreted, because being more likely to be very honest and straightforward, blunt even - as opposed to all the hinting and read-between-the-lines-ing style of NT communication skills - we're more likely to inadvertently wind people up and get people's backs up.
  • we don't do the workplace friendship/socialising thing as well as NTs. I've found that workplace friendships that have seemed genuine at the time and have perhaps even extended to socialising outside work haven't been 'sticky' in that they've not often persisted after I've left, whereas NT folk seem to make and keep work friends more easily that then translate into real-life outside work friendships that last for years even after one or both have left that place of employment.
Click to expand...
The first two on this list chime a lot with me - had my annual review recently at which my boss told me "honestly, we really value your 'speak truth to power' attitude" which I didn't really know I was doing so obviously.

Another one I think is just simple avoidance of responsibility. I'm acutely aware of my limitations and my burnouts and have actively avoided therefore taking on too much.
 
0. Lots of casual, temp, part time jobs with an excitingly diverse set of reasons for leaving including:

  • Walking out of a supermarket at Christmas because the manager was a complete shitbag.
  • Telling a middle manager to piss off when he asked me to sweep a warehouse for the third time because I didn’t “look busy enough”.
  • Let go for dropping and breaking a large TV that was thrown at me whilst loading a lorry.
  • Sacked for having mysteriously acquired some stock in my bag at the end of the day.
  • Finally: Switched from temp van driver to full time office drone. Result!

Followed by the full time ones, with less scope for daring exits:

1. Got a better paid and more interesting job somewhere else
2. Left to wander about South America for three months
3. Promotion
4. Promotion
5. Promotion

What would younger me think of me now eh? :D
 
Derek S-H said:
I got a job at 59!

I'll fully reply later as I have to go to work!
Click to expand...
I'm back and practising terrible Forum etiquette by quoting myself!

I wish my job history was as exciting and varied as some of you:

Left school at 16 and found a job in London working at a bookshop specialising in cars, but only stayed for a year as my family moved out to Essex and I couldn't afford to commute.
This was followed by four years pissing about at college.
A year doing a terrible job working in a "mental handicap" hospital (sorry for the term, but that's what they were called then), but I managed to save a whopping £1000 and buy my first-ever Hi-Fi system off the back of it!
Volunteered at Sussex University for 18 months providing care for disabled students.
Went off to Wales and did a degree (it was just a delaying tactic so I wouldn't have to work), ended up cleaning toilets at 3am off the back of it.
Finally got back to Brighton and was casually offered a job by one of the students I'd previously worked with. Stayed with him for 25 years but only really enjoyed the first 15 as he gradually went wonky and eventually turned into a paranoid recluse thanks to the pandemic.
Finally had enough of having a soul-destroying, sinking feeling every week and left September 2022. Lived off my life savings for the next 18 months until I found a part-time job in Social Care in February this year working with people with Learning Disabilities & Autism, and compared to where I've been, it's great!

Now I'm about to say something that might be construed as a criticism - it's not, because people either work or leave jobs for all kinds of reasons. But it's interesting being 60 and working in my field because I am very much at a certain life stage i.e. this should be the last job I ever have before I retire. Some of my colleagues are very young (20's) and are clearly working just for now, and this is just one job amongst many they might end up doing. Others are in their 40's, have been in the profession for quite some time and are feeling a bit burned out, so are making plans to move on when the opportunity arises. And then there's me and at least one other person (I think) who's late stage, mortgage paid off, working part-time and slowly winding down.

I hated my previous job because I felt I didn't fit in anymore, but I do feel included and valued and supported in my present job. I think sometimes it can be about whether we're a good fit or not as to whether a job is right for us, notwithstanding stupid bosses and shitty office politics; sometimes it's about us and life stages, rather than the job itself.
 
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Prison Officer the training is about rehabilllitation and key working the reality is locking and unlocking running up and down and handing out loo rolls:rolleyes: everything takes so long.
Half the prisoners shouldn't be there although some of them shouldn't be unsupervised simply because they have the brainpower of a potato.
I was crap at it so I quit. Emergancys cell fire, sucide attempt fight I could cope with the day to day was tedious.
Also officers get hardened etc the wheelie bin killer self harmed again and nobody else was prepared to give up there lunch to take him to the hospital wing so no lunch for me but the bloke got his arm stiched back up.
 
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Redundancy
They wanted me to manage and mentor somebody who was being paid ten grand a year more than me so I told them to fuck off.
My daughter was born and we needed more money.
 
I'm only including full time permanent jobs, not Saturday jobs aged 16 etc

1/ at the time you were expected to go for a promotion six-month post-qualification once you started running shifts etc. I did and got one.
2/ Decided to move to London, so got a job in an inpatient ward there.
3/ After the Christmas from hell on the wards, decided my time as an acute ward inpatient nurse was over, and applied for a crisis team job in the community.
4/ Had always fancied liaison work in A&E so applied for a job there
5/ Liaison posts in my NHS Trust were banded lower than in neighbouring Trusts so went for a higher banded post in one of those.
6/ This team was a binfire of wankers.
7/ Got pregnant, decided to move to community team.
8/ Had baby decided to move to Wales, got a job there.
9/ If I don't go for the promotion that arsehole will.
10/ If I don't go for the promotion that arsehole will.
 
I quit my first job because I got all the Xmas tips from the previous paper delivery person even though i only started in November and it was more than I would earn for most of the following year so I quit as I only did it to earn money to buy records, and a pair of headphones. And the boss (Newsagent) was a git.
 
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I told them it was too much walking, but actually I realised it was a system that was leaving customers cars really open to theft, and the other staff were taking cars for joyrides on the open roads, uninsured.

Sure enough, 2 weeks later one got caught by police driving a customers car uninsured on the road, and a few months later 13 high end cars got stolen
 
Cloo said:
I know everyone says the #1 reason people leave jobs is bad bosses, but why have you left jobs?
Click to expand...
Bad boss. 🙃

I was working in a military school and two female bosses in succession had insane power trips. The second ousted the first in a smear campaign psychopath Trump could only dream of. Then she set about abusing everyone else. The military bigwigs found this all so amusing and didn't give a shit. I think they thought it was just "good leadership" in their skewed world. It was evidently not a world I was made for. I left after finding out the boss had been vetoing pay rises for me and lying about whose fault it was.

Still, I left and then found the best job of my life so je ne regrette rien.
 
I recently quit primarily because I had had enough of shift working.
Also job had changed, poor boss, crap office. Btw new job pays much less but that's not what it's about.
Left previous job as I got bored with it and not worthwhile, so I took the redundancy. Only other job it changed, lots less responsibility.
Now in 4th and last job.
 
Oh so many reasons, looking back.

My face didn't fit, in the first job. I didn't have a degree from a fancy university and one colleague spread rumours that I was seeing a married man (I wasn't) but the firm had only just gotten over a scandal between a married partner who had been having an affair with one of the juniors. Then one of the partners was telling me about a case we were going to be working on and how he could make money on that I do and I innocently said 'wouldn't that be insider trading?'. He went very red.

So they terminated my contract.

Got a new job, left after a few years to do my PhD.

Finished PhD, got new job. Lasted roughly a year, left to come back to the UK and because there were mutterings of a plan to make us reapply for our own jobs.

Next job was ok, was offered redundancy after a few years as company was being taken back under Scottish Enterprise who I did not want to work for.

Went to an engineering company for next 9 years, left after a tortuous redundancy process that destroyed my mental health.

Got a job in that fancy londiniumshire. Started off great but there was a change of management after a couple of years and someone got brought in over my head so I knew the writing was on the wall. Got offered redundancy.

Got a new job after a few months, however the picture painted at interview was absolutely not the actual reality and it was several months of hell. Then my line manager dropped the ball on something serious and fired me to cover up her mistake.

Spent most of 2023 unemployed with a few bits of consultancy.

Got new job at the end of 2023 and it's definitely not perfect but it's way better than the last few jobs. So far at least.
 
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