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Carl Vitullo for Tech Workers Coalition

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What was your worst new job experience?

Sometimes you start a new job and quickly realize it's not a good fit. What's your worst new job story?

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Carl Vitullo

I once got a new job where they talked about their grand v2 rewrite project they were staffing up, which I was going to help lead due to my experience with React. A month in, they revised the project from a total rewrite to a new feature in a separate codebase. Two months in, they revised down to kludging the new codebase into the old app. Three months in, they called it good and required that I start doing database admin and Rails tickets—neither of which I had ever done before, and my title was "senior frontend developer."

Four months in, I realized that I was more stressed than at any other point in my life. I had physical stress reactions in the morning before going into work. I was being micromanaged, I felt out of my depth with no time to learn, and I was getting such intensely negative feedback during 1:1s that I was beginning to doubt my abilities.

I gave notice before my fifth month at the company. After telling them that I was leaving in 2 weeks, I was told to go home and not come back. My access to email and Slack was cut off before I had a chance to say goodbye to my remote teammates.

One of the most gratifying moments in my career was when one of my coworkers there reached out 6 months later to tell me, "you were smart to get out when you did."

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Adam

This really scares me. I'm 3 weeks into my frontend job and yeah, this shit ain't frontend :(

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Carl Vitullo

This was by far the worst experience I've had in 7 years and 8 companies. I've had some other bad ones, but this was way beyond the others. If you're not doing what you want to be doing, though, I don't think there's any shame in trying to change that. Can either keep your ear to the ground for other opportunities or talk with your coworkers to try and change the structure where you are.

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Jafar Rezaei

I am in that job opportunity too 😒

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MyKeg

Here is your computer -- it was about 6 - 7 years old, it was at the minimum spec for some software I needed to run, which meant I could hardly have anything else running. Company had been big back in the days, but was on life support when they brought me on for a 3 month project, which couldn't finish fast enough. I had to practice my patience with the computer.

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Fayaz Ahmed • Edited

Second day, I hardly speak, somehow gathered courage and politely went asked a senior designer if she was aware of this image requirement that she was supposed to do, Shouted at me in front of everyone because I came directly to her instead of sending a formal email. Even gathered some other employees and was telling loudly how unprofessional I was.

Though this was not that big of a issue, I figured this isn't a right place to work.

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Carl Vitullo • Edited

Wow that's super unprofessional of them! Not that you should publicly shame coworkers anyway, but on the second day, for a minor preference violation! Can't blame you for reading it as a bad sign.