Why won't you quit a job you hate?

1) Startups suck. They will work you to death all for the promise that maybe it will pay off one day (but probably won't.)

2) I don't want to work for a "mission-driven" company. What does that even mean? Most companies lie about their mission anyways. They want to make money, not save the planet.

3) There is not a company out there that is "aligned" with my values. I value free time. I value spending time with my family and friends. I value doing separate things from work.

4) I do not care about having "impact" or about "growth". Been there; done that. It is overrated. Building up a company's value so that the executives get bigger & bigger bonuses does not motivate me at all.

If you are able to change the world, build your own company. Don't work for someone else and let them take the credit. If you can't change the world, then stop pretending you can. Work, get paid, and then go home and spend some quality time with your loved ones. Stop trying to trick me into wasting my limited time left by slaving for other people.

FAANG is very much above average. Many startups are very much below average. Statistically, quitting a FAANG to join a startup is just a bad idea. The only reason to do so is that FAANG has a lower career cap. Even then, the cap on FAANG is much higher than, say, starting a restaurant.

At startups you generally deal with less smarter colleagues, spending months putting out fires that stem from hacky code designs, and dealing with many absent bosses who are just there for passive income.

Many startups try to look mission driven, but what drives most of them is just growth. The more growth oriented ones might be dishonest. If you think Facebook is unethical, watch what happens to a startup running on 3 months runway, trying to raise a new round. You also have to deal with pivots, often by bosses who literally don't know the meaning of the word and just bounce aimlessly between different things.

I'm one of those people who used to work in a "mission-driven." job. As part of burning out and walking the slow road to recovery, I started to feel a lot of "mission-driven" people are really selfish ladder-climbers who are fantastic at marketing themselves and their mission. I'm not even sure if they actually believe in what they are doing outside of inflating their own ego/prestige/whatever.

I'm not at FAANG and I don't earn anywhere near FAANG money. I know the above is really jaded and skeptical view of things. But I suspect more than a few people feel what I feel after a few years in the workforce.

"Bored" != "hate".

If you're getting good money, and your management is relatively sane, and you like the people you work with, think twice before you leave. I've been around enough to know that you can easily wind up in a much worse situation.

Honestly? The job search + interview process is way too painful. I feel like I'm a good problem solver, I've made really good impact at the jobs I've been at but landing jobs is difficult for me. I tend to stick around til the job is more painful than interviewing.

Almost none of the startups I see hiring in my area have interesting/worthwhile "missions".

No, I don't want to "reinvent how companies handle employee wellness perks" or "help find people the right credit cards and mortgage rates" (real quotes from startups in my area). That stuff seems worse than what I'm working on now.

I work for a startup, but I'm bored.

The biggest hurdle to overcome when wanting to switch jobs, for me and for all the people I know, is going through the interview process.

This isn't the sort of discussion you're looking for.

But I'd say for most people who are bored at work, working on a CRUD app in a startup isn't going to be intellectually stimulating.

In my case, the answer is: my job pays my bills, while I work on my startup after hours. Also, as many mentioned, standard interviews are so much pain.

I am 90% sure I would fail any interview I went for so I am pretty sure I am stuck where I am :)

But being serious.. the thought of preparing for an interview is so demotivating. I do good work and I am good at pretty much anything I do in my current job but I don't match any job descriptions I see. I've moved out of a pure coding role in my current job but that is what I would like to apply for.

Not what you were looking for, but I would be conscripted into the military if I quit this job.

Define "small paycut." Mid level engineers at FB and its ilk are pulling in 400k+ including RSUs and bonus. You'd be hard pressed to get even a very senior position at a small startup that pays even half that in real cash.

If you read any articles about VCs you'll note that most startups fail and even when they don't the multiple investment rounds dilute any stock you might have been granted. They don't call the rare exceptions "unicorns" for nothing.

Besides, it's not salary that is the trap, but Lifestyle. Most people's lifestyles expand to consume their increasing salaries, so taking even a reasonable pay-cut means big changes to lifestyle ... and the loss of bragging rights of working for one of the FAANGs.

Maybe people who are bored at work should focus a bit on helping one of their coworkers. They are likely to get a lot more insight to the company and possibly value their own job a lot more.

Why would a company and a person ever have aligned values, unless that person owns/runs that company? Companies are ultimately tethered to the will of its stakeholders and the stakeholders only hold stake because they expect a return on investment. People value things like family, travel, friendships, romance, spirituality, pursuit of passion, personal fulfillment etc. Why would a company ever value these things?

Nah, the whole point of working for someone else is it lowers your own risk, have a good salary and a stable income. If mission and purpose is that important, might as well accept the full risk and work on your own idea. Assuming you have the qualifications to get a FAANG job, taking a pay cut to burn yourself out at a start-up where you get peanuts when the start-up sells just seems like the worst of both worlds.

My screen name says it all. I have top-notch skills, but I will be forever haunted by white-collar crimes I committed over 20 years ago, and have even been pardoned for.

I stay with the company I hate (love the job, hate the politics) because it's almost insurmountably hard to get a good job somewhere else.

The pay is just okay here, but if someone else would give me a chance, I could easily make 20%+ somewhere else, for the same work.

I have happily quit several jobs. As long as I have 6 months of living expenses (including insurance costs) saved I feel able to quit. This time would likely increase once I have family relations.

It helps that I enjoy the interview process and don't find it taxing, which I seem to be alone in.

Money