The Make or Break Career Decision: Stay or Quit?

Note: This is a self-reflection post. #notetoself.

I recently completed 10 years with Eaton.

A tenure with decent longevity considering Indian standards. Like anyone with similar experience under their belt, there were times in between, I faced the Quit or Stay decision in my career.

This is arguably the most strategic decision which has the highest pay-off for one's long term career success. 

I have seen a few of my friends  getting this decision wrong and struggling in their careers. Some of them had to do a lot of de-tour and grinding to get their career back on track due to poor career switch decisions.  

The late Chandramouli Venkatesan, author of celebrated book "Catalyst: The Ultimate strategies on how to win at work and in life " writes:

The poorest career decisions I have seen people make is the decision to quit as a consequence of the decision to join. There are always better opportunities outside at any point of time that is not the reason enough to quit.

Taken to the extreme you can do it once in a while - Quit, because you found something better but suddenly at some stage the opportunities dry up for such a person.

Most importantly the process of foundation building and experience algorithm building can take a severe knock because of the unnecessary change.

Some people make the mistake of looking out for opportunities when they must, rather than planning their career well transitions well in advance to some level of clarity.

They make the big mistake of waiting until they feel they must leave their job or organization, and this puts them at a serious  disadvantage.

They might end up choosing an “exit job” rather than the right next career step.

Personally I am a big fan of solid stable "organic growth" within your chosen organization rather than frequently hopping for some short-term oriented lures.

Getting back to Mouli again,

A big decision to stay is when you are in the middle of a major learning cycle.

"In a fairly long career we all will be part of many major learning cycles. Out of which a few will be career defining ones. One must never leave a major learning cycle incomplete. These major learning cycles build depth over width in the long run for our career. Length in job is also an important parameter for this."

Length in Job allows us to learn for how to get to the high hanging fruit which differentiates us beyond the middle management in our career phases.

Mouli goes on to say,

" Treating the decision to quit your current organization and the decision to join a new one  as part of the same decision is often where many people falter in their careers. These two decisions must be taken independent of each other.

The decision to quit has to be taken first and must be taken independent of the decision on where to join. If you want to quit then you have to have the right reasons to quit not reasons to join elsewhere. 

There should be only two credible reasons that should allow you to take the quit decision -  Learning and Fit.

💚Learning - your learning algorithm is not building up and you are sure that it is because of the organization and not because of you.

💚Fit - when you feel your values and culture no longer match those of the organization and you are fundamentally a misfit in your current organization."

The decision to quit your current organization and the decision to join a new one are two different decisions". They are best made independent of each other.  - Chandramouli Venkatesan.

"Two common quit mistakes I have seen are  - getting tempted by an external opportunity and quitting without having a fundamental reason to leave and confusing short term negative factors (pay, designation, a temporary bad phase etc.) in your current organization with fundamental long term reasons to quit.

In most such cases people make their decision first and then create the reasons for the justification or rationalization of the decision.

Career change decisions like quitting your current company are among the most important decisions you will make. You must not fall into a trap of poor decision making first and then finding the reasons to justify. You must objectively evaluate the reasons first and then come to the decision.

For the join decision, evaluating prospective learning and fit in the new company is more important than pay and other prospects.

💚 Will the new place accelerate your real individual growth?.

💚 Will the new place have a culture and value system where you will find it easy to deliver in?

Many people while quitting are so excited on the potential opportunity that they just focuses on what is bad in my current organization as opposed to what can be good in my future organization and rushes forth without doing the corollary analysis on what is good in my current organization and what could be bad in my future organization!

How an Yearly Career Audit can help?

I really liked this ( posted as first comment)  HBR post which signifies the importance a career audit that everyone should do atleast once a year in relation to their career. ( highly recommended reading).

As the article puts it,

Most people wait until they feel they must leave their job or organization, and that puts them at a disadvantage. They might end up choosing an “exit job” rather than the right next career step.

Just to pick some nuggets from the article and some thoughts from my reflections.

Some telltale signs for your Stay decision.

(See if more than half of these you said "yes" to. Weightage depends on person's taste.)

💚 You are able to visualize your career trajectory with the current organization with some clarity.( atleast the next three internal moves/roles).

💚You're excited to go to work in the morning most of the days ( especially Mondays)

💚 People call you for help and advice, and you try to help them. When the shit hits the roof, you are normally the one on every ones' speed dial & you enjoy it.

💚 You know what you want to learn next and have spent your own money to enhance your career or expand your knowledge in the last year for on job learning.

💚 Industry best perks/privileges, compensation, work -life balance. you're loving it.

💚 You have a set of mentors you can call on for help or support. Kind of a personal board of directors in the organization to support you and guide you.

Some Good triggers for thinking about a Quit Decision.

( Weightage will vary from person to person. Some one would go ahead with a quit decision with one trigger only at times - say, I would consider lack of learning opportunities and not getting challenged enough in the current role as a litmus trigger. )

🔴 Your skills aren't being utilized better. You are not learning or being challenged.

🔴 Your mentors have left the organization or fallen into disfavor or People you respect are leaving the company.

🔴 It has been a while your manager invested in your development or provided opportunities for skill enhancement.

🔴 You are doing things you disagree with, or you believe you have to conceal what you really think.

Please read the article in the comment section for more insights on Career auditing.

Hope you could resonate with this article, and is itching to add your perspectives or few cents to the discussion..!.

Please fly in your valuable thoughts, agreements/disagreements, Insights in the comment box below. We are all in a learning curve!

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-- Prince Ramanan