Leaving first career job after 2 years of experience without any offer in hand and take a break of 3 months

Question

I am 25 years old with 24 months of experience as a software developer in a startup. I took this role rejecting all other good paying jobs due to awesome projects. But now I feel my current role is holding back my career progress as I am unable to properly learn industry standard technologies, and it is affecting my health due to unbearable amount of stress caused by poor management and work load.

Startup background:

• Service Based
• 4 years old startup
• 25 employees ( 10 developers )
• 3 developers per project ( average )

Pros:

• Flexible work hours
• 10 days of work from home per month

Cons:

• Very hard to take leaves since team size is small.
• salary is way below average for 24 months of experience.
• Poor management.
• No vision for company
• Poor growth ( developer team never went beyond 30 in size. Employee turn over rate is increasing )
• No appraisals. ( Need to submit proof of all work done)
• No work life balance. No perks.
• standard practices are not followed. (no one in the team is experienced for more than 3 years)
• Notice period duration is 2 months

My Background:

• This is my first company after college ( B.Tech).

• 24 Months of experience

• Worked on 4 projects.

• Experience in django, php, angular, node, mongodb, postgres, automated server deployment devops etc. ( all under same company )

• Good in data structures and algorithms ( codeforces rating: 1900+)

• Worked on multiple personal projects in college. (one android app has community of 200 thousand users)

I want to leave this job and take a break for 3-4 months to focus on learning new skills, personal projects and later find good fit job. Will this look bad for my next employer, I'm afraid it will negatively impact me?

I'm afraid about telling my boss that I would like to leave as this is my first job. Will my current experience land me a good job?

Answer 1

I've given few interviews and got decent offers, but I'm feeling afraid about telling my boss that I would like to leave as this is my first job.

If you already have an offer that you feel comfortable with, take it. Rule of thumb is you never leave your current job without another offer signed.

I am not sure what make you afraid of telling your boss about your leaving, if you feel he/she will physically hurt you (I hope not), you probably should seek for law enforcement help. If you are simply afraid of burning a bridge, as long as you have a decent offer in hand I won't value a bridge in a startup company having poor growth for 2 years that much, so yes if you have to then burn it. And after all, you are leaving this company, whether you go for a new job or a 3-4 month break has nothing to do with your boss anymore, and I don't think he/she would really care which is the reason.

And if you really think you need some time for a break, negotiate with whoever's providing you the offer, make the starting date 2-3 month later (or as late as both of you can agree with). After signed, you can hand in your 2 week letter and enjoy your break!

Answer 2

My advice to you is to not bother with taking a break, and to take a job offer that looks good to you now before you quit.

If you actually have familiarity with everything you listed, then you're probably capable of picking things up pretty quickly. You will have to learn new things and new skills at any job in software that you take; every company that is worth working for will expect this to take 3 to 6 months while you are starting to work for them. It is better to do the learning while being paid and employed. Your post reads like you are someone who is probably capable of doing this, and probably more capable than you know.

Another downside to taking time off with the explicit goal of learning new things to use professionally, is that you have no idea whether or not the skills you pick will be the useful ones to you professionally, because you don't know what job you're going to end up with at the end of the process. Trying to guess what the right things to learn are is hard, and when you're not constrained by an actual problem faced by actual people who actually want software, you're less likely to pick the useful things to learn and more likely to pick today's fad, whatever that is. There are many fads, but they're only plainly visible as such years after the fact or in the face of an actual problem where they disappoint.

If after all of that, you still want to take a break, three months is not a very long time between jobs. I remember a time before the job market for software became very high-demand, and it was not unusual to spend that much time on a job search.

Answer 3

I've given few interviews and got decent offers, but I'm feeling afraid about telling my boss that I would like to leave as this is my first job.

Since you'd have to tell your boss you were leaving if you took the 2-3 month break I'm not sure why you can't just take one of the aforementioned "decent offers"

I understand that telling someone you are leaving - especially for your first job can be stressful for you but honestly it won't be as bad as you think.

Answer 4

Will this look bad for my next employer?

Not necessarily. There is a chance that it will, yes. However, many employers will ignore it until the interview stage. This is where you can explain what you have been doing. If your 3-4 months break is to gain experience and skills within your current field. Then you could quite well argue that you have been developing as a professional.

Will my current experience land me a good job?

Depends on the skills you've developed in your experience. Everyone can say 2 years of experience with php etc... but how good are you at php developing?

That's what determines value in the market.

I fully recommend you take time after you finish work to develop skills and work on your own projects rather than quitting before lining up a new job. Although if this is what you wish to do then it's not all negative.

Answer 5

If you were there for 2 years and have working knowledge of all the above items you've listed, then you will do fine.

Freelancing is something you can do and is easily explained for any future job interviews. I know this for a fact because I have freelanced for 7 of the last 13 years and I always felt it made me look like a better candidate given the dedication one must have to work from home without supervision and under one's own control.

A great resume, honesty, the knowledge necessary for the job, and the ability to articulate clearly are all you'll need to succeed regardless of your past work history.

Best of luck.