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I just wonder if I should tell my manager that I want to quit in a few months from now or not. Below I am going to provide you with some context and description of my current situation.

Basically I am currently working as a Linux System Administrator/Infrastructure Administrator. In our team we have on-call rota which is one week long and also we have some tasks that we can do only after the office hours or even at weekends. The thing is, 2 guys quit, one in January and one in April this year, so we're kinda shorthanded.

Because of that, I feel overworked and overwhelmed by my responsibilities and sometimes I don't have enough time to do the things I need to do besides working (my goal is to learn cloud computing, a few new technologies and improve my spoken and written English because I want to move abroad). A few weeks ago I've had 3 weeks of on-call duty straight and I also worked all alone at that time because my only one teammate was unavailable.

The thing with my manager is, he gave us a raise, a massive one I would say, it's about like 50% of what I made before. That kinda feels like I got 50% of salary of that one dude that left us. That sort of feels like they predicted how I feel and they want to keep me aboard as long as possible. That haven't changed the fact that I'm dissatisfied with my job and it makes me miserable. Since May I have been taking part in various recruitment processes which gave me insight on what I should improve.

There was that situation recently when two guys from other team quit and my manager threw papers at them and said that they're not worth anything and he can replace them with anyone. That story made me think that this guy doesn't actually respect anyone at all.

That's about it. I don't know what should I do or even how soon I should quit. I haven't found a new job jet, but I'm saving money for doing courses and learning thing I need and want to learn.

I feel like this situation won't improve and I certainly want to quit. I just wonder if I should tell this guy I want to quit in a few months upfront when we're going to sign my new contract, give him some time to do something or just pretend to the end.

I have a gut feeling that no matter what I do, I will be the bad one but at least I posted here because I wanted to ask someone for insight.

EDIT: In case anyone's wondering what I did:

I haven't told my manager anything until I got a job offer from another company. After that I went on a 1v1 meeting with him and gave him my notice. We talked a bit about the company, technologies etc. and I'm currently leaving that sinking ship, after 31th October I'm going to start a new journey.

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Don't tell the manager. The company wouldn't do that favour too if they would have to let you go. Find a better job and leave this sinking ship.

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  • That's the first thing I've thought about to be honest. I even had a feeling when my manager gave me raise that he knows what's going on and he just wants to squeeze everything out of me and then let go of me. I know it's a bit pessimistic point of view, but unfortunately it's based on my previous experiences when for instance I saw over 100 people fired in one 15 minutes long meeting.
    – aaron_starkov
    Aug 3, 2020 at 21:05
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    At my last job, I gave a longer than necessary notice, as the work I was doing was specialized and it would be difficult to either train or hire a replacement. I was then denied an end of the year bonus, which they confirmed was because I was leaving. Had I kept my mouth shut and given the minimum required notice, I wouldn't have lost that money.
    – Itinerati
    Oct 6, 2020 at 12:26
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Should I tell my manager that I want quit in 2-4 months?

Assume his answer would be "So you're fired right now". Would that be okay for you? Are you prepared to be unemployed until further notice?

If both answers are "yes", then it's up to you. Otherwise, just give the legally obliged notice period.

If morality is of concern, keep in mind that many companies have policies that forbid managers to give larger notices to employees. So, if your boss wanted to fire you 3 months from now, he'd only give you the legal notice period and make no previous mention of it.

Frame challenge:

Try to solve the problems you are facing nonetheless, at least while you don't quit. Maybe hiring 2 or 3 new people would make life better for everyone? Suggest that to your boss. He doesn't listen? Suggest that to your boss's boss. You do have the leverage of threatening to quit, since it's your plan for starters, you might as well use it. If you are lucky, you might get yourself colleagues you've chosen yourself and a promotion. If not, you've delivered a loud and clear message that will help those who come after you (and certainly, someone will come after you).

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  • I clearly tried to change the frame and I did some small improvements like teaching other teams the basics so they can look stuff up in logs instead of asking us about it and waiting for our response, improving server monitoring to alert us before something actually happens, and I even suggested that we should hire one guy when we were still a team consisting of 4 people....but it didn't help too much. it's still the same and when I'm feel like I got used to the situation then levels of absurd around me keep increasing.
    – aaron_starkov
    Aug 3, 2020 at 20:58

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