Should you join the Great Resignation?
How to know if you should quit your job, by an excellent job-quitter.
Can you name one thing — other than “the people” — that you like about your job? If not, it may be time to think about joining the millions of Americans — 5.9 million as of October 2021 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — who have resigned from their jobs this year.
I resigned way before it was cool, and more than a few times. I acknowledge the privilege imbedded in this sense of security (or impulsivity), but I have never been afraid to quit a job. I love it when traits formerly considered flaws turn into assets!
The Sunday Scaries are not inevitable.
Sometime in the past couple of years, someone somewhere named the sense of dread I used to experience every Sunday as I considered the prospect of another week of meaningless meetings, broken processes, and a hellish commute: the Sunday Scaries. While this article in The Atlantic focuses on the modern workplace and capitalism as the source of the Sunday Scaries — and from a population-level perspective, I agree — your personal experience of the dread preceding the work week can be managed with a personalized solution. You don’t have to resign yourself to suffering, and you don’t have to wait for Medicare for All, universal childcare, or — god forbid — SOCIALISM.
This may seem obvious, but in our 24/7/365, side-hustling, just-making-ends-meet day-to-day, we often neglect reflection. The pandemic afforded some of us the time to pause, regroup, and deliberately chart a new course. If you didn’t get that time, I encourage you to take it — use some PTO or the upcoming winter holidays if you have that option — and consider the following questions.
Does your job spark joy?
(I’m serious.) No? It might be time to trash it, KonMari-style. When your work starts to bore you like that dress you loved five years ago that you’re still hanging on to, that’s the time to leave. Don’t wait until you hate it. It’s ok to fall out of love with a job you formerly thought was your “dream job”. Dreams change. If you stay at a job past its expiration date, resentment, frustration, and anger will settle in, I promise.
Why did you choose this role to begin with?
Reevaluate that reasoning. Are you working at a job you hate that pays well and has flexible hours so you can go to school? The tradeoff might still be worth it, particularly if you’re excited about what you’re studying and motivated to continue school.
Does your boss suck?
Does the thought of a meeting with your boss make you shudder? I’ve been fortunate to have had several incredible managers. This good fortune creates a stark contrast when I have a bad manager. What makes a good manager? They enable your growth, set you up for success, and advocate for the resources you need to do your job well. They regularly (like, weekly) ask about your workload, stress level, and overall well-being. They don’t micromanage you, they trust in your ability to manage your time and accomplish your objectives.
Where are you headed?
Is your current role a prerequisite to some other role you really want? Is there room for growth at your company or in your field? I left my last job because I couldn’t see a path forward. I was stuck doing customer onboarding and technical implementation tasks, but I was a data analyst. I wanted to analyze data.
Can’t decide whether to leave?
Fine. Stay, for now. But keep your options open and take action in the areas you can control. Some ideas:
Update your resume or CV.
Research available opportunities in your field, or in other fields that interest you. Let your imagination run wild.
Get a new professional headshot taken for your LinkedIn profile. (This doesn’t have to be cost-prohibitive, by the way. At Industrious, the coworking space that housed my last company, one of the perks was having a photographer come to the space and do a bunch of headshots all in one day for like $25 each. But you don’t work at Industrious? Gather up a few colleagues, reach out to a local photographer, and see if they might give you a discounted group rate. Get creative.)
Network. Attend a virtual conference, join a professional association, reach out to friends and colleagues you haven’t spoken to in a while.
Upskill. Gone are the days where you needed grad school to advance in your career. Learning platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning make learning valuable skills inexpensive for everyone. Your field probably has more specialized platforms of its own. We data people have Data Camp, Dataquest, Codecademy, and Pluralsight. Creatives have Domestika.
Have conversations around your pain points with your boss, HR, or whoever can help you improve your experience at your organization. Need a specific software to do your job more effectively? Need a raise? Need to work remotely 100% of the time? Right now, workers have a lot more power than they have had in the past. Do it now.
Need professional help? Invest in a career coach or a therapist. My dear friend Caroline runs a business like this, Centered Career, that I have no qualms about shamelessly plugging. My therapist is an invaluable resource when I need to ask the advice of a neutral party. Sometimes we will role play a professional conversation I need to have but I am nervous about, other times I just need to vent or for someone to put things in perspective.
Have conversations around your pain points with your boss, HR, or whoever can help you improve your experience at your organization. Need a specific software to do your job more effectively? Need a raise?
Take some PTO.
Currently, I have the privilege of working on the Data Management Team at Olive. Our culture and benefits are amazing and we are hiring.
Should you join the Great Resignation? was originally published in SELECT * FROM data; on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.