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How do I deal with insecurity on changing jobs, like "I haven't learned enough here"? I can't move to another company now.

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Mid-Level Software Engineer at Taro Communitya year ago

I received a couple of offers from companies when I applied for positions but there is always this thinking: "I haven't learned enough things here; I will wait for a better moment to change jobs". How do you all deal with it?

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(2 comments)
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    Team Lead (people manager) at Mistplay
    a year ago

    If the question was about how to get offers without having had a major impact at your company yet, then there could be a discussion about increasing scope and talking about successes better in interviews.

    However, if you have offers from teams with better pay, more opportunities for growth, more interesting work, a product you like more, etc, or any combination there of - and you want to change - I personally would take it and not look back. It is not a requirement anyone will check on that you have learned enough, and there may actual be something about the current company or team culture that is why you aren’t learning as much as you want.

    A couple more thoughts:

    • If you haven’t learned as much at this company, ask questions about learning potential to make the next role have that.
    • There are some good questions and answers about impostor syndrome on Taro, likely if your doing well in reviews and getting more offers you are learning and growing a lot, but impostor syndrome is very common and real. Try: “Overcoming Imposter Syndrome - You Have So Much More Potential Than You Realize
    • If the concern is that you won’t succeed at the next place because it’s too big of a jump then it is understandable and probably a common concern, but since you are interviewing and getting multiple offers it is very likely you are ready. With the Taro community support as well, you’ve got this!
  • 3
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    a year ago

    Here's another way to think about this: At any good tech company (which I assume your offers are from, otherwise why would you consider them), a bunch of great engineers have spent hundreds of hours making sure that their interview process doesn't let in the wrong people.

    At Meta, we had many hours of training and hundreds of pages of guides on how to grade candidates properly, especially to prevent false positives (i.e. candidates that seem great on the surface but have no chance of surviving at Meta in actuality). This hard work paid off as the vast majority of engineers who pass the Meta interview did pretty well at the company, a place where just getting "Meets All Expectations" can be tough.

    So if you have secured these offers, you now know these 2 things:

    1. You have an extremely high chance of doing well at the company.
    2. Branching off of #1, the company believes you have solid learning fundamentals and can quickly patch up any technical gaps you may have to succeed there.

    Also, you will never be completely "ready" to take on a new job - It is extremely rare for one company to have the exact same tech stack and culture as another. Adaptation will be always be necessary, especially as you should never be applying to a job where you meet 100% of the requirements (if this is the case, you are over-qualified for the role).

    Take the leap, figure out where you need to grow, stay calm, and figure it out 1 step at a time. And as Ryan mentioned, this is what Taro was built to help with!

    I hope these are helpful to you as well: