This article is a reprint.
Original author: Chang Leshi, Le Talks Career
Original title: Work is very oppressive and painful, I want to quit every day, but I'm afraid it'll be hard to find a new job. Feeling anxious every day. Should I resign?
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/c6SWiemFEHkg7HK2I78ECQ
I've been through the exact same thing!
Likewise, work was monotonous with no growth,
Likewise, the leaders and colleagues were eccentric.
The worst part was not knowing the job market, so I dared not interview or switch jobs.
If you are facing similar troubles, I believe this answer can effectively help you.
Back to the question itself:
Work is very oppressive and painful, I want to quit every day, but I'm afraid it'll be hard to find a new job. Feeling anxious every day. Should I resign?
This question has many elements. Let's break it down into three smaller questions:
Question 1: What to do when work is oppressive and painful?
Question 2: Should I resign or not?
Question 3: How to quickly find the next job after resigning?
Question 1: What to do when work is oppressive and painful?
First, we may need to figure out which part of work makes you feel oppressed and painful.
If you don't know the root cause of your pain, you won't be able to avoid it in future jobs. You might face the same problem even after switching to another company.
① Is it the low salary?
You need to understand the internal pay raise mechanism. How often is it adjusted? Do you have a chance to get a raise during the next adjustment window? This is crucial. If the company is already planning to raise your salary, you might want to reconsider jumping ship.
If there is no internal raise opportunity, just keep an eye on external opportunities.
② Is it the monotonous work with no growth?
First, do a horizontal analysis. Look at how the current business is divided into aspects. Is there room for improvement in the existing process? Is there a better solution outside the current process?
Then, do a vertical analysis. Understand where your piece of work sits within the department. Is there a chance to extend upstream or downstream, turning yourself from a small cog in a huge machine into a chain link? After taking on more tasks, you only focus on the most important ones and hire new people for the rest. This way the team grows, and so does your capability.
③ Is it the constant social engagements that annoy you?
You can be frank with your leader about this. Is it a mandatory requirement of the role? Or does the leader want you to gain more exposure, while you prefer to stay home and enjoy peace? Having an honest conversation might have an immediate effect on your current predicament.
Question 2: Should I resign or not?
Recommended reasons to resign
① Resign for money
No matter how well you perform at a company, internal raises can never keep up with job-hopping speed. If you've stayed at a company for two years but your salary hasn't increased by 10%, it means you're falling behind inflation. In that case, consider leaving.
② Resign for growth opportunities
When your own ability grows much faster than the company's development. Sometimes you've reached a certain level, but there's no suitable position in the company for further growth. Quitting is a wise choice then.
Reasons not recommended to resign:
① Resign because of poor relationships with colleagues
The core reason is that coworker relationships don't matter much. You need to handle your tasks well and build a partnership with your leader. Prioritizing relationships with colleagues is infinitely lower. It's really not worth letting unimportant things interfere with your core decisions.
② Resign because you don't want to go to work, or other strange reasons
If you're just trying to escape work, quitting might only bring temporary relief.
Yu Hua is a good example. His lifelong dream was to "live without being woken up by an alarm clock." How did he achieve it?
While others spent their spare time drinking and playing cards, he wrote and submitted manuscripts for five years before receiving his first commission.
Yu Hua turned this experience into a humorous story, which became:
"My manuscripts have visited more cities than I have in my lifetime."
"Every time the postman threw the mail into the yard, my father knew another rejection had arrived.
I would be a little sad, then pick a second-tier journal and mail it again."
But the casual metaphors still revealed his hardship:
Writing in winter, one hand was hot, the other cold.
"The right hand was a living person's hand, the left hand a dead person's hand."
He kept writing like that, and eventually Yu Hua became Yu Hua.
That was a bit of a digression, but the core problem-solving approach is worth learning. Facing the problem directly is the first step to solving it.
Question 3: How to quickly find the next job?
If you notice that your colleague who resigned last month already joined a new company this month!
It's not because he's super capable or well-connected. It's because he already started interviewing while still at his previous company!
If you also want a seamless transition to your next job, "riding a donkey while looking for a horse" (job-hunting while employed) is the best choice.
A job has hard criteria and soft criteria.
Hard criteria are the requirements explicitly listed in the job description, which you can fill in by referencing your daily work. No need to elaborate here.
How do you judge the soft criteria? That's where the answer to the first question comes in handy!
If you're leaving because of low pay, first check the salary range of the position. If you're unsure, ask the HR directly to avoid wasting time.
If you're leaving because the work is monotonous with no growth, then for the next job, you need to discuss in detail whether the work content will be more complex and offer more growth than before.
If you're leaving because of too many social engagements, you can directly ask during the interview whether the role requires frequent socializing.
Alright, the three sub-questions are broken down. Now, let's revisit the original poster's questions:
- Why is work painful? Because of low pay, heavy workload, and social engagements. The original poster didn't mention monotonous work, which means there might still be room for growth. The key tasks now are:
① Find out whether the company's raise window can meet your expectations.
② Is the socializing mandatory or can it be declined?
- Should I resign?
If the company's raise cannot meet your expectations, you can certainly "ride a donkey while looking for a horse" to find your next job.
- How to quickly find the next job?
Refer directly to the answer in Part 3 of this article.
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