Former Microsoft Engineer Shares the Question He Asked Before Quitting

To stay or to leave: It is the query many employees wrestle with for months, if not years.

Whereas job-hugging might really feel most secure on this employment market, some workers are nonetheless choosing to walk away from comfortable jobs, and one former Microsoft engineer shared his framework for making that call.

In an episode of Steve Huynh’s, “A Life Engineered” podcast launched Monday, Kun Chen, a former engineer at Microsoft, Meta, and Atlassian, stated that he used a easy take a look at to determine whether or not it was time to go away. Chen, stated he determined to go away Microsoft when he realized he was now not rising a lot on the firm.

Many individuals, he stated, wait till they miss a promotion to comprehend they’re now not rising.

“That is a really lagging indicator. I feel really we are able to inform if we’re rising a lot, a lot earlier,” Chen said on the podcast.

Chen advised Enterprise Insider that since beginning at Microsoft, he had been recurrently asking himself a easy query to maintain himself sincere about his development: “What did I do that month that I could not final month?”

When he was six years into his first job at Microsoft, he advised Enterprise Insider that he realized he could not give himself a very good reply to that query for a couple of months.

On the podcast, he stated that he was primarily engaged on the identical duties, and he already knew find out how to do them. He stated that whereas he may discover methods to do a few of his work quicker and higher, it was nonetheless largely the identical.

“That is how I knew I wasn’t rising as a lot,” he advised Enterprise Insider.

Chen stated {that a} month-to-month take a look at is particularly related given the present pace of change.

The software program engineering discipline, particularly, is within the midst of a radical transformation, as AI fashions have improved dramatically over the previous a number of months. Google, for instance, simply introduced that 75% of its new code is now generated by AI. Final fall, the corporate stated it was 50%.

“The world is altering very quick, and we must always consistently query ourselves,” Chen stated.

That does not mechanically imply workers should leave an organization or workforce in the event that they discover themselves stagnant of their roles, Chen stated on the podcast. Nonetheless, he stated it is price asking your self the query with the intention to determine what sort of adjustments to make.

Chen advised Enterprise Insider that he may have spoken together with his supervisor at Microsoft to debate methods to maneuver to a challenge or position that will permit him to continue to grow and studying new issues.

Nonetheless, he stated he finally realized that switching to a smaller firm with a really completely different tradition and enterprise mannequin would give him a distinct stage of development. He stated on the podcast that Fb’s inventory was rising on the time.

Chen stated on the podcast that he figured it was a very good time to present it a attempt, and it turned out to be the most effective choices he made, each financially and for his private development.

Chen ended up coming again to Microsoft after his challenge at Fb was “well-established,” and the “remaining work was extra incremental.” He stated he had a chance at Microsoft to assist bootstrap a brand new video games platform.

“I noticed that as a chance to use what I discovered throughout my years at Fb,” Chen stated.