2 Aug 2000 ahosey   » (Journeyer)

I was browsing the diary entries and I was struck by how many people are either preparing to quit their job, wanting to quit their job, or just starting a new job. (i.e. they recently did quit a job.) Everyone agrees computer/tech workers tend to change jobs relatively often. (Relative to, say, the newspaper industry.) Why is that?

I think it's because we're all perfectionists. In order to be good at this work, you have to be very precise about it, and very thorough. Nevermind how tidy your workspace is, or your personal grooming - I'm talking about the end results of your actual work. To get good results, you must be incredibly crush-a-diamond-in-your-sphincter anal retentive.

So the problem comes when you have all these perfectionists who have to also put up with the "bullshit quotient" which is always present, in some degree, in every workplace. Day in and day out you have to bear witness to some flaw in the business process, or in someone else's department, and you know that somewhere up the line, it's ultimately affecting your work too, and that's not acceptable because you've been conditioned by years of writing software to believe your work needs to be perfect. You're dying to see this flaw get fixed, and no matter who you complain to or what you try to do, it doesn't get fixed. And of course it's not just one flaw, it's five, or ten, or fifty, depending on the bullshit quotient at your particular job. So after two or three years of bearing witness to all these flaws, you can't take it anymore and you find a new job. You know it's going to have flaws, but you figure this time they won't be so bad. This time you'll be able to bear it. And it all starts again.

Or maybe my view is just biased by my own workplace.

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