Quitting is a full-time job
Nobody told me how much work quitting would be.
One imagines their last few weeks at work as stressless. Coast through the day, keep your head down, do some knowledge transfer, work a little less hard and say goodbye. Yet, I find myself swamped. Coworkers that want to hear my life plans, old code that’s all of the sudden unfit for production, integrations needing some sort of touchup and a thousand other last minute emergencies lead to work feeling just as rushed as it was before I told them we had no future together.
Exhaustingly, post-employment life preparation is a full-time job unto itself.
The minutiae of finalizing the short-term rentals of my West Village studio alone tolls considerable stress. Considering how and when to move stuff out, duplicating keys, deciding if I need an apartment caretaker, finding that caretaker, deciding what that caretaker actually does, managing payment, booking cleaning services, and most importantly generating leads for the unbooked few months to come all take more time and effort than I initially planned for.
Beyond that, scheming up a nomadic lifestyle demands attention. Booking upcoming travel details, meeting with friends and family that were surprised to hear ‘the news’ and want to get ‘the whole story’, spinning up initial side projects, learning about my future business’s industry, and most of all finding freelance work (so far I’ve created profiles on upwork, remote.com, crew, and hiremarket) all feel like the things I have to do if I want to succeed on my own.
It’s all manageable, but it’s not what somebody who’s quitting wants to do with their final days “home”.
Once there’s an expiration date on your once-safe daily routine you want to spend extra time at the gym, learn as many new technologies as possible (React Native and Blockchain Development especially), cross some of those local restaurants and drinking haunts off your bucket-list, and bond with those local friends just a bit more before you’re watching their Snapchat stories from far away with a tinge of FOMO.
When you’re leaving it’s a miniature gradation of sorts. It’s a bittersweet life-changer. A little like finally hearing your name called in a waiting room, only this waiting room isn’t so bad. In fact, a lot of people would kill to have a waiting room like mine.
To be honest, it’s been a trying week. I’m always tired and it feels like I’m constantly letting people down when I break the news to them. I find myself often put in the ungainly position of defending my decisions. Ask how I feel, and I’ll come right out with it - I’m anxious about the future. You start to understand why people don’t do this that often. It’s crazy hard and I haven’t even started yet. If I hadn’t expected this, I’d have given up already.
One thing I didn’t expect was that I have to convince myself not to job-hunt.
The mindset of “having job: good - not having job: bad” is so ingrained in our culture that knowing you have nothing lined up will have you poking around. I find myself scanning the options on Angel List, imagining what it might be like to accept a co-founder or CTO position at a lightly funded startup.
Then there are the dream jobs. Companies and products that I use everyday and admire. Ones that I respect. Organizations whose humble beginnings I’ve learned and memorized and hope to replicate. They offer positions at high salaries in cities I love with jaw-dropping perks alongside brilliant engineers and designers and product managers. And I finally qualify.
The best you can do is tell yourself what I told myself when first learning software development. These jobs will always exist. Take your shot whenever you can, because when you find your runway dries up, your product is a dead-end, and your patience has expired, these already-great companies will still be growing.
Furthermore, most of them will think better of you for your attempt. By no means do we celebrate failure in America, but we do love the self-made story. We idolize the Bill Gates startup-from-your-garage hustle, that Jeff Bezos making-desks-from-doors ingenuity, the Mark Zuckerberg hack-through-the-night brilliance.
If you do fail, when you’re finally ready to settle down, you’re a tastier option to be hired as a lead developer, tech director or CTO. And rightfully so, you’ve had to make every possible technical decision, staff your own team, market your own product, and cut costs on something you’ve put your heart into. Great organizations see that.
Or so I’m betting.
At the end of the day when my eyes close and my mind starts drifting off, I’m still giddy about my plan. In my heart I know it’s the right move. I think about all I have to accomplish the next morning and how early I can reasonably get up so I can keep grinding while still maintaining a healthy sleep schedule.
If you can’t convince yourself it’s the right move, then don’t quit. While making a transition like mine can be seen as a fun adventure, make no mistake about it, quitting is a full-time job.
