Are those uncomfortable feelings about your job just small inconveniences that need to be got through, or serious signs that it's time to quit?
To enjoy work and life as a whole, satisfaction and passion are crucial. If you no longer get a buzz from your time at work, the time could be right to make changes. Coming to realize your true feelings and attitude towards your current job can be really eye-opening. If you do find yourself in crisis, it can be a good starting point for the next step in your life.
To help you to discover how you really feel, there are signs that can indicate your level of happiness with the job.
A Passion for Work
Have the days when you got up in the morning with a pep in your step and headed to work encouraged gone away? Now you feel it hard to wake up and go to work on Mondays (as well as other weekdays). If this is you, it could be a sign of professional burnout or just evidence that you don’t do exciting things at work anymore.
Meaningful Work
One of the most important motivating factors in any kind of activity is knowing that you are doing something meaningful. Forcing people to perform senseless tasks has been used as an extreme form of punishment by cruel regimes through history because they know it can break spirits. If you don’t want to become apathetic and depressed, ensure to have a work filled with purpose.
Level of Routine
Do you feel overwhelmed with humdrum tasks and not challenged any more? If you have to run the same regression test suite manually or write simple test cases day after day, it’s natural to start being bored and unmotivated. If this is the only issue that bothers you, though, it could be a good idea to talk to your manager to ask about finding new challenging activities to participate in.
Friends at Work
As psychologists claim, having your best friend among the colleagues is one of the major indicators that you are in the right place. It helps you to combine work and fun, interests and tasks, so that you feel and perform in a holistic manner. Not everyone will find a best friend in the workplace but if you do, seeing your best bud every day can help round off the edges from the negative parts of your work.
Work-Life Balance
Your work-life priorities can alter throughout your working life, but if the balance is under strain, negative effects won’t take long to appear. Dissatisfaction caused by a lack of time for yourself and your family will snowball, causing an avalanche sooner or later. So, try to restore this crucial balance before it’s too late. Leave your work in the office, and make clear to your colleagues that you are open to discuss work questions within the allotted time, but not before or after your working hours. This can feel a bit tricky to do if you are freelancing and working remotely but setting boundaries is important for your peace of mind and proper relaxation after the day’s work.
Feeling Valued
In our work, we strive for excellence and want to be recognized and appreciated for bringing something unique to the company that nobody else can. Whether it’s reflected financially through a salary raise, or in intangible bonuses such as getting an appraisal, being asked and heard, or being awarded or entitled to challenging tasks, in all areas of life, especially at work, a lack of acknowledgement can leave you with the feeling of a wasted journey.
Career Development Perspectives
To feel accomplished, you need to be growing and to have an encouraging career development plan tied to your personal goals and current place of work. If your company or project is related to an industry that’s dying, or layoffs are coming, it’s definitely time to think about further steps, whether it’s having a sincere talk with your boss, making a request to change projects or starting to look search the job listings.
Authority and Trust
It is always a bad sign if you do not trust and have no respect for your boss. The same is true if you do not feel trust towards yourself in the way you manage colleagues. Perhaps in your current role, you don’t have authority or responsibility that you know you are ready to have, or your that opinion doesn’t count. Either way, the situation is certainly not what you were dreaming of. To improve matters, one-to-one meetings can help build trust as well as creating better personal visibility within the company. However, if you see the situation as being unresolvable, you can take radical steps towards the future direction of your work.
Fitting into Corporate Culture
Is it possible that you are not the best fit for your company’s culture? Perhaps you feel you have to think before saying anything, don’t feel comfortable in your behavior, or not proud about major decisions made on the company level. If you feel a black sheep among your colleagues and don’t try to refer your friends to your company or talk of it as a great place to be a part of, you probably need to think about making a change.
Level of Stress
There is always an element of stress when involved with challenging and interesting work, especially in the field of software testing. However, the level of stress is only considered acceptable if it is manageable, periodical rather than permanent, and is not detrimental to your health. There are a number of ways to deal with that kind of stress when it occurs. If you feel under the weight of long-lasting and hard stress, you should look for ways to avoid it, even if it means changing jobs.
Match of Skills and Responsibilities
If your job is mostly made up of tasks that don’t require you to apply your strongest and most unique skills, you may find yourself out of place rather quickly. Again, discuss your expectations and plans with your direct manager to make sure you are both on the same page regarding your career opportunities. Consider the option of changing jobs within your company instead of moving on in case your dissatisfaction is mostly related to the project, not the company.
Is it simply time to quit?
You may be having regular thoughts about leaving your current job or just know that the time has come. In this situation, don’t resist the changes. Start reviewing the job postings, and think about what new challenges and benefits you’d like to get. Creating an image of your dream work can be helpful during your searching and in the interviews. Even though you are not guaranteed to find the exact match, you’ll have a great guide to refer to.
Conclusion
If you realize that it’s time to change your job, there’s no reason to feel upset. Vice versa, a crisis is the time for opportunities to be discovered so use the situation to your benefit. You already have the advantage in knowing having a list of preferences for your new job. So, the next steps would be applying for jobs, preparing for and passing the interview, asking the correct questions about your future job, and negotiating of the terms of work.
Before making such a significant decision, weigh all pros and cons of changing job at the moment. Try to find solutions to any negative aspects such as a possible decrease in salary or an inconvenient schedule, if they carry major importance for you. But don’t hesitate too much – if you already know that you’ve outgrown your current job, just move on.
If you choose to stay where you are for the time being, move on into pastures new or just need a vacation to recharge your batteries, do what is right for you to make sure can enjoy a fulfilling and satisfying work life. Done at the right time, changing jobs can bring much inspiration and open a new, exciting chapter in your life.
