Why you should quit your job

In case you missed it: DON’T QUIT YOUR JOB, at least not yet. 

The goal of this website is not to convince you to quit your job. The goal is for you to understand why you might be unhappy in your job. By breaking down what makes a job good into five easy categories you will realize what you value in a job. Then you can evaluate how your job rates against your personal values and know if you can fix it or if you should look for a new job or even a new career.

I’ve had quite a few jobs in my life so far, 23 different employers in 4 different career fields. Some good, some not so good, some soul crushingly bad. My first real job was, like many, delivering papers. Living in a very hilly neighborhood delivering for a paper that rarely paid on time meant my first job was among the not so good. The second startup I worked for was staffed by incredibly competent people from top to bottom and was probably the best job I ever had and it was there that I started thinking about what makes a job great. When the startup was acquired and things gradually changed, my satisfaction went downhill. It served as great validation of what qualities you need to enjoy your work.

Everyone has a different measure of what makes a job great, but those measures are frequently poorly understood. The first measure is usually money, and while money is important, once you have enough it’s not necessarily the most important. In addition to paying your bills a job should also make you feel good about what you do, who you do it with, who you do it for, it should be easy to be able to do and hopefully make you feel better about your life.

This website is meant as a guide to understanding your job. The exercises will help you determine what is important to you and help you rate each category. You will then have an objective measure of what you do and don’t like about your current job and a single metric that suggests whether you should stay or go. 

If you don’t like your job or understand why it brings you stress or doesn’t fulfill you keep reading. If you like your job and want to understand why it is satisfying, keep reading. If you’re just curious, keep reading. Most of all, just keep reading.

Throughout this website we will follow several hypothetical workers (loosely based on real people, and a few real life examples to see how different people might rank the different aspects of your jobs. The best and worst examples jobs throughout my own career are also included. 

By the time you have finished all the worksheets you should understand the good and bad about your job, what you might try to fix in your current employment and what you might look for in future employment. So don’t quit your job, at least not until you’ve finished reading.

When you need a good laugh head over to the satirical International College of Businessry and Managering part of this website. If you see your job reflected there, you NEED to work all the exercises fully. If you see yourself there… well, let’s just say you don’t want that.

Next step, let’s examine the method.