You don’t make such decisions without looking at the pros (better salary, growth opportunity, new challenges, engage more professional contacts) and cons (leaving a place you already know, a place you’re comfortable with, a schedule you already follow); the impact on both your future professional and personal life, and most importantly, thinking about asking yourself later:
was it worth it?”
You might ask yourself, why thinking about leaving a place you’re happy at? Why look for other places? There are two main reasons:
- Curiosity: even when you already know people who worked in several of the companies in the industry, you always receive mixed comments from them, some had a great experience, some didn’t. As human beings, we’re naturally curious, wanting to explore and learn from new experiences, and this applies to both personal and professional environments.
- “Leave the comfort zone”: the current dynamics of the IT industry teach us not to trust comfort. “Basically, if you are happy and settled in a position, you could be missing greater opportunities out there”, most people say.
After considering all the previous reasons, I decided to leave Zemoga. I made the usual process of resigning, announcing my last day in the company, and everything else related to it.
In the final stages of the process, even there, you feel you’re leaving a great place. But more than anything, these words resonate:“the doors are open here for you, if you want to come back”. The very first thing that came to my head then, was: will I need to knock them? If so, will they really be open to me?
Obviously, you don’t leave a company thinking you will have to ask for a second chance, given the huge amount of opinions in the industry saying it’s not a good idea, or that things are not going to be the same, or even that the “open doors” expression is pure corp cliché.
Leaving all this behind, I started my new journey in a new place. Business as usual, the onboarding, meeting the new team, hearing what the company does, the goals and hands on to work.
It always takes time to get used to a new job, new people, and new dynamics. I’m always positive when facing those changes, and so this was the case. But after some time, I realized that something was not right. I cannot recall bad experiences, because there weren’t any, but the feeling was there: I was not comfortable at this new place. I was doing my job, but something was missing, that strange feeling of, despite receiving positive feedback, thinking I wasn’t doing the right thing being there.
This led me to some conclusions:
- It’s fine if you feel you are comfortable with your work, as long as you are learning continuously.
- It’s fine to listen to your ambitions, but be careful: we always want more. The difference is how you get more, and what you get more of.
Because of the latter, the time came when I decided I wanted to go back to Zemoga. Honestly, it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made. But also one of the most accurate. Why? Simple! I felt like coming back to a place I had always been welcome to. From the very beginning Zemoga let me know I was welcome, listened to my reasons and gave me the opportunity to return. Doors were open for me, as they said when I left -no corp speech-.
Personally, I think there are several ways to reach success in your professional career, but you have to choose a path that will lead you to a “long-lasting success”, knowing that you have all the skills you need to fulfill your position, being mentored on the way, receiving continuous training and working in filling the gaps in such skills, and being surrounded by people from all disciplines, willing to help when you ask for it. And also something crucial for me: technical expertise, which means being in a place known for its state-of-the-art products, technical complexity and quality, so I will have to challenge myself to be up to date with it.
This is why I decided to ask for a second chance. You have all of this at Zemoga. And even more, adding the perks and other extras, but most importantly, this feeling of being in a (real) great place to work, and I say “real” because you actually feel it, not because an award mentions it.
