Yeah. Only when the only reason I left was money and I negotiated for the appropriate money on the way in the door when returning.
Any place I’ve left for any other reason I haven’t, and wouldn’t, go back to.
I worked at the same company for almost exactly 12 years, I was so burned out that I didn’t just leave to a similar role, I changed fields. After a year and a half I was nearly broke and went back to my abusive ex, despite a healthy pay bump I left again after a year and haven’t done anything tech related since.
Farming?
Close, construction.
I have tuck-driving as my plan B.
That’s a good plan, I’ve had my CDL since 2008 and drove a snow plow the last 2 winters. Someone’s always looking for a truck driver.
Please fucking don’t. Think long and hard about why you left in the first place - you probably had a good reason.
Not all departures are due to bad things. Sometimes you want to pursue a different area of focus and your current company doesn’t have an opening like that. But maybe a few years later they do.
There are many scenarios to leave a company - in yours you were denied an avenue for self development and if the company has done that once they’ll do it again.
Not all companies are good. If one is shitty enough for you to abandon the relationships you built there it isn’t worth going back to.
I left my small company to go work for a large company since my career has only been in startups and I wanted to see how they do things at a 10k+ employee org. If I end up hating working for large companies I’d consider going back to my smaller company. Not all companies are shitty and not all departures are a burned bridge.
I didn’t say we always needed to burn bridges. In fact, I don’t think you should ever burn a bridge. That’s a rare scenario where you might want to return… but I’m also curious why you wanted to see how they do things at 10k+ orgs when you were happy at your current employment - that seems like quite the leap of faith to take when everything in your life was perfect.
I left a company after 5 years because (in retrospect) I was starting to feel burned out about product engineering. I left for another product engineering job, thinking that my problem was with the product culture at my old place. Nope! Hated product work at the new place too.
Eventually a role opened up at the old place, working on a more dev-ops-y side, and I gave it a shot. It worked out well for 2 years, but after a re-organization cut back the scope of my work, I left for somewhere else.
My keycard didn’t work.
Nope.
