Should I quit? Does it make sense to be ambitious?
~£150k TC, 6YoE @ Bloomberg London.
I like my job, it is very relaxed and most days I only have to work 4-5hrs per day. Some days are very busy, some days I don't have much to do at all and I can chill or play around with personal projects. No on-call schedule. Haven't gone in the office for more than a year due to COVID. Work/life balance is great.
I believe that I am a good engineer. My strengths revolve around software architecture and abstraction rather than algorithms. I despise LeetCode and spending time studying it sounds extremely dreadful -- I do not enjoy puzzles for the sake of it.
I have studied LC to pass the Bloomberg interview in the past and I never needed to remember any algorithm off the top of my head. If I need to, I can calmly research the best approach on the internet, and solve a problem efficiently. I do not believe that LC makes you a good engineer. I have worked with and interviewed myself people with strong algorithmic skills that wrote absolutely unmaintainable code.
I see three paths in my future:
1. Stay with Bloomberg, keep enjoying the work/life balance, but have a relatively low TC. Buying a nice house or raising a family in London seems almost impossible with this TC.
2. LC and GTFO. I really don't want to LC. It seems like a pointless waste of time. I believe I can get good results (nothing spectacular) if I grind, but I have no motivation to. I would then have to interview with multiple companies, negotiate, and maybe I'll get a good offer. The amount of (pointless) effort and uncertainty really puts me off. If I force myself and pull it off, I could get something like £250k TC in London.
3. Interview with a smaller full-remote company, sacrifice some TC, but live in a cheap place. This would be the opposite of "ambition". Basically say "fuck it" and stop caring about TC. Work and travel, live in a cheap place with nice weather, etc.
Am I being stupid by staying at Bloomberg? I feel like I'm having an internal mental crisis right now.
comments
My concern at Bloomberg is not only TC but career-wise I feel like stuck to be honest. I’m not that ambitious normally but thinking a change might be good..
1/2 vs 3 is a fair question, but 1 vs 2 is an artefact of being lazy.
The WLB, friendliness, manager -- to a good extent that was my brain making up excuses why I shouldn't LC and interview. Cooked up things to make me feel less guilty. Cozy comfort and laziness were the culprits for me.