Why Resign and then come back

We don’t really appreciate what we have until it’s gone. I was having a good time in my first company and I expected any place I go to, to have the same standards and satisfaction of work.

Reality is often dissapointing. I joined a company out in an older part of Bangalore that was a marketing analysis/telecom campaigning organisation. I was put into Customer support, where nobody gave any attention to work culture or work life balance. We used to slog hard and extreme burnout was commonplace.

Here is what I felt was wrong :

• No onboarding, I was working on production systems a few days into the company before even being introduced to everyone.
• Multiple higher level employees were known to yell at people in meetings. It was difficult to raise a point in front of them.
• Mass attrition. The implementation department had lost 2/3rd of existing employees in a year. They responded by doing mass hiring but even those new people were noping away.
• The Senior Engineer was barely responsive despite having a lot of knowledge, probably due to his own work pressure.
• Due to the high speed of releases, there were few, if any, quality checks in place. Developers and implementers could get away with a suboptimal solution and the amount of technical debt increased every day.

I also have unforgettable good memories and interactions with a lot of people at the place. The location of this company was the best locality I have stayed in Bangalore. There was even a nice small bar just adjacent to the office which frequently became the hangout after office hours.

However, I felt a bit under appreciated. The old charm of being a “future star” in my previous company was not felt. The few friends I had made had started to move out. So, I tried a few interviews but it didn’t lead to anything. I was not getting any calls from anywhere I wanted to join. Due to the lockdown, I had fewer interactions with others. I was in a tough place with regards to my family situation. And I was losing patience. So one bad day I called the manager at my old company and asked if there were any openings. He confirmed they would be happy to have me back. That was good enough and I resigned from the current company. In hindsight, this could have been a hasty decision, but a necessary course correction nonetheless.

There were a couple of interviews with my old company leaders and within a month, I got an offer letter. It was in one of these interviews that I was asked this question - Why Resign and then come back?