I quit my first job on the first day

Ademola Adegbuyi
4 min readAug 21, 2018

TLDR; It’s not cool. I had no intention of quitting because I got a really good offer (flexible work hours and some other shiny stuff). I’m not really good at writing but I just feel like sharing my story with everyone here.

I could call myself a JavaScript Developer Avocado🥑. I’ve touched and worked with all bleeding edge techs except BlockChain, I guess. I spoke at Google I/O Extended with awesome folks like Ire Aderinokun and Prosper Otemuyiwa. I’m a React Community Manager for Facebook Developer Circles Lagos, in Nigeria.

Enough of me already, I know. If you still want to go on, you can check out my portfolio.

Before that day, I’ve only worked on projects, and not with a startup or company. Why? I’m still a Student and no flexible work hours based on that criteria.

Why I Quit?

I have a very crazy personality, some folks know me to be weird, and all that because I “was blessed” with OCD. I quitted the first day of work with a Russian Start-Up, because I got frustrated, which later led to a mild depression.

What Caused My Frustration?

My Computer and Docker. I’m using a Toshiba Computer with 4GB of RAM, Dual Core Processor with 1.80GHz Clock Speed. Yeah, I know right? Docker shouldn’t give me any problem at all with such configuration but it did. I’m using Debian 9, which is a stable and awesome OS for Software Engineers, and I can’t do without using Chrome browser and VSCode text editor. The codebase was massive, which comprises Rails and React (handled with Webpacker). I wasn’t scared of the codebase because I’ve worked on freeCodeCamp website, which should be scarier than theirs. Compile time was very slow, my computer kept dragging while making a change. Debugging with the console was like hell. I went on like this for few hours, and actually pushed my first commit. At the end of the day before going to bed, I looked at what I had done, and decided to leave before it destroyed me finish. I mean, I had plan to only work 2 hrs or 3 hrs per day based on the agreements I made but I ended up spending 8 hrs on a 1hr job. They actually proposed to buy me a new and better Computer so that I can keep working with them, but I couldn’t take it. I just could not be in someone’s debt because I will keep thinking about it everyday till I pay it up, and that will drastically reduce my productivity. I didn’t have enough money to purchase a really good computer. I just had to quit, and leave some few tips with them on how to improve user experience.

My Computer had stopped me from working on big Open Source Projects out there. Installing the zillion multi-dependencies, running and working on these projects is really hard.

Before that time, I got paired with some folks in school for project. We had an agreement since all I do best is to write code. I ended up working on the write-up, which was out of our agreement. Yet, one of them kept telling me how bad I am and sh*ting my personality because I didn’t do it in time. It led to frustration, because I was the only one working on it. I didn’t complain about going out of the agreement, yet the person had the gut to throw hate words at me.

P.S: I’ve been a loner my whole life, don’t know who to call my friends. I just see everyone how they are; Colleagues, Classmates, Neighbours, and so on. Sometimes I even get scared that I will never get married in the future because I’m almost a sick dude, plus my personality. I can only talk to someone about my private life if I feel the person is qualified to know about them. I’m an Introvert, and still an Introvert. I was only able to speak/live-code at events because I stopped giving a f**k about what folks think of me. I’ve tried going out few times, but it just didn’t work out. Some folks will say “go to the movies”, then I’m like “why should I spend 2 hrs watching a movie when I can do other things?”. I’m not a Nerd, I’m not super intelligent, I’m just good with Maths and Computers.

After the whole thing, the startup offers to send a “Work Computer” maybe in a month time. I didn’t reject that, I said I’d love that.

To some folks that already messaged me or might plan on leaving a message, I have Inner Peace and that’s all I need for now. I’ve learnt some lessons and “Yeah, I know I gotta learn to be less crazy”.

Thank you for reading. See ya 👋

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