Leaving 4 months into an improbable project

techfiend

I took a position that was promised to be the primary infrastructure position to get a company PCI compliant within 11 months. It was going pretty well for the first 2 months, I thought I was making great progress on reaching the goal from the infrastructure side by migrating from 2010 software physical servers to current virtual servers. A point was reached where developers needed to get involved in order to progress, this is where everything started going wrong.

First off I wasn't able to get any developers time for migrating. Things sat idle for a few weeks, then I was told we're going to migrate old software to virtual servers as this wouldn't require any developers time. I warned them this wouldn't be PCI compliant but they want to continue down this path. There were many other bad decisions made by one specific developer that the company seems to run with which has led to a few other developers to quit. Infrastructure is ultimately decided by this one developer who is one of the newest employees and doesn't have a lot of experience in the field.l

After these decisions I see absolutely no way for the company to reach their pci compliance deadline. The stress I get from trying to push them in the right direction but ultimately being turned down is getting into my personal life and I need a change.

I know some others in the company are feeling defeated along with me but they've given up the fight. I'm at a point where I need to decide on what to really do, some options I've thought of:

1. Tell them the decisions are ultimately preventing us from meeting the deadline. Also tell them developers should not be controlling the infrastructure just like infrastructure is not even questioning development ideas.

2. Look for another job while I continue to get paid doing pretty much nothing at this company and not really having anything to put on a resume for 4 months. This is my third job, first was a year, second was almost 2 years.

3. Stay and watch the trainwreck. If I gave up and looked at their failures as being kind of exciting my stress level would dwindle.

In most places I'd try option 1 but I feel like I've already tried a bit of this and others have tried it which led to them quitting. So I'm leaning towards 2 but the a short hole in the resume without any successes is concerning to me. 3 I feel is doing myself a disservice as I don't feel like I'm advancing there but it's a way to pad the resume with time and at least be happier.

What would you suggest?

EnderWiggin

You can still put the job on your resume. Just because the goal isn't being met doesn't mean you're not there doing work. Consulting on PCI compliance, working on migration from legacy systems, ect. You did all that work, so it's merited on your resume. Personally, I'd go with option one, and if they ignore your advice, just coast for a while. Knock out some CBTs while waiting for the one year mark to hit at that job, then bail.

volfkhat

Whelp,
if you Abort now... you will only have a 4-month employment Gap on your resume.


But If you need a paycheck, and can't afford to quit... Start looking Now.


If/when you start landing some interviews... just LIE and say that you are currently on a 5or6 (whatever) month project/contract.

That way, it appears like a perfectly normal situation :]

Problem Solved!