How do you make a decision?

[Applebun]

I feel like I spend so much of my life worrying about different decisions.

Now I am fretting and worrying abiut jibs.

I started a job four months ago. I hate it. My boss is horrible. I am looking at new jobs. But how do i know which new job to take.

How do i know which one will be good for me. Its hard to know what a job will be like and what a boss will be like until you are in the job.

How do you make decisons about future jobs?

Ask co pilot. It’s awesome.

It’s old fashioned but it works - pros and cons list. So sorry your new role isn’t what you envisaged, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, work out what stuff is hard/upsetting and use that to guide you to a new start.

But how can you know if a boss will be abusive or not, before you start a job

Well you can’t, but you know that right? None of us are mind readers.

If only there was a way to know.
They want references from us.

Maybe I should set up a "ratemyboss" website.

There is a "ratemyteacher" website.

That stuff is so subjective though - it’s not balanced and therefore unhelpful. All you can do is concentrate on you. You sound fairly young - are you?

How does someone sound young in a post?

No I am not. I am in my forties.

I suppose because you're asking questions that sound a bit naive. Not that I'm not happy to answer them. I'm 46 and wouldn't go online asking people to predict my future boss' behaviour. I'm not being unkind, and we are all different, but this idea of setting up a ratemyboss website isn't usually someone in their mid-forties would suggest and I am sure you can recognise that? We've gone enough times around the sun to know that life can be unfair and unbalanced?

It can help to remember job interviews are two-way - you're also trying to find out if you want to work for them. But of course, no one is going to say, "well, I'm a micromanager and a tendency to bullying, hope you're okay with that."

8 agree a pris and cons list can help. But ultimately, none of us can read the future, so there is always an element of hoping for the best.

I left my last job after 5 months. Current one is going much better.

Ratemyboss is definitely somthing that someone in their forties would suggest. As actually my 45 year old colleague suggested the idea to me! That there should be a system for bosses to be reviewed.

I find that beind older makes me more stressed about jobs. When i was in my 20s i wasnt that stressed. At my age, I don't want to make a wrong decision as if you make a wrong decision career wise in your forties , it can be hard to get back into a good direction career wise.

I took this new job four months ago, and it is such an awful job in a really toxic environment. It was a wrong decision that I made

Thanks. I do need to get out of my current job. Its so toxic. Its hard to know what the next job will be like.

But I will hope that it will be better.

I've always thought that when you are faced with the question of which road you should take (when two or more are possible) the only sane thing to do is to make a decision based on the information available to you at the time. And then not to berate yourself if your decision turns out to be wrong for you.

If you couldn't reasonably know the information that makes the job wrong for you at the time, id just shrug, look for another job and put it down to experience. Any other reaction doesn't seem logical to me.

If you did your due diligence before taking the job, you did as much as you could possibly do.

And I don't think your "rate your boss" idea would work. If it was anonymous you'd never know who was complaining about which boss, and if it wasn't anonymous posters would run the risk of litigation.

Pay close attention in the interview. Does the manager do anything that sets off little alarm bells in your head? I didn’t pay attention to a manager who kept taking over me in an interview. Turns out he was a micro managing bully. When I was getting out of that job, I had two offers. The manager in one just gave me a little… concern. So I asked to meet with him again, just to check my instincts. He belittled his current team. That was enough for me to turn that job down and take the other offer. It was a fantastic decision, I did really well in that job and had a great manager.

The other thing to do, is the pros and cons list. Get all your facts and instincts straight. Then flip a coin and really tell yourself that whatever the outcome, you will follow through with it. When the coin lands, pay attention to your gut. How do you feel about the outcome? Any hesitation or discontent, you know it’s the wrong decision. So now you know, go with what you really want.