The test one former Microsoft engineer used to decide whether it was time to quit his job

• Engineer Kun Chen said he used a test to decide whether to leave Microsoft For the commodity.

• To see if he was still growing, he asked himself what he had done this month that he couldn’t do the month before.

• He said employees don’t have to leave a role if they’re not growing.

Stay or leave: This is a question many workers have struggled with for months, if not years.

Even though clinging to work is the safest feeling in this employment market, some workers still I choose to walk away graduated from cushy jobs, and a former Microsoft engineer shared the framework he used to make that decision.

In an episode of Steve Huynh’s “A Life Engineered” podcast released Monday, Kun ChenA former engineer at Microsoft Meta, and Atlassian said it uses a simple test to decide whether it’s time to leave. Chen said he decided to leave Microsoft when he realized he could no longer grow much at the company.

He said many people wait until they miss out on a promotion to realize they’re not growing anymore.

“It’s a very lagging indicator. I think we can actually tell if we’re growing much, much earlier,” Chen said. in question on the podcast.

Chen told Business Insider that since he started working at Microsoft, he regularly asks himself a simple question to be honest about his growth: “What did I do this month that I couldn’t do last month?”

Six years into his first job at Microsoft, he told Business Insider that he realized he wouldn’t be able to give himself a good answer to that question for several months.

He said in the podcast that he was essentially working on the same tasks and already knew how to do them. He said he could find ways to do some of his work faster and better, but it was largely the same.

“That’s how I realized I wasn’t growing up that much,” he told Business Insider.

Chen said a monthly test is especially meaningful given the current situation rate of change.

The field of software engineering, in particular, is in the midst of a radical transformation; because AI models have improved significantly in the last few months. For example, Google just announced that: 75% of new code is now produced by artificial intelligence. Last fall, the company announced that this was 50%.

“The world is changing very quickly, and we must constantly question ourselves,” Chen said.

This does not automatically mean: workers must leave A company or team can do this if they find themselves stagnant in their roles, Chen said on the podcast. Still, he said it’s helpful to ask yourself this question so you can figure out what changes you need to make.

Chen told Business Insider that he might talk to his manager at Microsoft to discuss ways to move into a project or role that would allow him to grow and learn new things.

But he said he eventually realized that moving to a smaller company with a very different culture and business model would give him a different level of growth. Facebook’s stock was rising at the time, he said on the podcast.

Chen said on the podcast that he thought it was a good time to try it, and that it was one of the best decisions he’s ever made, both financially and in terms of his personal development.

Chen returned to Microsoft after his project at Facebook was “settled” and “the rest of the work just got bigger.” He said he had the opportunity to help launch a new gaming platform at Microsoft.

“I saw this as an opportunity to apply what I had learned throughout my years at Facebook,” Chen said.

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