Leaving a job is never easy and it can be hard to know when the best time is to start your next adventure. Starting a new adventure is anything but easy, you have to work with a whole new team, figure out what your role actually is, and you might even have to relocate. This post will cover when to leave an organization and when to stay for professionals in entry to mid-level positions in the tech industry.

Personally, I am constantly checking if I am comfortable at an organization. I can tell if I am comfortable if there are no projects I am working on that make me a little nervous. I am not talking about ethically nervous, but nervous as in I am not completely sure how handle this project. This feeling is very similar to the feeling you feel when you start a new role and are trying to figure out how to excel in it. The organization would not have hired you, if they did not believe you could succeed in the role. However, once you figure things out, you have to proactively look to put yourself on projects that stretch your skills and make you feel uncomfortable. When an organization can no longer provide these opportunities, I know it’s time to actively start my hunt for a new role that can can grow in. The earlier you are in your career, the shorter I believe this window of time is. Personally, I spent about a year at my first few roles and would not have spent a month longer at them.

I treated each role as if it were an internship and tried to absorb as much knowledge and experience as I could within that year.

This gave me an early advantage in the job market. Although, when applying to jobs I may not have had the “years of experience” but I did have a large amount of experience in working in different roles across many types of organizations. This became invaluable the further I got into my career. I was able to draw upon many more experiences than if I had just stayed at one organization and hoped to make my way up the promotion ladder.

Some may ask, well wait, didn’t organizations ask you why you were leaving your current role or job hopping so frequently? Yes, I did get those questions, and I explained how I wanted to broaden my experiences and knowledge in my field. Having a hunger to grow and learn, in my opinion, is never a negative attribute.

Now there are some other perks to leaving more frequently early in your career. For one, since you are always interviewing, you get pretty good at that skill. To add to that, you’ve now had to negotiate a salary for a  “dream job” multiple times. Having that exposure early in your career is priceless. Every single time I negotiated a salary, especially, the first couple times, I made some sort of mistake. Learning from those mistakes early is critical.

One last thing to take note of is that the biggest percent increase in your salary occurs from negotiating your offer. It does not come from promotions or raises. This is when you have the most leverage.

It is more likely you’ll get that big pay raise by leaving your current role and finding another role, than waiting for that promotion.

And although, it may seem scary to start a new journey, whether that new journey is for better or worse, I challenge you to take that leap of fate when you start to feel comfortable.

So take a moment today and evaluate your current role. Are you getting challenged? Are you learning and pushing yourself to grow? Do you feel like you are earning enough? If you’re not, it may be time to start looking for your next adventure.