u/New-Pea4213

Hey everyone. Long story short I moved to a new state to start a new SWE job at a pretty well known financial institution. Before I was working for a defense/satcom company for 5 years, which was my first job out of college.

I was pretty excited to join the company because the project seemed pretty interesting to me. After my 1st week ended, I immediately regretted my decision. I found out there was a lot of micro management at this company, the VP is a character, and they moved me to a completely different project where all my team members are offshore.

I’m pretty set on leaving my job and I’m planning on leaving this job off my resume, but I need some help answering these 2 questions. Some of these I answered when I was applying for jobs early this year and I need some help answering them again:

1. What should I say if a job application asks if I am currently employed? Should I just lie and say I’m unemployed?
2. What should I say if a job application asks why I left my last job?
3. Also do you guys think leaving this job off my resume is a good

idea? I’m worried background checks can see that I’m currently employed and they will think I’m lying about my experience

Hey everyone. Long story short I moved to a new state to start a new SWE job at a pretty well known financial institution. Before I was working for a defense/satcom company for 5 years, which was my first job out of college.

I was pretty excited to join the company because the project seemed pretty interesting to me. After my 1st week ended, I immediately regretted my decision. I found out there was a lot of micro management at this company, the VP is a character, and they moved me to a completely different project where all my team members are offshore.

I’m pretty set on leaving my job and I’m planning on leaving this job off my resume, but I need some help answering these 2 questions. Some of these I answered when I was applying for jobs early this year and I need some help answering them again:

1. What should I say if a job application asks if I am currently employed? Should I just lie and say I’m unemployed?
2. What should I say if a job application asks why I left my last job?
3. Also do you guys think leaving this job off my resume is a good

idea? I’m worried background checks can see that I’m currently employed and they will think I’m lying about my experience

Just for some context, I used to live in the east coast where I was a SWE at a mid size defense contracting company for 5 years. This was my 1st job out of college and I was getting paid around ~90k when I left. I was very under paid and decided to look for a new job. Eventually I landed a new role at a well known finance/banking company in a new city far from the east coast and my family . I had 2 rounds of interviews: one with the hiring manager and another with 2 software leads on the team. I didn’t notice any red flags during the interview and decided to accept the new job and move because of the substantial pay bump and the project seemed pretty interesting to me.

When I joined this new company, I immediately regretted my decision. Here are the red flags I observed:

-The hiring manager told me that he tracks the average time it takes to complete a ticket for every dev on the teams he manages

-I found out 4 days into my new job that they were switching me to a new project and team. Apparently the VP (my manager’s boss) decided not to renew the contract of 8 contractors, so they moved me and another new hire to this team to replace them. My boss was blindsided by this decision.

-In a meeting with the VP, he told me and the new hire that the code cutoff for this project is end of July, and that we “need to help save this project”

-Pretty much all the devs on the team are offshore and I sometimes have to attend meetings at 10pm, something I didn’t know about when I interviewed. It’s also tough to get help with new tasks since we are in completely different time zones.

-During another meeting with the VP, me, the other new hire, my boss, and some PMs, the VP mentioned to everyone how many times I logged in to gitlab (apparently he tracks this too) and asked what I thought about his code repo which he built with Claude. Apparently this project is behind schedule, and he made this code repo to replace the existing code base and he wanted to get my opinion on whether we should go forward this (he asked me this 3 days after I joined this new project)

-This new project is not something I wanted to do since it is backend only and I am a full stack dev

- my boss and the VP tracks everyone’s commits and sends emails if we are not following their rules.

I really want to leave this company due to the excessive micro management here but I feel like I am stuck.
I’ve only been here for 3 weeks so I don’t know what to put on my resume and I also don’t know what to say during interviews when they ask why I want to leave my current job. Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks

Hi everyone. I am currently interviewing with Western Union for a position in Austin. I don’t know much about Austin, but it seems like a lot of well known companies have offices there and it seems like a nice place to live.

Does anyone have any insight into the culture at Western Union? I did some research online. Glassdoor reviews seem fine and I also didn’t see any news articles about mass layoffs, but I wanted to learn more from people in this sub!

Would love to hear from people who have worked there or are currently employed at western Union

I was also wondering if Austin is a good place to live as someone in their mid 20s?