Yeah, it was meant to be one of those ‘temporary’ situations until they found the right people. It became pretty obvious after a while that they weren’t planning on hiring. A couple of months before I quit, I sat down with my boss and told him I couldn’t do my job because I had too much work. I also mentioned that I was burning out. His response was ‘just do what you can’. I gave it a couple of months to see anything would come of our conversation but it didn’t.
The reason that I stayed so long was because it was in an industry that I’m passionate about and that I wanted to be in. I was hoping that things would improve but they didn’t.
After I resigned, they hired 2 people to replace me. I spent my notice period onboarding them.
You’re right and I did push back on work that wasn’t urgent. Generally my project work got sacrificed for the more pressing things.
The nature of the business meant that a lot of work was urgent and needed immediate attention. When you’ve got a customer in a store and they’re having trouble putting a payment through, you have to drop everything to sort it out because it’s really awkward for the store staff. The same thing if there is a truck waiting to pick up a wholesale order and the warehouse crew is having problems. At that point, the company is losing money. When you’re dealing with external suppliers systems, there’s so many things that fail or go down.
Unfortunately its difficult to build software and manage systems while also dealing with a lot of phone calls and chats from retail and warehouse staff.
At the end of the day the company was under resourced. I highlighted the issues and asked for some help but I didn’t receive any. By that point I was burnt out and made the decision that was best for my health and not the company.