"If I change jobs, things should be better than now."
And yet you also hear plenty of "I regret changing jobs." Which is it? Research shows a surprisingly clear pattern.
Right after a job change, satisfaction jumps
Boswell and colleagues followed managers to see how job satisfaction changed before and after a job change (Boswell, Boudreau & Tichy, 2005).
The result was a neat hill shape. At the old job, satisfaction declined over time. After changing jobs, satisfaction shot up at the new one. But then it declined over the following year.
The researchers named this the "honeymoon-hangover effect": after the high of a new workplace (the honeymoon) comes a sobering period (the hangover).
A study using large German panel data also found that satisfaction rises sharply right after a job change, and that the boost gets smaller year by year (Chadi & Hetschko, 2018).
So "the first few months were great, but gradually I started feeling the way I did before" isn't unusual. It's a typical pattern that happens to many people.
Still, the people who chose change were happier
So is changing jobs pointless in the end? It's too early to conclude that.
The economist Steven Levitt ran an experiment where people stuck on a big life decision flipped a coin online (Levitt, 2021). Heads meant make the change; tails meant stay put. The decisions included whether to quit a job.
No one had to follow the coin, but people who got heads were more likely to actually make the change. About six months later, people who chose change were happier than those who kept the status quo. The difference was especially large for important decisions like whether to quit a job.
Of course, the people in this experiment were "already on the fence." It's no reason to tell everyone to change jobs. But at least this much can be said:
People who have been on the fence for a long time may be underestimating the benefits of change.
Why do we put off change?
People tend to prefer their current situation more than they should. This is called "status quo bias" (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988).
What you might lose by changing (stability, familiar relationships, the reputation you've built) is easy to picture. What you might gain (a new environment, work that fits) is vague. So the losses look bigger than they are.
If you've been thinking "I want to quit" for years, that may be not only caution but this bias at work.
How to make the hangover smaller
A hangover after the honeymoon is hard to avoid in itself. What matters is making a move where, when the hangover comes, you don't think "I got it wrong again."
To do that, decide in advance how you'll check, at the next workplace, the things that bothered you at the last one.
| Complaint at your old job | What to check in interviews |
|---|---|
| Too much overtime | Average overtime in the team you'd join, and how people work in busy seasons |
| No autonomy | What first-year hires are actually trusted to do |
| Unclear evaluations | The criteria, who evaluates you, and when raises happen |
| Didn't get along with people | The size of the team you'd work with, and a chance to meet your future manager |
| No sense of growth | What recent hires became able to do within a year |
One more thing: before changing jobs, write down three things you expect from the next workplace. Six months in, when satisfaction starts to dip, look back at them. If two of the three have come true, that's not failure. It's the hangover.
Today's exercise
- Write down the one thing you most want to change about your current job
- Come up with one question to check whether a job change would change it
- Write down three things you want from a new job, and save them
Changing jobs doesn't guarantee happiness. But staying on the fence is also a choice.
Once you can put into words what you want to change, a job change stops being a gamble and becomes a design.
References
Boswell, W. R., Boudreau, J. W., & Tichy, J. (2005). The relationship between employee job change and job satisfaction: The honeymoon-hangover effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 882–892.
Chadi, A., & Hetschko, C. (2018). The magic of the new: How job changes affect job satisfaction. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 27(1), 23–39.
Levitt, S. D. (2021). Heads or tails: The impact of a coin toss on major life decisions and subsequent happiness. The Review of Economic Studies, 88(1), 378–405.
Samuelson, W., & Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1, 7–59.