I'm not in, but your OP made me curious:
RWarehall: In a little over a week, I start a new job
in a lateral move. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to display my skills and hopefully the new job will have a better atmosphere than my current employer.
What exactly do you mean? Are you changing from one occupation to another? Like, from carpentry to plumbing? Or are you just moving from one job to another in the same business?
RWarehall: As an optional topic of discussion, since I'm leaving a job for a new one, tell me a story about what happened at a previous job that made you want to find a new employer.
Well, it's kind of a long explanation, but here goes.
I was working as a software developer. Over time, I found myself disagreeing more and more with the decisions being made by both the upper and middle management. It seemed that decisions were being made by people who were not in a position to judge the best course of action, who furthermore did not consult those people who were in such a position, and that the decisions were primarily based on short-term personal ambition rather than long-term business survival. Then a new department manager was hired for my department. He turned out to be the best manager I ever had. Not only was he extremely competent, but he also actually cared for the people he was managing. I was hoping this was a sign of change, but the same awful decisions were still being made by the rest of the management. Then there was a "restructuring" of the four development departments, which after some reshuffling of developers ended up with only three departments. This meant that a department manager had to go, and they chose to fire mine, the only one of the four who was actually good at his actual job, while I ended up in the department of a guy I really didn't like. For me, that was the last straw. I started looking for another job on the same day we got that bit of news, and it didn't take me long to find one.
A while later (I had gotten the new job, but wasn't due to start it for another month and a half) I got called into the head office for the yearly "employee performance interview" (not exactly sure what the official term is in English), you know, where you talk to your manager about the goals you set last year, how well you've achieved those goals and what goals to set for next year. I was met by the smug bastard who now managed my department, whom I hadn't seen since the restructuring since I'd been working on-site on a customer project. He was all smiles, trying (and failing) to project an aura of truly caring. We went into a meeting room and sat down, and he started to ask me how I was doing, but I stopped him. I told him "Before we proceed, you'd better read this", and handed him my resignation. I loved the way the expression on his face changed. Naturally, he had to ask me why I chose to resign, and I was more than happy to tell him, although he wasn't particularly happy to hear my reasons. Although I didn't mention him specifically, he was not in any doubt about the fact that I considered him to be a part of the problem.
From all I had seen while I was there, I was sure the company could not continue along its present course for long, and I was right. When I left, there were about 130 employees, having slowly but steadily grown during the years I was there. Six months later, they were down to 50 employees. Mind you, neither the growth, nor the decline had anything to do with me. Just poor management making poor short-term decisions.
